Bootleg t2 figurines 2019-08-04
tf2 figurine
For this 72 hour jam, I wanted to make another tf2 figure. Previously I have made some figures of my loadouts because it is a fun way to have some personalized tf2 objects on my desk.
For this jam I wanted to try making a more stylized tf2 merc. My inspiration was the tf2 blind box figures.
Valve never officially released a medic variant, but they did show off a prototype at Toy Fair 2015 so that means with valve time the figures will totally come out within a day or two.
To start my project I imported the medic into blender and got a pose that I liked.
One of the things that most people don’t realize about video game models is how low polycount they are. Without using any shading the medic looks like this. Sadly, it is impossible to tell a printer to make this model smooth and to look nice so the print needed a lot of modifications.
The figure that I made is 3 inches tall. I knew that there are some parts that will not print correctly at all, so I removed some smaller detail pieces such as the loop of wire that is on the medics backpack.
Next came brutally ripping off the medic’s head. This is how I enlarged part of the head.
I also removed all of his teeth and tongue.
The next step was modifying the scaling of the medic. The blind box figures have very tiny bodies with large feet and heads to compensate. I decided to instead scale the body uniformly down on the z axis and I also manually modify scaling on the x and y planes to get a design that I liked.
This is a rough idea that I originally had for sizing of the model.
One of the biggest problems that I came across was getting the head to sit on the body. With a neck it lead to some weird looking poses. This was done on my computer and I was taking pictures on my phone to get advice from some friends. Sorry about the poor picture quality.
.
What I finally disliked the least, was this:
Next, I added some details to the backpack such as the cross and circle.
The final medic was a little over 650,000 triangles. If the game used models like this, we would be counting hours per frame.
Next came printing. Since the model was going to be so small I needed to use an sla/dlp printer to get the detail that I was looking for. One of the downsides of these printers is that one liter of resin is around 50 dollars, which can make models pricey. In order to use the minimal amount of resin. I hollowed the model to a 1.75mm wall thickness. This greatly reduces the cost of printing. One of the other problems with sla printers is that they have to pull the build part off of the screen after every layer. The problem with this is that the head layer adhesion was so strong that it pulled itself off of the support which lead to 3 failed prints. On the fourth print I modified the orientation and added an obscene amount of head support.
Finally we have the medic
This back picture shows a lot of the support on the prints. This had to be sanded down to remove the zits form the medic.
Next the medic was sanded and primed and sanded again.Once he was all smooth, he was ready for painting.
Finally comes painting. I used some cheap acrylic paints and after a few hours I was finally finished.
For this jam I wanted to try making a more stylized tf2 merc. My inspiration was the tf2 blind box figures.
Valve never officially released a medic variant, but they did show off a prototype at Toy Fair 2015 so that means with valve time the figures will totally come out within a day or two.
To start my project I imported the medic into blender and got a pose that I liked.
One of the things that most people don’t realize about video game models is how low polycount they are. Without using any shading the medic looks like this. Sadly, it is impossible to tell a printer to make this model smooth and to look nice so the print needed a lot of modifications.
The figure that I made is 3 inches tall. I knew that there are some parts that will not print correctly at all, so I removed some smaller detail pieces such as the loop of wire that is on the medics backpack.
Next came brutally ripping off the medic’s head. This is how I enlarged part of the head.
I also removed all of his teeth and tongue.
The next step was modifying the scaling of the medic. The blind box figures have very tiny bodies with large feet and heads to compensate. I decided to instead scale the body uniformly down on the z axis and I also manually modify scaling on the x and y planes to get a design that I liked.
This is a rough idea that I originally had for sizing of the model.
One of the biggest problems that I came across was getting the head to sit on the body. With a neck it lead to some weird looking poses. This was done on my computer and I was taking pictures on my phone to get advice from some friends. Sorry about the poor picture quality.
.
What I finally disliked the least, was this:
Next, I added some details to the backpack such as the cross and circle.
The final medic was a little over 650,000 triangles. If the game used models like this, we would be counting hours per frame.
Next came printing. Since the model was going to be so small I needed to use an sla/dlp printer to get the detail that I was looking for. One of the downsides of these printers is that one liter of resin is around 50 dollars, which can make models pricey. In order to use the minimal amount of resin. I hollowed the model to a 1.75mm wall thickness. This greatly reduces the cost of printing. One of the other problems with sla printers is that they have to pull the build part off of the screen after every layer. The problem with this is that the head layer adhesion was so strong that it pulled itself off of the support which lead to 3 failed prints. On the fourth print I modified the orientation and added an obscene amount of head support.
Finally we have the medic
This back picture shows a lot of the support on the prints. This had to be sanded down to remove the zits form the medic.
Next the medic was sanded and primed and sanded again.Once he was all smooth, he was ready for painting.
Finally comes painting. I used some cheap acrylic paints and after a few hours I was finally finished.