Here is my first attempted at making a custom transformer. After seeing some of the work from Treadshot A1 and fakebusker83 here on the boards I was inspired to give Shapeways Transformers a shot. so I came up with the idea of these targetmasters. Right now I am waiting for my order from Shapeways to see how they turned out but I wanted to share my creations with the community. Once they arrive I'll upload some pics of before and after being painted.
Interesting design, but some of the joints look pretty small and could be fragile. How long have you been working with 3D CAD? What program do you use? Wait til you see what MasterShooter is working on though. I hear CAD images will go up on their facebook page in approx 2 weeks.
Great idea but I'm not loving the quadrapeds. I think you could probably get the same end result as a biped.
Yeah, four legs doesn't work for me. Also, this thread should be in Fan Art, as with all renders. I think you could do much better with a regular humanoid frame. Shell Shock is nice as is, but a simpler, perhaps more effective design would employ a transformation more along the lines of the butt of the gun being the legs, the arms along the sides or bottom, and then the gatling guns folding onto the back of the robot. Quite literally, the same transformation as Aiuole (see the thread in Fan Art). The advantage of that system is that the guns don't have to split apart (giving a much better looking barrel). Here, i fear the barrel won't work as you think i might. The barrels might not stay latched together, and you'd end up with an ever expanding seam along the length of the barrel (basically, the lower half is pull down by gravity, so the barrel splits in half). I don't see a peg built in to hold them together, so unless the screenshot doesn't show it, this might be an issue in the actual model. This, of course, is Aiuole, an example of how a humanoid frame can be worked into a gun: You can still achieve the double gatling gun mode simply by replacing the two rays at the front. I'm not saying what you have right now isn't great as it is, i'm just saying you'd probably get more sales with a slightly more conventional design. That said, i'm glad my work has inspired this, and it looks like a really cool concept. I do agree with others in that it does use some pretty small joints, but then again everyone has to experiment with different joints. It took me ages to perfect my ball joint system. I hope this works out for you. BTW, what modeling program do you use? PM me if you don't want to spill too much.
well what I was going for was something a little different. I have never seen a quadruped targetmaster so I thought, hey why not? I also like the idea of there not being any kind of extra parts when in robot mode. I have attached an image to show the back of the robot mode. yeah, I have no idea how strong shapeways is when completed so I am honestly concerned about the joints myself. I hope that they will hold up but if not there is always superglue. I did think about a peg at the end of the barrel, you should be able to see it better in the attached pic. I really do appreciate all of your comments so far. as for my CAD background, I have 10 years of architecture and civil engineering CAD work under my belt. The 3d CAD is just for fun and I have been playing with that off and on for years. All of my modeling is done just using sketchup, nothing fancy at all.
You see, the problem with a quadruped targetmaster isn't the four legs itself, it's what makes the legs. If you'd used the back of the gun as the legs, and the arms with Gatling guns, then we could all accept it as a half-turret-half-robot. Sorta like a cross between a Droideka and PCC Chopster (who has the gatling gun arms). But with the gatling guns as legs, it makes his robot mode much less menacing. It's good to see a clip at the end of the barrel to hold it all together, i can see the 10 years have served you well on the small, easily overlooked details. As long as you've got your tolerances right, Shapeways should be strong enough to make the joints work.
Just my 2 cents. Pay attention to your scale; make sure your walls and joints are of proper thicknesses. Nothing less than 1mm will survive the rigors of printing and assembly, and ball joints should be at least 2.5 mm in diameter if you want any sort of consistency in performance. There are some areas of doubt to me in your design. Things like the fists and abs, though there's a lot of effort put into cadding it, seem too fine to be printed in Shapeways, though I can't judge until the printed sample arrives. This being said, I find the concept interesting, and a quad legged targetmaster is certainly new to me. All the best!
i'm down for a quadlegged targetmaster. One of my customs, Trashtalk, had a multi-changing partner, who had 2 Powermaster modes, 2 Targetmaster modes, and 2 robot modes (dog and bird).
well first minute I saw the quadlook I was like... yuk! after 5minutes I was like.... Mmmmmm now I am like AWSOME!!
yeah, I actually just took a measurement of ball joints and they all seem to run about 2.5 mm. the hands are smaller so those could be a bit problematic. this will be my first time working with anything shapeways so I do think it will be a good learning experience when it comes to details and stability. I would also like to thank everything one else for the comments, the more input the better.
On the Shapeways site they recommend 0.7 mm minimum wall thickness for Strong flexible, but I think for anything that's remotely load bearing you wanna have it at least 1mm thick. 0.5 mm scale might be suitable for surface detail (like etchings, wires and stuff) but they might not appear too well on the powdery surface.
Interesting concept. I might consider flipping them upside down and giving him 4 arms instead of 4 legs. Keep it up. Always good to see new people putting out work.
Do like the gun modes very much! The mini gun would look fantastic with dotm Roadbuster on his door ports, would use the shotgun on leadfoot
