Mass Effect - Turian Phaeston Assault Rifle

[Talaaya]

It's been a while! Excited to finally get started on a new cosplay.

For my next one I plan on doing Nyreen Kandros, the female Turian from Mass Effect 3. I've done the pre-production phase to make sure she'll work on a human body but haven't progressed much past that. I decided I should start with the rifle she'll be using, the Turian Phaeston assault rifle. I will be 3D modeling and then 3D printing it.

To begin, I found the game model to use as reference. I ended up finding it as part of a pack for Garry's Mod, which required unpacking and converting it to a file type usable by my 3D modeling program, Maya. This takes several steps involving quite a few different programs:

• Download the Garry's Mod pack on the Steam Workshop
• Drag the .gma file onto gmad.exe in the Garry's Mod bin folder
• Use Crowbar Decompiler to unpack the .mdl
• Import the appropriate .smd into Blender using the Blender Source Tools plugin
• Export as .fbx or .obj
• Import to Maya (model conversion done)
• (For textures) Use VTFEdit to open the .vtf material file
• Export as .tga
• Load the .tga onto a material in Maya
• (If anyone has any questions about this process I'd be happy to help)

Once I got the model in Maya I could begin analyzing its shape and texture to determine how I would need to model my own version. While I had the original model, it is not very useful for the end product. A lot of the detail you see on the model is actually faked via textures, so I would need to effectively start my own model from scratch, using the original as reference. Even a lot of the beveled edges aren't actually modeled in. I had to try to interpret what exactly the original artist was intending the shapes to be. This blurry bright line here - is it a beveled edge or a scratch? What do I do with this shape that doesn't make any sense when you look at it with the context of the texture painted on top? Things like that.

Below is the model in Maya. You'll note that in the first two images at the beginning of the post, it's really hard to make out a lot of the details. Once I had the model in Maya I could increase the viewport's gamma to really bring out all of those details. Note how few details are actually modeled into the mesh itself.

The original model was not scaled to the proper size, so I had to figure out how big it's supposed to be. I wasn't sure how to go about this. After some sleuthing, I found this article talking about a 1:1 rifle prop you can actually buy. It included the exact measurements.

However, it was not the Phaeston, but the M8 Avenger. But even so, that was all I needed! A point of reference. I just had to unpack and convert the M8 avenger game model as well and scale that to the accurate size in Maya, then scale the Phaeston the same percentage. The resulting measurement for the Phaeston is 35.5 inches, or nearly 3 feet (90.17cm). She's a big one!

And here's what I ended up with! This is my completely scratch made model. You'll note that there's some faceting going on, particularly on the round barrel parts. This is because this is the low poly version which will later be smoothed before 3D printing.

My 3D printer bed is approximately 9"x9"x8", which means it won't be printable in a small number of pieces, let alone the entire thing all at once. I wish.

I've spent a long time tearing the model apart into printable pieces (28 of them!) which involves making decisions about where to divide the model so it will fit on the printer bed and print well, making it watertight, and making it physically possible to reassemble the printed pieces together for the final product. I also need to make sure it will be strong enough when all the pieces are put together, so in addition to being smart about how I divide it, I will also soon be adding in mortise and tenon shapes to the 3D model itself. It's not usually a good idea to rely solely on glue to attach something together. If you instead have mechanical connections (like mortise and tenon) it will be much, much stronger.

In approximately the middle of the rifle there's a small hole above the trigger. This hole will need to house a set of LEDs. To accommodate that, I had to make sure to hollow out the piece that hole is a part of so I will be able to insert the LEDs and battery. I'll also need to engineer a way for the gun to come apart for access to that area, while making sure it does not weaken the structural integrity of the whole rifle.

Here are the 28 pieces and their likely orientation for printing:

 

[Loneken]

This is awesome. Totally following this thread!

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I really like the look of this gun, but always used something else in the games. I can't wait to see how it turns out!

 

[Loneken]

Talaaya did you ever finish this? Would love to see the final model!

 

[Talaaya]

Talaaya did you ever finish this? Would love to see the final model!

I kinda forgot I started this thread, whoopsie lol. I had put it on hold for a bit due to life circumstances but I got back into it recently and I've now done all the prep work and slicing setup for printing it.

Here's how it ended up being divided. As I mentioned previously, I made it have mortise and tenon connections so it would be stronger than just glue. (I've learned the lesson of the importance of mechanical connections the hard way...)

The colors represent the assembly order, in order of the rainbow. So red, orange, yellow, lime, green, etc. Not seen in this first image is green, which is on the opposite side of the cyan piece.

It's in fewer pieces now because previously I was dividing it for an Ultimaker 2, but recently I got an Ultimaker S5 which is much larger!

I did a lot of working and reworking the parts so they would print in the most efficient way, with minimal support structures, to try to reduce the amount of print time. As it stands, it's still colossal, sitting at nearly 18 solid days of print time! 12 prints, 20 pieces. I don't think I can reduce it any further without reducing the print quality, and I'd rather not do that since it just means more sanding and fixing issues later.

The piece with the longest print time is the larger of the two black pieces - 3 days, 3 hours, 29 minutes. Woof. Though the fact that I'm even able to print a piece that takes that long is only possible because I have the S5, so I can print some pretty huge pieces now. And it doesn't even take up the entire area of the printer bed! The bed is 330mm x 240mm x 300mm (13in x 9.5in x 11.8in). I think I could print an entire helmet if I wanted to!

My solution for being able to open up the gun to access the interior to put in LEDs and change batteries was to make the butt of the rifle come off. It has 3 mortise and tenons that slot into each other and a chicago screw to hold it in place (screw seen below highlighted in green). This chicago screw connection worries me a little though because I think it might be a bit thin there and I'm not sure how strong it will be. There isn't really anywhere else I can easily add a screw like that though so I guess I'll just print it and see how it goes. It can be hard to get a sense of scale in digital software even if you have measurements so I'll start with printing the purple piece that the chicago screw is in first.

I'll also be using a new filament I haven't used before. My new printer has dual nozzles so I can print the support material with a different type. I have some PVA I'm excited to try, which is water soluble. Should be interesting to see if it scars the print less and see how easy it is to dissolve off the print. Though I've heard it can be a pain to print with, especially if the room is humid.

 

[Talaaya]

So that water soluble PVA I mentioned ended up being a no-go, at least for this project. It was too moist so I have to dry it out before I can use it. Instead, I gave a different new support material a try: Ultimaker Breakaway (third parties also make a generic version). It's a fragile filament that easily pops off and breaks away from the rest of the print without scarring it. It worked so well! Even on the bottom side of supported PLA the breakaway did not get stuck to it and it very effectively supported it. This is such an improvement over using PLA as support for PLA! Having dual nozzles is awesome.

Another new thing I tried was a different shape of infill. Normally I'd have just used triangles but I noticed a new option I hadn't seen before: gyroid. It seems like it's much stronger than triangles (and multi-directionally strong as well) for the same or less amount of filament. Also it looks super cool.

It looks really dense here but this is only 10% infill!

The mortise and tenon connections went really well with the exception of a couple. The tolerances were off slightly by accident and I corrected it for later prints.

I haven't been able to hold the entire rifle yet as the individual pieces need to get filled and sanded a bunch before it gets glued together (and then filled and sanded again to take care of the seams) but I could at least hold the grip and trigger. I realized only after printing it that I hadn't even considered whether it would be the right size to put my hand around it. Luckily it is a pretty good size, if a bit on the larger side.

The chicago screw also worked out perfectly! I correctly measured everything and it fits like a glove. It seems sufficiently strong as well.

And finally, after 16 days, 2 hours, and 25 minutes of printing, here are all of the pieces assembled! (Again, no glue yet so some gaps are visible)

It weighs about 4 lbs and cost $145.37 in filament (which could have been cheaper but I was mostly using the expensive filament that came for "free" with my printer).

I made the mistake of not putting a brim on the earlier prints which resulted in some nasty warping, particularly in those holes between the black and white pieces. It's gonna take some pretty serious bondo and sanding corrections to fix that. It's a little hard to see in the above pic but you can see the white flaring a bit. It continues pretty far on either side of the seam.

I've also started doing post processing. I decided to go with bondo to do this. Normally I'd hit it with filler primer for the first pass, but that doesn't work so well on detailed stuff like this. I opted for the extra control that bondo has, with the tradeoff of tedium. I don't mind if it takes longer. It's fun! Also, bondo should in theory stand up to more abuse than just primer so I like that aspect as well.

It's quite difficult to get it into all the places it needs to be but I'm managing. I've bondo'd a few pieces and haven't started sanding yet.

 

[Talaaya]

I found a new material to post process 3d prints with instead of bondo and I'm loving it! It's called U-POL Dolphin 1K Combination Putty (UP0657).

The reason it's so great is you can brush it on to the print by diluting it with acetone (it comes out of the tube quite thick). This also means you can continue to work what you have already applied to the print by adding more acetone in the event that you make mistakes. I was a bit worried it might pick too much of it back up and would mean I couldn't build up layers well, but it doesn't dissolve fast enough for this to be an issue.

It's also not a two part mix, unlike bondo body filler. You just use it straight out of the tube (aside from diluting it with acetone if you want).

It's much stronger than bondo spot putty and will not shrink like spot putty. No cracking and you can build it up super thick!

It's very forgiving to work with! The putty cures very quickly but that's not an issue. If your mixing dish hardens, just mix in more acetone. The cure time is actually very nice because you can handle parts of the print you've just done in order to deal with new areas. It will receive fingerprints or indents for an hour or so afterward but if you're gentle it's not a problem. Plus, even if you did damage it, you're gonna sand it anyway.

Clean up is also easy as you just use acetone to clean the brush and anything else.

I discovered the putty from this video which has more info if you want:

I first used it on a test piece which I pre-sanded half of. It didn't seem to make any difference that I had sanded one side so I'm probably not going to bother unless the print has some pretty egregious issues. Though perhaps adhesion might benefit from a scuff pass.

I didn't apply enough of it on this test. Sanding it was very easy but since I applied it so thin I had to sand it back down to the plastic and there were still a few imperfections left. A second coat would have helped, but you can always do it after sanding as well.

I have not tested its application over a primer yet so I don't yet know if there would be any issues there. I expect it will be fine.

I went ahead and started applying it to one of the rifle pieces.

It was sooo nice to be able to get a little paintbrush into those details, not only to apply the putty but also to use acetone to clean out any build up in creases.

Trying to figure out the best way to work with a small amount of putty and some acetone was a challenge. Those containers are notoriously not slow pourers and are hard to work with. I only needed a tiny amount of acetone so I grabbed a little needle-less syringe I had on hand (from the vet) which fit perfectly into the nozzle of the acetone container. Once the acetone gets lower in the container I'll have to pour it into another container first or get a longer syringe or something. But it was extremely nice to have the syringe to add a few drops of acetone at a time to the putty. I worked with the putty on a paper plate (ideally I'd prefer to use a tiny cup to help keep it contained in one spot better, but I only had plates).

I've also started sanding the pieces I applied bondo to earlier. Bondo's definitely nicer for big open areas so I'll still be using it for some things if it's warranted, but likely not for any other pieces on this rifle. I'm curious what this putty does when applied over bondo. I can't imagine it'd be a problem though.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I've never heard of that putty, I'll have to try it. I do get the thing about Acetone. From experience it's very easy to try to pour a little and then pour it into your lap... Fastest pants change ever.

 

[Talaaya]

Sanded down the dolphin putty. There were a few areas where more putty would have helped but overall it went quite well. It was very difficult to get sandpaper into a lot of the crevices, but I have a set of small metal files that really helped getting into those tiny spaces. However, they did not help with getting into the long groove. I had to rely on folding up sandpaper so it was thick enough to not crumple and try to shove it into the groove. The bottom surface of the groove in particular was the hardest part to get sanded.

(In the pic above there's still a bunch of dust on it. Before painting, I washed it off.)

I figured at this point I should hit it with a coat of primer (non-filler) to really see the problem areas.
It's quite smooth! There are several areas where the ridges from what I assume are VFAs (Vertical Fine Artifacts) still need filling in, but now I can see them better. You can see the leftover VFAs best in the long groove at the bottom of this pic, or on the rectangle piece on the far right (which I am not putting any putty on as the rectangle does not need to be smooth):

So I did another pass with the putty in areas that needed more help. It applies very well on top of primer. If you work it around on the primer for long enough it will pick up the primer but you have to work a while at it to make that happen.

I also did a pass with bondo spot putty just for fun to see the difference. But I will definitely be using the dolphin putty as the bondo putty is impossible to get into any of the crevices since I have to use my finger. After sanding this side I'll have to go in there with dolphin putty to get the remaining problem areas. I figured I better not risk doing dolphin on top of bondo.

 

[Astyanax]

Trying to figure out the best way to work with a small amount of putty and some acetone was a challenge. Those containers are notoriously not slow pourers and are hard to work with. I only needed a tiny amount of acetone so I grabbed a little needle-less syringe I had on hand (from the vet) which fit perfectly into the nozzle of the acetone container. Once the acetone gets lower in the container I'll have to pour it into another container first or get a longer syringe or something.

For storing and applying small quantities of acetone, I use these wash bottles. The black caps are "Airbrush Siphon Bottle Jar Adapter Cap Covers"



Both can be found cheaply on Amazon!

(The cups are dip cups from Smart & Final, which are about $5 for a hundred of them.)

By the way, the acetone thinning trick works with the red Bondo Spot Putty too!! I prefer to paint half-thinned spot putty on my prints with a cheap disposable paintbrush.

 

[Talaaya]

For storing and applying small quantities of acetone, I use these wash bottles. The black caps are "Airbrush Siphon Bottle Jar Adapter Cap Covers"

View attachment 1813150

Both can be found cheaply on Amazon!

(The cups are dip cups from Smart & Final, which are about $5 for a hundred of them.)

By the way, the acetone thinning trick works with the red Bondo Spot Putty too!! I prefer to paint half-thinned spot putty on my prints with a cheap disposable paintbrush.

Oh nice, thank you! That's super helpful.

 

[Talaaya]

Been doing a ton of sanding! I have a permanent work space now when previously I was having to sand outside with no cover from rain or heat, and I'd have to set up and take down my work station every time which made my motivation go down the drain. Very happy and much more motivated now!

Sanded the big piece with Bondo on it:

then hit it with primer:

There are a few areas I need to fix with some spot putty like here where you can still clearly see the print lines:

Also sanded these 3 pieces:

then primed those as well:

They also have some very minor spots I need to touch up with spot putty, but nowhere near as bad as the big piece.

Then I tackled the most annoying piece, which really sucks because of all the detail and how difficult it is to sand in crevices. Here it is with the Dolphin putty on it before sanding:

Here it is mid-sanding, with the deep recesses yet to be sanded:

And fully sanded! It has a lot of problem areas I'll have to fix, probably with more dolphin putty since the areas are too big/deep for spot putty or are corner areas that need to be strong (spot putty is very fragile and shrinks). But thankfully the worst of it is over now!

Also sanded another piece (left) that had Bondo on some of its surface, but not all. This one was also a pain to sand but for a completely different reason: I didn't mix enough hardener into the Bondo so it cured a little sticky. It kept gumming up my sandpaper and metal files - but once sanded it's fine and the stickiness is no longer an issue.

I'm very annoyed at 3M (makers of Bondo). Normally I'd have no issue judging how much hardener I need - I've learned just what shade of pink it needs to be to cure correctly, but for whatever reason the company decided to change their hardener to blue from the red it used to be. Figuring out what shade of blue the Bondo mix should be is much more difficult than the shade of pink because the Bondo without the hardener is a cool gray - telling the difference between cool bluish gray and slightly more bluish gray is stupidly hard. Why did they do this?! I read somewhere that you can separately buy red colored hardener, but having to buy something extra just to get the same functionality is absurd.

Yet another reason I'm loving the Dolphin putty way more. Not even going to bother with Bondo anymore unless there's some sort of huge crevice I have to fill.

 

[Talaaya]

I did another round on this one - used spot putty instead of dolphin putty. I don't remember why I chose it for this one but either one probably would have worked about the same. Though I have noticed that the dolphin putty can get bubbles in it which might be why I chose spot putty for the final pass on this one. Also it's just fun to smear it on there with your fingers (gloved).
Spot putty is actually easier to sand which could also be why I chose it. Dolphin putty isn't hard to sand, but spot putty just falls away super quickly since it's more fragile.

Here it is after sanding along with the trigger piece which also got the spot putty treatment. I forgot to take a pic of that one before sanding.

More primer passes! The gray is regular primer to allow for seeing any remaining problem areas (if none, then it'll be ready for final paint), and the reddish ones are filler primer. These pieces are pretty low on detail so I felt more comfortable using filler primer on them, and it was the right call. It worked really well on them. They'll still need sanding in some areas and a little putty but this definitely saves a lot of time. It's very hard to spray paint into the complex geometry on that super tall one but I kinda got it in there alright. Hopefully I don't have to do much sanding in there.

The top left piece (pic below) needed some more help in a few areas so I went back and heavily filled a few areas with dolphin putty. The gaps/indents are an area I mentioned previously that had elephant-footing flaring and it's still not quite fixed. Those areas are very hard to get tools or even spray paint into.
Also on the bottom point the inner surface there needed to be smoothed out. I had left it unfinished but realized it will actually be a little exposed when the rifle is assembled. It was very scraggly and print line-y from being not printed very well as it was the underside and not super well supported.
I dolphin puttied the bottom piece in this pic because it had some layer unevenness that filler primer wouldn't have solved. Also because of the elephant footing issue again.

A few more pieces that got dolphin puttied and then sanded. The twin pieces on the right were a few that were included in that filler primer pass but they needed a lot of help on their faceted edges as they didn't print super well. It kind of scooped inward there when it should have been a flat facet. A few corners still need further build up.

And finally, sanded these two.

I've run out of both types of primer now so I'll have to go get some more before I can make any further progress. Annoyingly, I discovered that the price of primer has nearly doubled recently. It had been at a stable 6 bucks for years and years and now it's $11!