Hurrican Rifle v2 Prop [Mechanically Finished] [Long thread with progress]

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 1:51am

Project Status: Mechanically Finished

Hi guys, Yiming here.

For the past ~2 month I have been working on this original prop design during my free time. Mentin on mastodon suggested that I should post this on BlenderArtists. I have a bit more time today so I’ll update this project’s back log on here.

I was mainly updating it on my blog and social media previously. So I’ll collect pictures and stuff and post them here as a more concentrated thread, and it allows for discussion.

Hurricane Launcher v2 Prop…?

This is an updated design based on the Hurricane Launcher concept I did last year for the comic and a similar rifle design from this more recent piece. The intention is to make a 3d printable model out of it.

For people who are not that familiar with my works, I usually do paintings and comics and do designs for these art projects. This is an early iterations of this design:

I like the look of this design more than the more blocky one from one of my recent paintings

Some of you may recognize some design language influences of a game called FireFall in these pieces.

And now let’s start designing for the actual modeling of the thing

I used the proportion from that recent piece and made layouts of main components of the prop.

Verified the ending location of the stock and the placement/proportion of the grip with a photo overlay of a SCAR-H model I own…

Because I found the shape to be too blocky, it may look ok on painting, but the 3d form is gonna be very boring if everything is right angle, so I used more non-right-angle shape splitting to unify the look of the entire device.

Some more iterations I did with the form, mainly on the scopes.

At this point I started doing structural drawings for internal elements and fastening elements. Here the main solenoid, chamber tube and the stock structure is depicted.

The battery compartment and fastening structure for the middle body. The structure behind the ejection port is quite slim, this requires extra support in the front portion of the middle body (currently done via screw in the front of the chamber), and the use of extra thick shell.

Redesigned the installation structure for the main trigger. In the first a spring pusher is installed, then the trigger body is pushed downwards and locked in place.

(more posts incoming)

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 1:51am

Finished analyzing the main structure, some problems:

The structure of which main grip is connected to the main body may not allow the wiring for the main solenoid to pass through to the back.
Upper forebody may have a bending moment on the in and out direction against the image.
Mode switches has little to no room for articulation and assembling.
Locations for other switches and potentialmeters are not arranged.
Not entirely sure how lower front and upper middle structure can be fixed onto the main structure.

The exterior appearance was modified slightly from the issues seen from the structure design

Restored the externalgas pipe structure on the back for convenience of wiring.
Put non-essential mode switches on the stock.
Verification of screw hole locations and part splitting lines.

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 1:52am

Spatial relationship of shapes were checked in 3D before analyzing the structure.

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 1:53am

Spent quite some time to take care of the subdivision surface of the shell. Since there’s tons of geometry elements that are used to control curvature, this process is not particularly efficient, especially when you need to fine tune/modify some forms, however looptools can help with features that are mostly planar/linear.

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 1:53am

Volume approximation after adding ~5mm shell thickness. Final volume of the model should be close to or a bit over this value. Main problems:

Final product can be quite heavy. (Density of PA6 is around 1.13g/cm^3, and bulk weight of battery and solenoid needs to be added on top)
Unsure if the current fastening structure can hold the center line, considering the weight and parting structure of the front section. Might need additional fastening structure alongside the axial direction.
Cost of manufacturing can be quite high, but should be within budget.

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 1:54am

Making structures for installation.

Battery compartment and the position for the smoke generator.

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 1:56am

A particular problem in this stage of modeling is to create a inner shell for the shell that’s already modeled with subdiv. This portion is not visually complex but took quite some time to do. Directly calling solidify on this kind of surfaces will result in very long post-processing time and relatively bad surface quality for the inner shell as well as uneven thickness. Afterwards the remaining surfaces are all shelled out manually portions by portion and connected together afterwards, it then gave better result and saved more time.

Later I also made a geometry nodes setup (details to follow) to help me cut away structures with boolean more or less reliably to check internal interference visually. Overall it’s not very performant, but I pushed through lol…

Continuing on the structure of the decorative scope. In principle it’s OK to print these as a unibody, however by splitting them into two or three parts, more screws can be hidden, as well as allowing shorter hex driver shaft when assembling, and exposed screws can be placed at visually pleasing locations.

There are tons of issues with boolean in blender. Looks like I should seal the shell but this can affect the subdiv shape in the middle part.

Later I got it to work more or less reliably, I made a geometry node system to toggle half and full view of the model as a solid.

A pretty useless but sort of pleasing look, if you turn x-ray on the dense structures in the middle won’t really show very clearly, but this can be used to impress other people where they don’t know much about the structure

One thing I need to add about why I needed to model such structures like injection molded parts is that I’m gonna use SLS Nylon 3d print process to ensure high strength and better layer adhesion so when the prop is handled with force (and under its own weight) it will not tear itself apart, and also it can have a better surface finish in the end.

The surface will look a bit “fuzzy” because it’s gonna be printed with powder. Luckily I do need this prop to have a matte finish, this means I don’t need to really polish anything.

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 2:06am

For these small parts, only using crease seems to be more convenient. I was spending too much time trying to nail down subdivision loops, but apparently using crease can give you better result quicker, especially when you have smaller mechanical structures, this will make sure that you don’t have a very dense mesh structure, allows for more convenient editing if you ever needed to change something slightly.

Here depicted is an iron sight (? or red dot) on top of the main scope which is also supposed to be a beam splitter that combines the “display” with optical viewfinder image.

Progress is relatively slow, I just make a few pieces every day. Constantly thinking about structures and assembly process is quite a brain teaser…

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 2:12am

I only processed some internal structures this week, this includes arrangements of some moving parts and their installation method.

Other stuff remaining includes structures for switches, fixtures for the pipes, supports for those scopes and external decoration items/panels.

This is the holding ring that limits the travel of the main solenoid inside the stock. It’s a huge solenoid that runs on 24V on two directions, this is gonna be a very good recoil simulation. Which means this entire tube structure has to handle the impact. Being made with nylon and it being this thick, it should take such impact… I haven’t tried it yet.

You can already almost see how everything should be assembled in this image. Also visible is the smoke pipe in the front and the holes for LED & smoke exhaust in the muzzle brake section. Also visible is the front grip trigger structure.

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 2:16am

Gradually adding visual details. These are mostly done by a base subdiv shape and boolean on top, then booleaned on top of the main model. It’s impossible for me to do subdiv everything here and that won’t look good even if I do model them that way.

This did cause some issues with later 3d print files, the factory have to do some minor fixes on their end, but it didn’t take too much time in pro’s hands.

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 2:21am

Making switch components and other visual features.

These are mode switches on the stock, the rear cap would secure the switch slider in place, and the switch themselves will be glued in the socket embedded in the shell.

Mode switches on top of the trigger, internally it’s more complex because I have to make room for the tube in the center… and also make sure it can be assembled.

Fake switch on the middle body, and some visual features on the battery box.

This is a USB board holder for the RP2040-TINY ZERO break out board, this way I could flash the control program without disassembling the whole thing, I don’t want to weaken the structure too much.

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 2:26am

Last week I finally “finished” the entire model. Of course I could keep working on it forever, but at one point I have to stop. The entire modeling process took like a month or so on and off because it’s a side project for when I have time.

The length of the whole thing including the silencer is ~1.4m, without it it’s about 1.2m.

At this point I just cleaned up everything and sent components to my local 3d printing service.

Turns out they will use Nylon12GF instead of Nylon6, so it will have better overall strength and rigidity. Maybe next time I can thin down some walls in the structure because now it’s definitely way overbuilt (and expensive )

Another thing I need to improve is that I may need to reduce the BOM of the screws list. This should be thought of during modeling. e.g. try to keep screws the same length. Though those are not expensive. Having fewer lengths of screws will make everything easier to assemble. Currently my design used M4/M5/M6 screws of various lengths and M3/M4/M5 double ended clamping type screws for symmetry on both sides of the body.

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 2:46am

AND now we got the prints back and assembled!

This thing is HUGE an HEAVY… It is definitely gonna be an eye catcher if I ever bring this out for cosplay lol…

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 2:54am

Underpaint… turns out it didn’t take me much time, thought it’s gonna take days

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 2:55am

Just yesterday, I started designing the color arrangement. This image is a pure color painting multiplied with Matcap render from Blender to check possible lighting effect.

Mainly have 4 shades of gray, no fancy colors because I don’t have too many equipment to do proper efficient mixing of paints. Besides, this gray kinda look cool and it can be paired with any style of outfit without visually jumping out of place.

(OK finally updated this thread to match my actual progress lol)

pafurijaz · December 20, 2025, 9:40am

This is an incredible piece of work! The documentation of the whole process to create this printable 3D model is awesome too, full of details and useful info. As I already said, this futuristic rifle 3D model has absolutely nothing to envy those made in CAD programs, which are now used more and more often for this kind of stuff.

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 10:23am

Hey many thanks man! it’s been quite a journey and I can’t wait to finish this entire thing

xp8110 · December 20, 2025, 5:20pm

Ignore the messy desk but I just got Gray 0 and Gray -1 layers done

1D_Inc · December 21, 2025, 4:30am

Gorgeous model, awesome design and fantastic detailing!
Very familiar with how making sure that stuff could be assembled could be tedious, since in cg there is no feedback except visual.
Same about size - a script which sets viewport scale 1:1 appeared to be helpful.
Gray + orange is a very sporty combination

to toggle half and full view

Sadly, layer (quick access slots) system which is supposed to help handling such kind of structured/layered modeling (satisfy muliref modeling conditions) has been damaged.

Also the absence of the ability to toggle Xray on a selected elements also is quite limiting during working with similar structures.

Later I also made a geometry nodes setup (details to follow) to help me cut away structures with boolean more or less reliably to check internal interference visually.

Grabbing model through Alt+B crossection border is quite helpful while performant

Withers99 · December 21, 2025, 7:07am

This looks really good so far.