WIP NS 1600/1800 Electric Locomotive

Artwork Works in Progress
1

Hello everyone! I have been using blender for almost 2 years on and off. I have been working on a Cruiser A24 Comet tank, a Me-163 Komet planet(for a game). And most recently a electric locomotive used by the NS(Dutch Railways, Nederlandse Spoorwegen). the NS-1600/1800 series.

This will be send of to a 3D printing company and then be used as a keychain for my father, he works at the Dutch Railroads so I figured I would make a nicely themed gift for his birthday this year.

A couple of hours work:

render1.jpg960×540 58.8 KB

And a wire, although its throwing a bit of a hissy fit, in that it fades away at some parts. I tried increasing the Z offset, but that doesnt seems to work(its grayed out):

render1Wire.jpg960×540 97.5 KB

The mesh obviously still needs cleaning up, but im using edge loops to add new features. I never really did so when I was working with 3dstudiomax so its a new technique for me.

2

I am a bit stuck on the grill on the side of the train, I need to subdivide the face in vertical edges, but I’m not sure how to do that correctly:

And a reference:

3648×2736 4.49 MB

3

I would model the grille as a new object with the array modifier and join the objects once it fits your needs. But I’m not sure if it has to be a continous mesh for 3D printing?

4

Thats probably best, I think it needs to be one mesh, the one printer I checked out told one to join the meshes together with a Boolean modifier.

5

From what I know it has to be a continious mesh, although a Boolean modifier is suggested for joining it. I suppose its down to some testing.

To be fair, after some research the grill may not be feasible anyway, since it will get lost in the roughness of the printing material.