Haha! Take that ugly! Ooo… sneaky spider!
And again… I love this game.
Hey guys, Yes, it’s true, I love Skyrim
and I started playing it for maybe the tenth time a few weeks back. And a couple of days ago
I saw this… and I thought, that would make a nice Skyrim inspired pendant.
I turned as usual to Fusion 360 and got to work forming a basic shield design.
The obvious choice was to place the shield in the background and use it as a guide.
I decided to work in two main layers,
the wooden planking and the metalwork. You’ll see why in a moment.
Actually, this is a good opportunity for a tip. Someone asked me a few days back about
exporting a STL file from Fusion and yes, this is easily possible via Export and selecting
STL. But personally, I have always found this a very slow method, often taking several minutes.
A faster way, for me at least, is to 3D print it. With this option,
Fusion exports the file very quickly to Cura, a free 3D slicing software.
Again choosing Export as STL here, the file gets converted much quicker.
Yes, it’s an extra step, but it’s very simple and will save you a heap of time.
Once more I export the metalwork using the 3D printing method. But let’s be honest,
this shield looks much too clean. I want a battered shield – something that’s seen battle.
To achieve that I turned to ZBrush, which has definitely become my favourite sculpting program.
It’s not free, but it’s very good and worth the investment if you’re serious about CAD work.
But if you fancy Free, and who doesn’t, Blender is an excellent choice.
By exporting the Wooden Planking and Metalwork as separate files,
I was able to combine them here in ZBrush whilst still work on them separately.
However, once I’m finished, I can merge the two into one complete file.
I reached this point and I was happy enough… but I still wanted to tinker some more.
And that led to this, very similar design, which is a tad more faithful to the Skyrim original. And
that meant I had two designs to print. I incorporated a sprue to make casting
set up a little easier and got to printing on my Phrozen Sonic 4K.
I deliberately angled the prints this way. My logic is that any print lines
will follow the grain pattern in the wood. This castable resin is a new one for me to try.
I’ll give it a few more outings before I share my opinions with you. It certainly prints nicely.
Here I’ve experimented. UV curing isn’t necessary with this resin,
but I’ve chosen to cure one of them, making it almost transparent,
to see if it makes any difference to the outcome. Cured or not, they both sand nicely.
This is the advantage of including the sprue on the print.
Again I’m going to be using the Ancient Bronze casting grain
that I mentioned last week. Ooo…
those both look pretty promising. Genuinely I’m not sure if there are
any flaws at all here. I guess that’s the beauty of these beat up shield designs.
I have to admit, I am delighted with both these castings.
I’ve been able to spot a couple of tiny flaws on both the cured and uncured casting, but so
small as to be insignificant and luckily fitting in quite nicely with the overall shield design.
As is usual now, I’ll be sharing the STL files I’ve created for this video with my
Patrons, adding them to my Patron download library. It’s my way of
thanking my Patrons for their continued support. Genuinely I think these are both nice pendants.
With a bronze chain or a simple leather cord, I think they would look great.
So there you have it guys, my tribute to Skyrim, a truly fantastic game.
I hope you enjoyed this one guys. Take care and thanks for watching.