Hello everyone.
This is my first thread here, but I've been a longtime lurker. I used to hang out at Foundation3D before that sadly went off-line. While there I began an ongoing project where I wanted to try my hand at building models based on the Renegade Legion universe. For those not familiar with it, Renegade Legion was a series of board games that was put out in the late 80's - mid 90's by FASA Corp., the same company that made the more popular BattleTech.
Although I'm not a board gamer myself, I've always been fascinated by the stories and artwork in RenLeg, which is why I chose this subject. Also, I wanted to do something that I've never seen before and up to that point no one had done high detail versions of the armored grav vehicles in the game, so I set out to be the first.
So far I've completed six models and started a bunch more including this one - the Bata Revo (Wolverine) Light Grav Tank. This my favorite design so I'm picking up where I left off with this wip.
Here's the metal game miniature that I'm using as my main reference. I'm also referring to a lot of game art.
And this is where I'm at so far. Most of major parts are done but I still have a lot to go.
The hardest part so far has been building the forward hull section and it was a royal PITA! I don't know how many hours I've spent rebuilding and tweaking this thing, but I'm finally satisfied with the results and now it's onto the turret.
I hope you enjoy it.
Posts
Since F3D went offline I was expecting you to show your wips here or in deviantart. There aren´t much of your old wip renderings available out there.
Keep posting!!
Things will go a little slow at first as I dust off the cobwebs and get back up to speed. Also, there are a lot of new modeling tools in Modo that I want to see if I make use of in this project. Should be interesting.
Here's a view of the underside showing the grav coils that propel the vehicle. I borrowed them from one of the other models. Not sure if I will redo them to make the look unique for this tank or just leave it since you wouldn't really see them much anyway.
I thought it would be good to give some background information on the fictional universe that inspired to do this project.
The game is set in the 69th century and primarily focuses on the conflict between the tyrannical Terran Overlord Government (TOG) and the Human-Baufrin Commonwealth which is located on the opposite side of the galaxy...think Star Wars' Galactic Empire against Star Treks' Federation only the two have a shared history and the same technological level.
Fighting along side of the Commonwealth are the Renegade Legions (from whom the game takes its name). They are a group of former Terran military units that defected to the Commonwealth in protest when TOG rose to power in a violent coup. The red graffiti "R" is the symbol used by the Renegades in defiance of TOG. The war have been going on for a little over a century.
And so, while I am pondering the next phase of the Wolverine, I decided to start blocking out the Spartius. It's the CW/RL's standard Medium grav APC. This is another of my favorite designs and I really wanted to get started on it.
Very early on.
I temporarily used the main hull from my Liberator tank model just to get the proportions in the ball park but it will soon be replaced. The two vehicles are so similar that even though the books don't specifically mention it, they must have come from the drawing boards of the same design teams. The major difference are the large cutouts for the infantry doors. Funny thing is that the ortho schematics show the hull as having straight lines like the Liberator, but as you can see in the inset, the miniature is more curved. As with the Wolverine, I'm going by this version because I consider it to be the final design.
And finally here is a preview of the aforementioned Liberator wip. More to come on this one.
I did some minor work on the Wolverine by adding in these undercuts to the forward hulls side panels. I believe they are big sections of armor so I think it makes them look pretty cool.
https://renegade-legion.fandom.com/wiki/Gladius_(fighter)
Add some SFB Lyran…
The TOG Gladius is a fighter that I would like to have a go at one day. I tried in the past building another fighter but it didn't turn out so well, imo, so I've stuck with the tanks for the time being.
Speaking of....
I have the Spartius's outer hull pretty much worked out. As I figured it involved some trial and error, but I think I'm happy with it.
Since I have a bad habit of jumping around a a lot when doing projects, I've spent the last two days dusting off and updating the files for some of the other old wip's that I started. Some of which haven't seen the light of day for a number of years.
The first up is the Eliminator. It's one of the newer good guy vehicles. It's heavily armed and armored but has a very sluggish acceleration rate even for a heavy grav tank, so it's mainly used for defensive operations. There is another version of this tank called the Cincinnatus which is used by the Renegades. The two are nearly identical except the Cincinnatus carries extra supplies and ammo. I'll probably do that version as well only I'll take the liberty of swapping the Mass Driver Cannon for a heavy Laser.....just because I can.
There's very little reference material on this so I'm making up some things as I go.
Next is the Deliverer. Personally I think this is one of the uglier designs, but I feel compelled to build it because it's the primary heavy tank for the Commonwealth and I want to do all ten of the main front-line vehicles (five for each side). Don't have much to show yet because it was one of the last models I worked on.
And lastly the Lupis. It's the standard light APC used by TOG. It's very light on weapons but excels at doing it's job of getting troops to were the fight is.
browsing for Renegade Legion stuff I found your works on Foundation3D years ago. I was really enthusiastic about them as I am a fan of this game system. It's nice to see you active again and I enjoy to see new creations of yours.
Jfyi there is an active community of fans, albeit not big, on Facebook who try to not let this great series of games die, discuss the universe and more.
:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/rlinternational
There is also a vault where you can post and find anything RenLeg:
https://groups.io/g/RenLeg
Feel welcome to join. You might well find some of your past contributions among the posts. The members would really appreciate it.
Hi spicmart
I'm glad you are enjoying the wip so far. Sorry I haven't posted recently, but I've been busy at work and other stuff.
I don't play the games myself, but I've been an avid collector and reader of everything FASA put out for RenLeg every since I first picked up the vehicle tech book at a sci fi convention. I'm not on Facebook, but I'll take a look at the other link, thanks.
As for your question above, as I mentioned in my first post, to the best of my knowledge no one but me has ever done hi-poly models of the grav vehicles. But interestingly, I did discover that several 3d print sites have a lot of low-poly stl files of all the original main tanks and apc's from the games as well as a number of vehicles that are only mentioned in the books which is cool. I also saw that new material was published a few years ago with the intent of reviving the game, but I don't know if that's still in the works.
thanks for getting back to me that quick. I'm just seeing it by now.
Most of the models there in the group made by members are indeed stl-files.
There are also some Leviathan files one can print.
I forgot that we also a group on Discord. Many Facebook members also post there. If you want to join I will post you the link.
As for new stuff there were two games published by various companies.
FromBSG: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/333997/renegade-legion-centurion
From FASA: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/340430/aetherstream-interceptor
But because of IP issues those are only related to the original system and mot to each other.
Btw. Which scale are your RenLeg models? There are some inconsistencies regarding the size of theoriginal CENTURION and INTERCEPTOR metal miniatures.
How big are they? hmmmm....
Well, there's no information about the actual physical sizes of the vehicles in-game, so I had to guesstimate. The only reference I had to go on was the relative size of the crew hatches on the miniatures and schematics. So I just eyeballed it using my scale dude which is 6 ft tall [1.82 m].
For example, the Wolverine is 16.6 m long x 6.75 m wide and the Eliminator (which is the biggest model so far) is about 28.9 m long x 14.9 m wide.
Here's a comparison of the Eliminator beside TOG's Trajan.
As often happens fiction nothing is exact.
The Eliminator really dwarfs the Trajan. Great work!
Do you mind if I post some of the pics here in the group?
I actually reduced the size of the Eliminator to about 90% of what it was when this render was made because I thought it was a wee bit too big, but it's still longer and wider that the Trajan. And yes, you can post the more "finished" pics if you like, I'm easy going about that.
Btw, I was searching my old hard drive and found these early test renders. I don't recall if uploaded them in the past. I was trying to find some methods of making a nice laser beam and also to light the grav coils.
Please excuse the crappy textures. I intend to go back and redo them at a later date.
Here's the Trajan firing it's heavy lasers.
And here's the Renegade Seeker Recon tank. I think I did a pretty good job on the cyan glow of the coils based on the existing artworks.
Thanks! These are fantastic! I haven't seen those yet. Really like the visuals of the lasers and grav coils! And looking forward to see more.:)
Well I'm finally back at it. I don't have much of an update because I decided to first go back and re-work the forward hull on the Eliminator. I was unhappy with the underlying structure so I started over from scratch. Also added the side armor panels. There's still some more things to do (as always) but, getting there.
A closeup look.
And here's a view of the grav coils.
Hopefully progress will get faster from here on out. I tend to work on whatever I think of in the moment so not sure what's coming next. lol
I added some more armor paneling and changes mainly to the front end. Moved the crew hatches forward. I was going to put them behind the turret but didn't like the look. The new locations may not seem very practical, but hey it's sci fi. Also added some temp colors to help the details stand out better.
Finally, started on the Vulcan IV anti-missile system. I previously mounted the one from the Trajan just for reference so had to come up with something new for the Commonwealth tank (still kept the sensor dome and gun barrels though). I'm still refining it and may even scrap it all together, we'll see. Once it's done I'll use it on the Deliverer as well since tanks often use components from other vehicles if they are very successful on the battlefield.
So back to this ugly fella. Most of the changes you see were done awhile back, but I just haven't gotten around to making a post of them until now. I did a lot of work in the turret area and blocked in a bunch of hull details. Also, imported the mostly done Vulcan IV. I'll replace it once it's finished on the Eliminator as I mentioned previously.
I don't know how much effort I'll put into this one, for some reason it's just not growing on me.
And of course, more paneling.
Added the heavy 7.5/6 laser mounted on the turret (not much to look at, just following the schematic) and the hidden recesses for the twin pop up 1.5/6 lasers in the hull.
One thing that has me scratching my head is that the vehicle stats specify that a 50 mm Gauss cannon in located on the turret, but it's not shown on either the schematics or game miniature. There's some kind of tri-tubular thingy on the right side of the hull opposite of the 6 pack missile launcher, but I have no idea what that's supposed to be. I guess I'll just stick the cannon next to the heavy laser.
A common lament when it comes to realizing the differences between the stats and the official artwork in many games. I've seen it before with BattleTech, Crimson Skies, Star Wars, and Starfleet Battles to name some notable examples.
I think it's because a lot of times, the artwork is commissioned and completed before the playtests. So what you see on paper doesn't match what's in the images.
Yeah, that makes sense. One of the more glaring examples I've seen in a lot of the game art shows a vehicle, which I assume to be TOG's Romulus APC, with a split forward hull. But the final design has a singular hull. The vehicle shown is actually the Remus Grav Engineering Vehicle (GEV) which is based on the Romulus. Seems unlikely to use a GEV so prominently, so I guess they decided to switch the two at some later date.
Here's the cover of the Centurion board game.
Here's the Romulus minature.
I put the big boys on the back burner for awhile and returned to the lighter vehicles. Did a lot on work mesh cleanup but added some things to the Spartius.
I'm really liking how this one is turning out.
The turret is to scale to the rest of the vehicle, but it still seems tiny so I may enlarge it some.
And another comparison render with TOG's Horatius Medium Grav Tank, the Liberator's main adversary. I'm not sure if I got the overall scale right because I thought the Horatius would be a lot bigger, but oh well.
It's a nice touch that you are doing a different Vulcan system. Diversity rules.
I agree that the Liv is a departure from the classic grav tank config. I also didn't like it too much but it grew on me and, matter of fact, I found out that it actually seems to be a favorite among the RL community.
The Liberator and the Horatius weigh in at the same weight, 273 tons, that is.
The Lib is said to have a double hull design, which might account for it being wider.
The Horatius seems to have a bit more height.
Thanks for stopping in.
I'm actually considering during the Remus as well. The only difference between the two seems to be the forward hull, so I would only have to build that part. Stay tuned.