H22, Galactic Ranger

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The ’noids are just about finished. Trust me, sarge. This one’s gon’ be a cakewalk.

Galactic Rangers has always been a core memory of my childhool playing Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal. I love their quirky dialogues, overall look and the presence they bring in game. My biggest deception was the lack of Ranger skins, or a way to play as their characters. I discovered years after that a “bullhorn” gadget was planned in the game, allowing us to command a ranger squad. But it was ultimately scrapped, probably to the rushed dev time of this game.

Straight from the game

My big idea was to get the 3D model from the game, as many online resources allow us to freely download them. I jumped on spriters-resource.com and downloaded the Ranger.

Unfortunately and as expected, once the textures removed, the model is very bare-bones with little to no details and very basic shapes. That’s what you get for ripping a minor character from a PS2 game. With a whapping 2,538 polygons, I needed more if I wanted a cool 3D printed figure in the end.

To the drawing board

I ain’t a 3D modeler, but I had to give it a chance. Plus, rangers are made of very generic shapes, so that would be a good exercise. I started by modeling the feet. They are very simple oval shaped with a elongated dome. I added grooves and called it a day. Then it was about connecting it to the leg. Instead of opting for a static pose that I will (maybe) regret later, I decided to add articulations with small ballcups and balljoints. Instead of remaking the wheel, I opted to add Mini 13’s modular joints onto my build.

The Ranger would almost become an action figure!

It took me a week of working almost every evening on the project. So something between 14 to 20 hours I would say.

I tried my best to be accurate to the details given by the texture image, as well as respecting scale and shapes. The body was obviously the hardest part, but in the end I’m very pleased to what I produced, and very pleased to the 3D modeling skills I acquired at the same time.

Printing, assembling, painting

Once printed, the model looked very good. I obviously had a ton of sanding to do, but it was very pleasing to see something you spent time creating in the virtual word coming to life.

I don’t have much pictures of the WIP painting unfortunately, but it was quite straight forward. UV resin was used to make the eye and blaster glow, and I printed three little disks to make the antenna.

Final model

The base is a simple wooden disk with grinded coffee and glue as sand/pebbles. Rocks are made with a cork, and the whole base is meant to represent Tyhrranosis’s dusty ground, with the little bush and orange tone.

Files

3D files are all available for free on my Thingiverse or Makerworld profiles. If you ever make your own, please ping me somewhere, I’d be glad to see!

Glitch in the system

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Metal Arms : Glitch in the System has always been a favorite of mine. And of many other people, chances are that if you ever meet someone who had this game, this someone may have loved it.

The model

Eleven years after its release, I wanted to try to make a cool statue of the main character, Glitch. Fortunately for me, some skilled people already extracted and 3D model from the game, and even rigged it. So I downloaded what Vissova had made for the Steam Workshop and started posing Glitch. Unfortunately, the game model was not made to be 3D printable at all, so I had a bit of work to be done, mostly to connect loose faces and recreating some meshes that were simply not gonna print as it.

Once done, I split the model into multiple parts to be more easily printed. Assembly will be required, but that’s a small price to pay in exchange of a way better printing experience.

At some point I wanted to split even more and make the figure articulated, but that was simply out of my skills at the time.

It tool multiple prints and 3D adjustments to have a great results. Once assembled, I started painting the figure, mostly using Citadel paint.I used UV resin on all shiny parts (eyes, headlamp and various screens) to give a bit of depth and realism.

3D files are available both on my Thingiverse and my Makerworld profiles. I’ve already seen some people printing their own, if you do, please send me a picture!

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