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A little preamble: I design paper models, mostly in the mid-very small sizes. Some of these are commercial (for sale), although most are not. It is mostly a hobby for me (one of many). I am also a bit OCD with regards to scale. I hate to see models placed next to each other when they are not relative to one another. I've been working on 1:1000 scale buildings and such for Battletech (the horizontal scale for the hexes) for the last few weeks, but I've wanted to see if I could make 'true' scale Mechs as well. I build a test model of a Catapult and found that 1:1000 was about the limit, but was completely possible in paper.
Inspired by the success of my test I wanted to make more, but there are very few good sources for multi-angle pictures of Battlemechs. I tried my hand at a few, and I even have some 'armour' in that scale I am quite happy with. However, I was not satisfied with the results of the mechs themselves. I was reinspired though, after playing the open-source release of Mechcommander 2. In fact I was quite excited to see that the models were in great condition for conversion to small scale paper figurines. What is better is that all of the mechs are scaled appropriately to themselves, saving me the trouble of trying to determine how big each really were.
There are 39 mechs in the game and I have managed to extract all of them, although without textures maps intact. I'm not overly concerned as the original textures were quite low resolution and I would have needed to make new textures anyway. The meshes are simple enough that remapping is quite easy. I suspect quite a few will need correcting, I've already redesigned the Catapult torso (I will be texturing a new one, rather than the original test build).
All of the mechs can be seen below. The list is in alphabetical order, so does not map to the pictures in sequence.
Spoiler
Mechs:
Anubis
Atlas
Bushwacker
Catapult
Cougar
Cyclops
Enfield
Flea
Highlander
Hollander
Hunchback
JagerMech
Lao Hu
Men Shen
Raven
Ryoken
Sha Yu
Shootist
Starslayer
Uller
Urbanmech
Werewolf
Wolfhound
Zeus
Clan: Blood Asp
Clan: Mad Dog (Vulture)
Clan: Shadow Cat
Clan: Summoner (Thor)
Clan: Timber Wolf (Mad Cat)
A note on 'Scale'. I've compared a scale Union Dropship I am working on (which has actual measurements, and yes will be paper as well) to a comparative scaling chart of mechs/vehicles. Using this I determined a reasonable range for Assault class Mechs to fall into. The scale itself uses a Banshee as the 'Assault' mech scale reference. I reasoned that the Atlas likely stands a little taller than it, so rescaled all the mechs to reflect this. This gives a height range of 8-18 meters tall for the mechs, from the smallest, the UrbanMech, to the tallest, the Atlas. Also, I have used a base 32 mm hex as a 30 m horizontal scale rounding it to an even 1000. If printed as is, it actually comes out to 1:938. To get true 1:1000 scale mechs the .pdo models scale will need to be modified to 30 (instead of 36).
Even better, the models and textures will be designed so that those people who are not obsessive about scale (like I am) can resize them and printed them at 'miniature' scale (1:280 or so). The meshes should be quite easy to construct at that size.
Currently the Atlas and the UrbanMech are textured. Next will be the Catapult, shown below compared to the original MechCommander 2 model (the model I am going with is on the left).
Spoiler
I just completed the Beta build of the Atlas, which was very successful. The CDN penny in the second picture, for reference, is 19 mm (3/4") in diameter. The hex 'hills' are 32mm (1.25"). I will be releasing the Atlas as a package (with the .pdo file and a texture file) shortly. If it is a small enough file I will post it on both Zealot.com and Papermodelers.com. If not, I'll be posting it on my site.
Spoiler
Enjoy,
Tirick
