I found some time finally, and I might have just about managed to tame this thing into an actually printable shape. I noticed that it's still missing a few things (like the rear hatch didn't exist on this holoviewer model, so I just added some extra lines there, also non of the wheels were actually connecting to the hull) and ofc the wheels and track wont move, but at least the turret should be able to rotate.
BTW, that design is a load of fun-over-realism. The axis of the turrets rotation is way more forward in the game if I remember correctly then on my model, however there is literally zero space for a "neck" or collar or whatever you call it that could connect the turret to the hull with enough surface area to make it feel even remotely realistic. Basically it would be the size of a smartphone, both width and height... The gun in itself , cos it has to traverse down and is anchored so far back, makes a proper large enough to be believable cylindrical connection impossible.
We never see this in the game, who cares really, so it doesn't matter. Rule-of-cool and somesuch, but it was a pain to find a large enough spot that is forward enough to make a cutout for the turret connection that would still allow for the turret to rotate around what one would assume is it's center of mass. So I made it where it felt forward enough wihtout cutting into the turret details, cos there's a lot of stuff on the bottom that goes way back under the barrel.
The biggest pain in the ass with these models is ofc them being single sided planes hangin in mid-air, not having any volume, thus one has to manually add that volume. There are fast and easy ways to do this, but it gets real messy real fast if you don't put in the time and effort to do it manually. Hence why you don't see a mass inflow of printed ships apart from a few low quality efforts, and also why I guess we haven't seen a single new item from the official 3d printing shop in many many years. It's just not worth it from a financial standpoint to have multiple people spend weeks rebuilding a model to a standard that would be acceptable by the model building crowd.
Imho if RSI want's to get into the physical ship merch game, they should just have someone do basic low-detial with some overexaggerated features type of ships for die-casting, like key fob/hotwheels size, and have that mass produced in some sweatshop in china. It would make for a good source of income and would make tons of fans happy, unlike the waaaay overpriced printed kits.
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