Kdapt-Preacher

Of course LEGO's has the huge advantage that it already exists and mine doesn't yet, LMAO. I think they're going to fill somewhat different niches; LEGO's is almost 40% larger than mine, which is enough of a difference that they aren't going to have much in common structurally. They've certainly done a lot of stuff I like, to the degree that I'd probably say I like the set more than any MOC I've seen in that size range, so I'll definitely be going over it to see if there are any elements I want to steal, but I don't think it's the best that could be done. This came up in the 2023 News thread too, so while everybody's thinking about Venator hangars I thought I should show how I'm looking at doing it in case anybody's looking for examples. These renders are from a while ago, so still obviously WIP, but you can see the basic idea. The hangar is a huge architectural constraint, so I've landed on a very different strategy than your typical large SD MOC. Instead of the typical Technic frame I'm using these four spars all mounted at acute angles to each other, such that the hangar itself becomes the major structural component of the front half of the ship. This is significantly more part-intensive than a normal frame, but it leaves far more open space in the interior, and with each of the spars tied into the others at multiple angled joints I think it'll be very stiff for its weight. The flat hull panels are attached to each of the spars so everything meshes together nicely. Note that this design was mostly made with the RotS version in mind; I'm doing the same basic thing for the TCW version as well, but I think it's probably overkill for that given that the doors are mounted to the hull panels rather than to the center body--it'll still work fine, but you could get away with a lot less infrastructure if you wanted to there. It's easier to plan for RotS and then convert to TCW than vice versa.

Ooh, good catch. You're completely right that the skate is a better fit there. I'll put that on my list of things to update. I'm not sure about using the Barraki eye piece there--neither one of those options is a great match for the Skipray's hull, but I like that the cone captures at least a bit the pointiness of it. I'll think about it. I have a running list of changes I want to make to older models when I get a chance. Several new pieces have been introduced in the last year or so that are relevant here. The 1x1 downwards bracket now exists in dark grey, which is good news for some of the Stinger Mantis variants and probably a few other things (maybe Twilight, although I think that needs some light grey *somewhere*); and the 1x2 vertical brackets that were released last year are relevant for a bunch of small shuttle dorsal fins (maybe not the Lambda-class, since that's supposed to only be connected part of the way down, but definitely the Nu-class); and I'd like to add the 2x6 angle plate into the Nebulon B, and clean up the hull armor there a little; and I've done the hull attachment update for the Cantwell-class, although I can't do much with that until I can build it IRL. There are a couple other things that I'm forgetting, I think; I have them written down somewhere. And I have some more small ships that've been finished for a while that I just haven't done the renders for. Stuff to do! The LEGO time I've had recently has been mostly working on the Venator, which is progressing very nicely (although LEGO's definitely going to beat me to the punch here, especially since I won't be able to test-build mine for months at least).

The 2003 Clone Wars is so stylized that it's hard to point at specific differences. It's obviously the same ship, but it's basically a line drawing. There are some pictures here for reference. But the Complete Cross-Sections book, which is a much better source, also showed the doors open on an RotS-style one in 2007, so I think it's reasonable to say that that was always the intention even if the movie itself doesn't make it obvious.

I feel like you're being intentionally obtuse here. Obviously yes, in the most literal sense, the hangar is inside the ship, but when people talk about a model having an an interior in this context they mean something like the small internal playset the UCS Executor has. That's what UCS sets (typically) don't have. They do typically cover the features that're visible from the outside of the ship, as the Venator's hangar frequently is. What @Iperial_Fleet_Commander is pointing out is that for many people the iconic image of a Venator, especially the TCW-style version, is of the ship with the doors open disgorging a cloud of fighters, and it's not unreasonable for them to be disappointed that this model can't be displayed in that posture. When Iperial mentiones the Eta-2's wings they're not talking about them being removed, they're talking about them being fixed in position instead of hinged as in the movie--the better example might be if they released a UCS X-Wing that could only be displayed with the s-foils in the closed position. It wouldn't be *wrong*, it just means there's one fewer ways to display it, but not being able to show the wings in the classic X posture would make the model obviously less interesting. In the case of the Venator doors the ratio of improved displayability to increased structural complexity isn't very good, which is why most UCS-style MOCs don't bother with that feature either, but given the scale here it would've been a nice thing for them to include. I do have it on the UCS Venator I'm working on, for example, so I know they could've done it in this space. I'm mildly amused (but not surprised) to see that LEGO couldn't come up with a better solution for a nanoscale LAAT/i than I did. At least I assume that's supposed to be a LAAT. Theirs has the advantage that it sticks together, and the wings are a better shape, but I think mine is more recognizable overall.

There are a handful of structural differences. ForgedInLego mentioned a few, but the placement of the side guns is also somewhat different (one of the versions has them noticably further forwards on the ship, although I can't remember which), the Open Circle Fleet emblem is further back, the intented greebly area is larger in the TCW one, etc. More significantly, the internal hangar layout is depicted very differently in TCW than RotS, although that's not obvious from the outside of the ship. It's also worth mentioning that Resolute isn't the only Venator with the red bridges. TCW used that for any 'hero' ship that the audience needed to tell apart from generic background allies, so several Venators that happened to be featured prominently in an episode use that color scheme (Endurance, Liberty, Even Piell's unnamed flagship, etc), and in-universe there are presumably numerous others. Definitely don't be thinking that you have to call this one Resolute just because of the paint!

I'm also potentially interested. I'm reasonably experienced with making instructions (see the Rebrickable link in my signature for examples), and I've done them for other people's models before as well. Like ForgedInLego said, though, I'd need a bit more information before I would commit to a project of that size.

Yes, I've been quite pleased with it so far. I haven't crunched the numbers myself yet, but there's definitely enough information in the hangar shots to work out the size of those New Republic cruisers. Very pretty ships! Hopefully it'll keep going like that. Current plan is to keep them free. I don't have any problem with people choosing to sell their instructions, but for my own part I prefer to keep my LEGO building as just a hobby. If I ever found myself in serious need of an additional income stream I would probably get over that ethical hurdle, but hopefully it won't come to that, LMAO. For the second question, that depends on what you mean by 'possible'. I'm doing my utmost best to make sure that it would stick together and support its own weight, so in that sense yes, I think it'll be possible. With a model of this size it's hard to be completely certain of that (especially since I'm an ecologist, not an engineer), but I'm convinced it can be done. However, in a more practical sense, we're talking about probably hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of pieces here, if they're even available at all; a while back I worked out how many 16x16 plates I'd need to make the whole hull out of them and it was more than BrickLink had for sale at the time. And you'd need a space to display it, which would probably have to be a whole building designed around it; I don't know what else you'd do with it. If I ever actually finish the model (which, to be clear, is a very big if) I'll put serious thought, at the very least, into how to go about getting it built, but I don't think it's at all likely that it'll end up actually happening. For the time being I'm treating it as essentially digital art. It's nice to think about, though...

Probably more than that. It's not that much longer, but with the extra width and bulk the Ghost ends up having three or four times the volume of the Falcon. Rebels never focused on that very much, but they had six people living in there with mostly their own bedrooms, a much larger sitting area, a huge internal cargo bay, etc. BrickVault's minifig-scale Ghost is more than 13,000 pieces. An official set could probably get by with fewer than that, but it'd still be ridiculously huge.

In other news, work on the Venator is proceeding apace. I can't remember whether I actually posted the previous render here or not (I don't see it earlier in this thread), but regardless, I've completely reworked the hull panels since the last time I said anything about it, to reorient the stud lines parallel to the inner edges rather than the outer. The main reason to have them aligned to the outer edges was for stylistic consistency with 75252, which I do consider a positive, but I think the better alignment of the Open Circle emblem and the wing stripes makes the new version look a lot better. Having the paint details be flush with the surface of the hull makes a big difference to how polished the ship looks overall. These panels still aren't final, since I have to integrate the recess behind the emblem and some other greeblies, but I'm still working on exactly how to best tie the panels into the frame of the model (which is a lot harder without physical bricks), so those details will have to wait a bit. That's the main remaining stuructural question; I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on what this needs to look like other than that. As promised, the doors do open and the hangar has an interior. I'll include some Gunships and such in the final model. I think I'm probably not going to include a hinge to 'properly' open the doors; that's just a bit too complex for this space and I don't think that that kind of 'play feature' buys me very much when this is definitely a pure display model anyway. Haven't completely ruled it out, though; we'll see what happens when I have the hull panel attachment finalized and I know exactly how much room I have to work with.

D-d-d-double update! We have #205, Ahsoka Tano's T-6 shuttle, and #206, Luthen Rael's Fondor Haulcraft! I'm trying to clear out all the stuff I've got here that's small enough that I'm comfortable publishing it without having tested it IRL. Ahsoka's shuttle is based on the Republic T-6 I posted ages ago, so I know that works, and the Haulcraft is only 11 parts, so I'm not really worried about it structurally.

I think you're right in general, but there are a handful of folks out there that are 3D printing parts commercially. I don't know who manufactures these Darth Wyyrlok figures, but I've seen them in person and the 3D printed headpiece is essentially indistinguishable in quality from an official part. Obviously that's a super high-end resin printer, and they're probably also using chemical smoothing or other more advanced stuff than you'd typically find in a home setup, but the technology does exist. We're not quite at the point where it's more practical than molding for most purposes, but I think we'll be there in not that long.

Continuing the Tales of the Jedi theme, we have #204, the Sith Meditation Sphere! This model hasn't yet been approved by Rebrickable, but should be public shortly. Although I suspect you can figure out how to build it without needing the actual file. And on a more substantial note, Ulic Qel-Droma's Nebulon Ranger! I'm not publishing the Ranger immediately because I want to build it IRL first and make sure it's not going to fall off that stand, but this should give you a pretty good idea of what the model looks like. In this case I'm assuming that the official size (150 meters) is the length down that wing rather than the length along the axis of flight, since otherwise the cockpit alone would be the size of a house.

Alright, we gotta just get going here. #203, the Sith escort gunship! A fairly obscure ship from the Great Hyperspace War, which has the principal benefit that the model is small enough that I'm confident it will stick together even though I haven't actually built it IRL. I have several more small things and will try to get them out over the next couple of days. Thank you! I'm having a great time so far. I'm an ecologist, so this is definitely a cool place to be. I saw a wild platypus this morning!

Looks like the first appearance was in Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, but most people would probably know them from Empire at War. They've been around the EU for a long time, and they're back in current canon as well, although they haven't been featured very prominently anywhere yet. The design is based on concept art from RotJ, so there are a couple other similar-looking things around, too, most notably including the New Republic cruisers in the recent Ahsoka trailer. Those probably aren't MC30s but they sure look like them, at least from the front end.

Next up, the MC30c frigate! At long last, a Mon Calamari ship. These things have been kind of intimidating me for a long time, so it feels good to have one finished, even if it's just a small one. This also fills a much-needed gap for a mid-sized Rebel ship to counterbalance all the Imperial stuff. Like with the Strike cruiser, I'm pretty satisfied that this is finished but I can't currently build it IRL, so I'm going to hold off on publishing instructions for the moment. More renders in the spoiler:

Strike-class medium cruiser! Provisionally finished, with the aforementioned note that I haven't been able to build anything in person here. This isn't a super complex build, so I'm reasonably confident in it even without having built it, but there's a big gap between 'reasonably' and 'completely'. I think it's at least fair to say that this is what the exterior is going to look like, even if the structural bits end up getting reworked slightly when I eventually test it. More renders in the spoiler:

WIP Strike cruiser, to prove I'm not dead. So, the deal is, I've moved to Australia and am now some 9,000 miles away from my LEGO collection, so I won't be able to physically test-build anything until probably early 2025. That was an important part of my design process here, and I haven't decided yet how I'm going to deal with not having access to it. It doesn't really matter with very small models, since for the most part if a build only has ten parts you can pretty much just look at it and see that it'll stick together, but even then there can be issues occasionally (like how the 1x1 brackets in one of my Small Imperial Ships groups didn't quite fit the way the measurements suggested they ought to), and I definitely don't think I could publish something like the Venator I've been working on without having verified it. I think the easiest thing to do is probably to just only post renders of stuff and delay posting instructions until I've built them myself, but that'll be a long time to wait. I might go ahead and make instructions for things I'm reasonably confident of and just post them with a note that they haven't been verified yet; I think I can get away with that since I'm distributing everything for free (obviously it wouldn't fly for paid instructions), but I kinda hate to do that because then inevitably some little thing will end up needing to be changed and it's a whole pain to redo all the pictures and everything (not that I haven't done that on plenty of occasions in the past, but I'd prefer not to do it for *every* model). And also because, y'know, I have standards and would prefer to be associated with finished products. It may also be the case that I get a bunch of models to the 'mostly finished' stage but then run into stuff that I really need to look at IRL to know how to continue the digital model, which I won't be able to do much with in the interrim. So I dunno; we'll see what happens. I'm also going to be busy with actual work, so my LEGO building time would probably decrease from what it has been the last couple of years anyway, but I do want to be clear that that doesn't mean I've given up on all the ambitious plans I've talked about over the last 14 pages of this thread! I will still be working on stuff, even if I may not be able to effectively publish it.

It takes serious modification. The raised area below the bridge isn't actually connected to the rest of the build, it just sits there via gravity, so you have to tie that in (probably literally tie it with strings or something, it's not trivial to do it with LEGO elements), and do more work to strengthen the stand, affix the hull plates, etc. I have seen done, but it's not something you just throw up on a whim.

Hmm. I've been thinking for a while that it would probably make sense to wipe this machine and downgrade back to Windows 10, so that may address some of those issues. I'll report back eventually. Ahhhh, interesting. That's a useful thing to know. It'll be hard to fix that for my immediate issues (I'm making a very large Star Destroyer and am currently trying to get the hull panels lined up, which doesn't lend itself well to splitting up the model like that; by nessecity I have to be able to see how the whole thing is fitting together), but I'll do what I can. Thank you!

Hi! I'm working on a very large model in Stud.io, and the program's handling it very poorly: when I try to move or place a piece it typically freezes for 30-60 seconds, and occasionally it locks up completely and then crashes, so at the moment it's pretty much unusable. But I notice that it's not using my computer's resources very effectively: it caps out at about 8% CPU usage and 11% memory usage, and doesn't seem to be using my GPU at all. My immediate diagnosis is that for some reason it's limited the amount of RAM it can use and that amount is insufficient, but I don't know why it would be doing that. Is there any way for me to give it more system resources, or make it use the GPU for whatever it's struggling with? This is on Windows 11, with a 3070Ti GPU. Thanks, -Kdapt

The Twilight has similar proportions and they didn't have a problem with that. Building rules may have been a little looser in 2008, but the selection of parts available was also much smaller--something like the large cog pieces used for the UCS AT-AT could control the rotation of the Mantis's wing and keep it sturdy enough to be played with. I agree with you that a playscale Mantis seems unlikely (something battlepack-sized or slightly larger would be more plausible, like they did for BF2), but I don't think it's because of the build itself, just LEGO seeming loath to take risks on video game sets.

Jorstad Designs has excellent models of both of those, including both the Home One and Liberty MC80 variants. There’s a link to his site in the post above yours, and he’s also on this forum, so you can probably find his threads if you poke around a bit. I do want to make those myself as well eventually (especially the MC75, since that’s the only one I’m missing from the Battle of Scarif), but they’re way down on my list of capital ships, so I don’t expect to get to them any time soon.

I’m pretty confident that the Venator will be scaled larger than the ISD is. That’s only a guess, of course, since I don’t have any more information than anyone else at this point, but that’s the way the math leans. A Venator is a much smaller ship than an ISD—roughly 70% as long, but proportionately much narrower and far less bulky in the stern, so probably less than a quarter of the total volume. The number of parts in a model doesn’t scale directly with the volume, and we also have to take into account that a Venator has a more complex shape and a larger area of greebling, but I would expect an official Venator at that scale to have substantially fewer pieces than the ISD does, probably in the range of two or three thousand. The Jorstad Designs model has about 4000 parts, and MOCs are almost always denser than official sets. The upcoming UCS model has 5400 parts, so it should be a fair bit larger than that. My guess is that it’ll land close to the same length as the UCS ISD or only slightly shorter, with the extra parts going to the more complex engines and whatnot. For other MOCs, the Jordstad Designs that I mentioned in the last paragraph has several large capital ships, including a Venator and some Mon Cala ships: https://www.jorstad-designs.com/ Ky-E Bricks on Rebrickable has a lot mixed in with all the Star Trek, although several of them are non-canon names/sizes for things: https://rebrickable.com/users/ky-e bricks/mocs/ The ‘nano-scale’ stuff on BrickVault is technically scaled to 1:1666 to match the original UCS ISD, but for small ships that’s functionally equivalent to 1:1455: https://www.brickvault.toys/products/nano-scale-fleet-nebulon-b-arquitens-gozanti-cr90-gr75-tie-fighters-more There are a ton of other one-off ones on Rebrickable, too. DaringSteel over there has made a couple of ships from The Expanse at this scale, specifically to fit with my collection; RobertBrick has a Raider that was one of the inspirations for me to start this project (although I confess that I think my Raider is better—he didn’t have that 6x2 wedge piece to work with, which is really the part that makes the model); DarthDesigner has stuff at a bunch of scales, but off-hand I think their Sphyrna is about this size; etc. I don’t know of any great way to search for those models, unfortunately, but if you poke around a bit you’ll run across them. Many are labeled 1:1500 or 1:1666 rather than 1:1455, but for most of those ships that makes for less than a stud of difference.

Those aren’t mutually exclusive. Several Inquisitors are fallen Jedi—the Grand Inquisitor was a Temple Guard, Ninth Sister and Fifth Brother were Knights, and Second Sister and Third Sister were Padawans. I’m not aware of any that have yet been confirmed not to have been Jedi, in fact, although they seem to be open to recruiting people who weren’t. That said, in Legends there were like a dozen competing Imperial dark side organizations that all served basically the same role the Inquisitorius does in current canon. I strongly suspect that at some point they’re going to reintroduce one or more of those just so they can get away from the constraint of having all the Inquisitors numbered, especially since the Inquisitorius seems to have been largely wiped out before ANH. These guys may well be from some other group (even if they’re still referred to as “inquisitors” in a casual context).