Endless Sky Starship Collection 1:2000 Scale by MoffKalast

Last crawled date: 3 years, 3 months ago

Endless Sky is the open source remake of the classic Escape Velocity. It features a rather large amount of varied ships of interesting designs.
While the ships appear as 2D renders in the game itself the renders are made from full 3D models that I've repaired and sliced for FDM printing.
Given the top down nature of the game most meshes are only really detailed on the top, so I've added details on the undersides, enlarged existing details so they look better, removed unprintable details, added ones that would look decent, etc. All depending heavily on the ship mesh and its specifics.
The default scale is 1:2000 according to the hypothesis that the Finch is roughly jet fighter sized (~20m) and the rest of the ships are scaled in relation to it according to Vitalchip's calculator which takes into account most ship stats. The in-game relative sizes have mostly been disregarded since they were designed to make ships visible without zoom and not to relay actual size.
Ships done so far (and special instructions):
Human:
Finch (untested, probably too small for FDM at default scale)
Shuttle
Scout
Star Barge
Freighter
Blackbird
Mule (has a bit of a nasty overhang on the rear hangar, add supports if you wish)
Firebird
Splinter
Star Queen
Navy Cruiser (current version has larger guns than the test print)
Dreadnought
Bactrian
Kestrel
Remnant:
Ibis (both sliced parts require a brim unless you have god tier adhesion)
Albatross
Korath:
Kar Ik Vot 349
Hai:
Shield Beetle
Wanderers:
Strong Wind
Coalition:
Heliarch Interdictor
Sheragi:
Emerald Sword
FDM printing and painting instructions/tips:

The ship parts are exported separately as I like to print each part by itself to reduce nozzle entry/exit into parts for a better finish. Nothing's stopping you from printing it all at once though.


Clean up, remove any leftover stringing with a flame/heat gun, glue together with superglue (goes for PLA anyway).


Download the correct ship reference image


Open the ship viewer, upload the thumbnail and pick the swizzle colour you want to paint.

Paint with your preferred method. Generally some sort of acrylic ink works well with unprimed PLA.