Thunderfighter Remix from Taranis

The original Mesh was created by an artist going by the name Taranis, converted by another one going by the handle Klingon_commander and I downloaded that from ShareCG IIRC. I didn't see either of these artists up here, so I can't really do the Remix credit.

While it was a beautiful mesh for working in DAZ, there were two issues with 3D printing at the same scale as Star Wars TTRPG miniatures...first, the wings came out too thin with weird little hooks on the end and two, the canopy would never print. Now, that could have been due to me not knowing how to thicken things in my slicer, but my workaround was to modify the starfighter to have exaggerated wings and I attempted to redo the canopy. I'm still working on this one, so I may take it back to the original mesh and try again.

Anyways, I made this one for my Star Wars D6 games. I also tweaked the engines because I wasn't fond of them following the nosecones' angles.

UPDATE: 2025-Feb, I rebaselined the original model and while I did properly fit the filler primitives just under the cockpit glass surface, enabling the original glass to remain (which was superior to my ham handed attempt. I haven't test printed it yet, but I'm the Chitubox I use as a free slicer didn't have anything super obvious for me to thicken the glass so I adjusted the layers from .05 to .07 and I'm going to see if that'll help. Anyways, my main goal with this model isn't to redesign the starfighter, but to adjust its proportions for 3D Printing for tabletop scale (about a 34mm length). Another poster to Thingiverse had taken a model of the reimagined Viper Mk II and done something quite similar. I liked the idea because it did print far better than true proportioned Vipers scaled down that small ever did. Hopefully, some of you find this useful. Before Thingiverse and my purchase of my Photon, the closest I could come to any TTRPG starfighters for Buck Rogers was Bergstrom Studios 1 inch starfighters. He tweaked the design to be excellent for board game pieces and while not precise, was close enough to use when I didn't have access to a printer. More importantly, the artist doesn't charge a fortune for his work.

UPDATE: 2025-March, I successfully printed the thickened model and if I watched my finger placement as I removed it from the supports, The canopy came out wrinkly, but intact. I'll see if I can make it better, but the proportions came out at small scale perfectly. The new engines look pretty good, but I did leave older versions of the starfighter in the download in case anyone liked the larger engines better. While the TV show was made shortly after the original Star Wars (Ep 4) came out, so it had rather dated special effects for space scenes, the impression I always got was that the Thunderfighter was a quick, nimble starfighter. And given how Hollywood handled world building....you're never going to get exceptional lore for a 2 season show that changed Producers between Season 1 and 2. The second Producer had a radically different vision and monkeyed with quite a bit that Glen Larson set up, especially around Erin Grey's character Wilma Deering. So, as a fan, all I can say is, don't focus on the flaws and imagine what it could have been like if Hollywood truly valued SciFi in those days and had better options around special effects.