Blastech E-11 Blaster Rifle (ROTJ Variant)

[DarthParametric 3,767]

So, per a post in the request thread, I had a dig through some of my old files to see if I had an E-11 that I had been working on back in my "recreate all the Original Trilogy props" period. There wasn't much of use so I just decided to whip up a new replacement from scratch. Did most of it over the course of several hours last night, just finished off the scope and remaining details this evening. Possibly I got a bit carried away, as it runs about 3,800 tris. If InSidious sees this I'm sure he'll have a conniption. He got elevated blood pressure seeing some of my weapon models with 2K polys back in the day.

 

I still have to texture those Nautolan and Kel Dor heads (which I was planning to do over Xmas), so this should be a nice way to get acquainted with my new Wacom tablet.

 

[Jorak Uln 458]

@Darth Parametric:

 

Yay. Fantastic as always! Im curious, you still have your droids foundry (T3, Protocol etc.) in the makings, any news on them?

[DarthParametric 3,767]

They are on indefinite hiatus until someone releases a properly working alternative to MDLOps.

[Jorak Uln 458]

They are on indefinite hiatus until someone releases a properly working alternative to MDLOps.

Thats too bad. Hope there will be a solution soon. 

 

 But im glad your working on the heads - do you plan to take on the different NPC heads as well?

And a nice side-effect of that would be the possiblity to do detailed skin with pores & hi res beards etc.

[djh269 262]

That blaster looks amazing!

 

Nice work!

Djh269

[Mephiles550 221]

Now this is a Christmas present I can truly appreciate. Thanks for making the model, it looks amazing!

 

What exactly is the difference between the ROTJ E-11 variant and the E-11 in EP IV and EP V?

[DarthParametric 3,767]

There are a bunch of small differences. To be honest it's actually really hard to tell just watching the movies, unless you know ahead of time what to look for and freeze frame like crazy. Even then it's sometimes impossible to tell because things are out of frame, obscured, or blurry (especially before the HD transfers turned up).

 

The ANH hero props were built off real Sterling submachine-guns, with resin casts used for stunt weapons. They had rubber t-tracks running along the barrel vent holes. They had a full rifle scope mounted on a pair of thin metal rails. What is considered the definitive version had a Hengstler mechanical counter mounted on the left side wired to some tubes mounted on top of the magazine (you can see these being held by the Stormtroopers that escort Leia to Vader on the Tantive IV, and by the squad that come to the bridge where Obi-Wan is disabling the tractor beam). Not all versions had the counter, but it seems like most if not all firing versions kept the tubes on the magazine (like the versions Han and Luke have in the cell bay shootout and subsequent chase/escape). From what I understand, the counters were only glued on, and many fell off during shooting. It may have originally intended to have been standard on all variants. According to one reference site that I used back in the day, there were at least 8 different versions used during ANH.

 

Here are some shots from ANH. These are the non-counter version with tubes.

 

Here are some fan-made replicas showing counter and tubes:

 

ESB was largely similar to ANH, and reused a lot of the same props, but it seems like many/most of the stunt versions were resin versions roughly cast from one of the ANH originals. They added some greebles to this version, some additional sight blocks in front of and behind the scope, a few pieces on the rear of the main housing (behind the magazine) on both sides. It seems this version was used in all the promo material, and was also grafted onto IG-88 as his gun arm. Most notably they didn't bother with the Hengstler counter at all from this point onwards.

 

It's hard to find any decent shots of the ESB variant, but here's some promo shots where you can make out some of the details:

 

In ROTJ they again reused some props from ANH/ESB, but by that point a lot of props had gone "missing" (including, famously, Vader's lightsaber), so they also made some new hero props. These were not made from original Sterlings (which were probably hard to source by that point) but replica versions made by a company in Japan. They used some different pieces to replicate the look of the originals. Metal rails to replace the rubber t-tracks, a solid 1 piece scope rail, a fabricated scope made from the back end of a real scope with a metal cylinder bolted onto the front, some different greebles on the body. This is the version that I modelled.

 

Here's one of the actual screen-used ROTJ props, on display in one of the prop tours of recent years:

[DarthParametric 3,767]

OK, I think this is done.

 

 

 

Kind of a waste seeing as it's basically just a black blurry mess in KOTOR. I guess InSidious was right after all, lol. Oh well.

 

Edit: Whoops, kind of helps if you remember that MDLOps completely screws the UVs of elements with contiguous edges that are split across UV islands. Freaking MDLOps. So anyway, slightly less of a blurry mess in K1 now. Looks better in TSL though.

 

 

 

Edit 2: Now released - http://deadlystream.com/forum/topic/3939-k1tsl-blastech-e-11-blaster-rifle/

[Thomo93 1]

That really is nice! Great work