Creation
The Sith Probe Droid model was created by me back in Feb of 2023. I modeled, printed and painted the probe droids quickly. I even bought some 3mm dia clear acrylic rods to use as stems, and then I lost steam trying to come up with a base stand. There were 5 different stands I made, but I hated all of them. They were all individual stands, and all basically just variations on the Sith emblem.
Darth Maul used The Sith Probe Droids in The Phantom Menace to locate Queen Amidala on Tatooine.
Getting back into it
A few days ago (a full year and 3 months later), I decided to instead sculpt a sand base that will hold 3 probe droids. They turned out better than I was hoping for. I started modeling a smooth base in Rhino and when I was happy with the basic shape, I gave it a quad remesh and exported. Then I loaded up Blender to do some further subdivision and sculpting on the base, adding some desert ripples and a few rocks.
Finishing
I primed it then gave it a quick shot of Alclad copper around the bottom rim first. After that dried, I masked it and sprayed the top with Testor’s Italian Sand. Then I mixed a lighter tan color, dry brushed that on the rocks, and the peaks of the ripples in the sand. The way I did the shading was with a combination of blackwash for the rocky recesses, and dry brushing pastels in various colors. I sealed the whole thing with a coat of satin clear. In hindsight, I should have gone with flat, but I can still do that 🙂
The Sith Probe Droids themselves were primed and sprayed with gunmetal gray. I highlighted the iris of the “eye” with a dark metallic blue. Then IÂ hit the edge of the eye with chrome and added a chrome dot in the center. After the paint dried, I used a hobby syringe to place a drop of clear UV curing resin in the iris recess, then hit it with a scorpion light for about a minute to cure it. This creates a very nice lens effect. I had originally considered simply printing the lenses in clear. I quickly realized that the surface tension of resin will form it into a lens shape naturally. It worked like a charm.
These were the first prints I did that are “multimedia” as it were. I realized the antenna is too thin to print and would be way too fragile. Instead, I added a tiny hole and used 0.5mm brass wire for that. Also using 3mm acrylic rods for the stems.
