Istarian Drone - Medium Ancient Construct (DND / TTRPG)

Here is another one that I couldn't find elsewhere - an Istarian Drone as seen in Shadow of the Dragon Queen. This was a mixed project where some parts are from the AI generation and some I made through hard surface modelling. As usual with complex creatures the AI was a bit of a Frankenstein monster. I made a Modron Planar incarnate a while ago so I borrowed some of that experience to model the main body and wires but I really liked the legs, arms, head and claws so I kept those from the AI model. It's not 100% matching the source imagery but I like it. I split everything into separate parts, filled in the gaps with my parts and then rigged it one bone at a time to keep a really rigid armature like what you'd expect for an ancient Istarian Construct.

This is a medium creature but given how its legs branch out the two "base" versions won't fit on a standard 25mm baseplate so I'd run it without a baseplate but if you need one you'll want to create a 40mm base for it. The standing variant I sized for 25mm but it stands a lot taller. For FDM it could be scaled up a bit to help with printability but on resin it should print fine.

Since a lot of it was handmade it's a smaller model so I've also included a blend file with the rig in place. It's all set as separate parts in there so you can split them out for other parts if you'd like. I didn't rig the main body - just the limbs and head so you can move them around or if you want to rig the main body you can do that too. For getting it 3d print ready I recommend the following:

1. Pose the model to your liking - create a copy, apply the pose and move onto the next step
2. Remesh the model (by default this should turn into 1.8 million vertices) - make sure to keep a high res / riggeable backup before applying this
3. Use Quad Remesh to get it to ~180k vertices (if you have this - otherwise use the built in remesh for this as well)
4. Shrinkwrap the reasonably sized model to your high res version to reclaim some missing details
5. Scale the model to your desired size (0.333 or so should be the same as what I have for 25mm medium scale)
6. Use the 3d Print Toolbox extension to print optimize - fix non-manifold stuff and then export
7. Post a remix and lemme know what you did (hopefully not just adding skibidi rock crab stuff)

That's it for now - this was a monster project so I'm hoping to get some quick ones done next!

I'm on a quest to make 1000 dnd models in 2025 and you can join me on Thingiverse, Printables, Cults3d or see my weekly updates on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/c/Adamnant (as well as get codes for exclusive downloads on Cults3d). I'm focusing on models that don't seem to exist on Printables / Thingiverse and are listed in campaigns. If you have something that you need let me know and I can add it to my list.