I’ve been neglecting my model building and this site of late… While waiting for good printing weather, I discovered Visual Pinball. That’s lead me down a months long rabbit hole, on a quest to build the perfect Murphy style, pedestal, pinball cabinet… Anyway I digress!
The above picture is intended to show a scenario where the older HMS Warrior might have won the day in an encounter with the brand new French Ironclad Redoutable. It was the unexpected result of a thought experiment I’d been having with ChatGPT. I’d asked it, if there were a way Warrior could have bested the newer French ship. It went on to describe a situation where; if Warrior could close the gap quickly and unseen, either through fog or storm, she could conceivably negate Redoutable’s substantial gun range and power advantage. And while she’d still have a hard time sinking her, she could effectively disable her by hammering Redoutable with her relatively quick firing and numerous (though comparatively light) broadside guns. I had responded that it had painted a pretty picture with Warrior charging out of the fog, full ahead with full sail in order to pounce on the unsuspecting French ironclad. And with no further prompting or ado, it did! Only took all of 20 seconds…
ChatGPT’s original is below, while it did an unbelievably beautiful job depicting HMS Warrior charging from the fog, Redoutable is complete rubbish… To be fair, my last comment had just mentioned “French ironclad”. Regardless, I knew I’d be spending some quality time trying to effectively add my Blender model of Redoutable to that image, and at least 6 hrs latter, I’m reasonably happy with the outcome above.
Haven’t done any model building of late but lots of Blender fun. Above is one of my earliest Blender models USS Texas, I thought it would be cool to put the world’s only surviving dreadnought in a digital Diorama and I did enjoy it… Except for all the repair work and texturing needed.
I’m super surprised this model printed as well as it did, I was still using XYZ’s object editor for some parts and man, they are sloppy! Repairs went fast and the texturing of this was fairly simple. Had much fun with the ocean effects.
Pre-Dreadnought Charles Martel Leads the French Ironclad Fleet in the Line of Battle
Original Post: Jan. 13, 2026
Anyone paying attention just had to know this post was coming, no way I’d leave my Charles Martel out of the French Fleet Fun with Digital Dioramas!
As crazy as it may seem I do think this scene was actually plausible, Admiral Duperre, Devastation and Redoutable were all still active at the time of Charles Martel’s commissioning in 1897.
I was going to make the Reboutable led battle-line picture the new website splash-page graphic, but this pic ended up stealing the show.
I’d obviously rather spend two hours creating a fictitious French naval recruitment poster circa 1887 prominently featuring my new, mostly complete, Redoutable Ironclad Blender model, than spend those same 2 hours working on the tiny details that remain, won’t show in renders but still need to be completed before printing…
Think I may make this my new splash page graphic. I love the way creating digital dioramas in Blender lets you “play” with your new digital toy models! 🙂
PS: The keen observer may have noticed I used my Admiral Duperre model for the second ship in line.
Blender renders of the French ironclad warship Redoutable
Original Post: Jan. 8, 2026
While researching my Admiral Duperre project, I would repeatedly come across pictures of the first steal hulled battleship, Redoutable and I really liked her lines. Her tumble-home hull was even more pronounces than Duperre’s and though Redoubtable is Duperre’s predecessor, aspects of her appear more modern, at least to my eyes. In the pictures above her Blender work is easily over 90% complete but I’ve still got a bit of work before she’s done. Even so, it’s only taken me a little over a month to get this far. So I’m definitely getting faster! (Or at least able to reuse more). I kind of like Redoutable more than Duperre right now but then again, I always like the shiny new thing I just finished best.
Come spring I’m going to have some difficult choices to make as to what gets printed and assembled first. Heck, I’m already looking at Courbet for my next Blender build. I do love me some French ironclads…
Below are renders of Admiral Duperre in her 1887 configuration
Had a long ChatGPT yesterday about my Duperre Blender model. Seems there were some historical abnormalities. I figured there were a few… it’s why I contacted the all knowing Oracle for a sanity check. Turns out that when Duperre had the Charles Martel type fighting tops she also had the fugly anti-torpedo netting. Except for the late 1890’s by which time she had lost her bow sprit, and status as a front-line battleship. I’m typically not a crazy stickler for historic accuracy, but I really like this model and want her to be reasonably accurate.
When in doubt
Kind of left me with two acceptable options. Make all the changes to get her into her 1892 refit configuration (except for the nets, which I cannot abide). Or do her up as close to her 1887 refit as possible, making her more or less a copy of the Paris Naval Museum’s Duperre. So naturally I went with both, at least in Blender. Not sure yet which I’ll ultimately print/build (leaning towards 1887) but for now I’m tweaking her for both states.
Except for the lack of anti-torpedo hardware, the pictures below are pretty close to Duperre’s post 1892 refit look.
Original Post: Dec. 7, 2025
French battleship Admiral Duperre 1891, Blender renders
One thing that absolutely needs to be addressed up front and for the record (and for Google’s search engine…) I am totally aware that this ship’s official French name is: Amiral Duperré, But Admiral Duperre is a tad easier on my English speaking target audience and how the heck do you even type: é?
OK, back to business. The Blender design work is complete (edit: yeah right...) on my French ironclad Admiral Duperre. She still needs to be parted up for printing but that must wait until I decide on the make of my new resin printer. I’ll be scaling her to 1/200 for printing and when built, she should pair nicely with my 1/200 Charles Martel.
She took about 3 months to complete which is a huge improvement on Martel’s Blender work of nearly a year. Wish I could say there was less guess work on Duperre’s design then with Martel’s but that would be a lie. If it weren’t for the handful of excellent pictures taken of the builder’s model on display in the Paris Musée de la Marine, I wouldn’t have chosen Duperre as my next major Blender project. Those photos filled in a lot of blanks. The biggest problem with them being she’s depicted after her 1887 refit, and I was looking to model Duperre circa 1891, before she lost her main mast, bow sprit and was fitted with anti torpedo netting but after she received her fighting tops and simplified bow sprit… (edit: should have passed these assumptions by ChatGPT first)
There are a handful of reasonably good photo’s of Duperre, but few during the desired period. It’s extremely difficult to know when changes occurred when looking at earlier or latter photos, though if you see enough pictures you start to see patterns and make assumptions, but it’s easy to get it wrong. Speaking of getting things wrong. I know the paint scheme used on the Paris model isn’t 100% correct and was used to highlight her armor layout, and it’s even less accurate for Duperre circa 1891, but it’s available in color, looks crazy cool and is probably the most widely know paint scheme for her.
Anyway, plenty of time for me to tweak things, it’s going to be a while before the temperatures in my printing shed allow me to resin print again. so I’ve got a few months before I can start this build. In the meantime I’ve already started on an even earlier French ironclad: Redoubtable. I really do love me a tumble home hull. I’m guessing I’ll be posting design updates on Redoubtable long before Duperre sees any more progress.
The reworked Blender model of Admiral Duperre also needed a new sunset shot and of course a posterized version…
Update: Dec. 14, 2025
Reworked my Blender model of Admiral Duperre to represent her earlier 1887 configuration -thought I’d have a little more fun.
Update: Nov. 11, 2025
Still messing with Blender dioramas/graphic art, I wanted to try a new none night time setting. (and I’m not ready to go back to working on all the small details I’ve still got to do…) I do really like the posterized look.
Original Post: Nov. 9. 2025
My Blender Admiral Duperre displayed in a digital diorama.
My Blender design for the French ironclad Admiral Duperre is coming along nicely. At about 70% complete, most of the remaining work will consist of countless small details limited only by my patience. I wanted to have some fun with the model, so dropped it into the Blender diorama I had originally made for Charles Martel.
Frances ironclad Admiral Duperre after about 3 weeks of Blender work
Oct. 27 2025
Winter’s coming and I need a new resin printer anyway, it’s time to switch to Blender design work and prepare for next seasons model building projects.
Having had a most excellent time with Charles Martel, and really loving the steam punk look of her, I decided to go back to the source of tumble home goodness. I spent a day or so doing a deep dive into France’s early ironclads, her pre-pre-Dreadnoughts if you will. So many interesting options, (the ironclad era is chock full of them from all nations). It didn’t take too long before I found what I was looking for: Admiral Duperre . Sticking with France also allowed a connection to Charles Martel and you can readily see the evolution of design ideas.
I found Admiral Duperre to be an irresistible subject for modeling, she has so many naval design eras baked in: – Straight from antiquity, the prominent ram bow and forecastle. – From the preceding generation of ironclad frigates, 14 massive muzzle loading broadside canons 7 per side. – Again from the age of sail, schooner rigging! Or was it barque? Anyway she’s got sails for Pete’s sake! – The latest ironclad innovations were also present: Steam engines powering duel props, a fully steal and armor plated hull, 4 armored barbettes housing massive breach loading 13.4″ rifled cannons, (in pseudo turrets even!) – And my three favorite design elements, two of her massive barbette guns are arranged forward, side by side in wing turret fashion, she’s got two giant side by side smoke stacks right behind them and of course a sexy tumble home hull.
I’m thinking she’s about half done. maybe an additional month or two of Blender design work before I’ll switch to parting mode, breaking her up into printable chunks. Hopefully I’ll have a new resin printer by then.
I was using my models in Blender to help design the case and realized with a little extra effort I could have a cool render of what I’m hoping the finished set will look like.
The newer designs still require some tweaks to make them printer ready but the bulk of the Blender work is complete. I may still add utility craft, life boats and planes, though the typical Comet and Framburg recognition models I’ve styled mine after, did not include them. It seems my projects are never truly done…
I’ve finished printing and building the entire USN WWII German Naval Recognition Set (and then some) in 1/500 scale. The picture link below takes you to the project page with info and images for all the models in the set.
While researching famous German WW2 ships to add to my faux USN German recognition set, I stumbled upon the Wikipedia story of the Auxiliary Cruiser Kormoran – Wow, what a good read that was! If you’re not familiar with Kormoran’s story I highly recommend you check it out. I was floored that I’d never heard of this ship before, she’s definitely made the list.
Basically a freighter, the Blender design for Kormoran has been a nice change of pace and I’ve found the work quite enjoyable. The end detail level will be fairly low, keeping her more or less consistent with my other WW2 recognition style models. That said, there will still be considerably more detail than typical. I’d like to do her up proper in 1/350 scale, maybe some day.
In other news, I’ve also finished the designs for the pre-dreadnought battleship Schledwig Holstein and the torpedo boat Jaguar. It’s almost time to add a new project page so I can put all this content in one place…
I’ve finished printing and building the entire USN WWII German Naval Recognition Set (and then some) in 1/500 scale. The picture link below takes you to the project page with info and images for all the models in the set.
