[Bandit LOAF]

The last time we saw CountvonSchnaps they were making some handsome cat fighters[/url]... and now they're taking things in a direction you couldn't have predicted! The good Count has now posted their take on another one of the Wing Commander universe's signature ships... Privater 2: The Darkening's famous Heretic! Amazing to see a Privateer 2 design re-interpreted like this.

Privateer 2: Heretic Medium Fighter (DeviantArt)

A (re)design of a well known medium fighter in Privateer 2 The Darkening... the Heretic Medium fighter. In use in the civilian market the fighter is in use by mercenaries, smugglers and pirates alike.

This commission was made for Heretic1311 and asked for a bronze blue color scheme and little to no markings... since the craft in question is in use by a privateer.

Fun design of a great game I enjoyed playing... already quite some time ago.

--
Original update published on February 22, 2026

 

[kingmakeress]

The last time we saw CountvonSchnaps they were making some handsome cat fighters[/url]... and now they're taking things in a direction you couldn't have predicted! The good Count has now posted their take on another one of the Wing Commander universe's signature ships... Privater 2: The Darkening's famous Heretic! Amazing to see a Privateer 2 design re-interpreted like this.

Privateer 2: Heretic Medium Fighter (DeviantArt)







--
Original update published on February 22, 2026

The fighters are great!

Also, there seems to be a forgotten tag in the the first sentence of your post.

 

[rap1983]

Does anyone have a good 3D model of the two ships from the cover?
The data from "Privateer 2 3D Models (12MB)" is just gray blocks. Or did I look in the wrong place?
The files from the other Wing Commander parts are better.

 

[Bob McDob]

They worked fine for me, except for the Chirichan Demon. I think you can export them from the game files too now using the Originator.
They're not the high-res models on the cover though, we don't have them and I'm not sure they exist anywhere. Michael Paul Cottam was one of the artists on the game and he's shared some images of them.

 

[AD]

Does anyone have a good 3D model of the two ships from the cover?
The data from "Privateer 2 3D Models (12MB)" is just gray blocks. Or did I look in the wrong place?
The files from the other Wing Commander parts are better.

IIRC the archive of the P2 models stores ships separately from their textures. The textures are in the "maps.gif" zip included in the archive. If you open the 3DS file you can get a list of the required textures, but you can get them to show up anyway by just having the textures in the same folder as the 3DS file

 

[TCSTigersClaw]

What do you use to open the 3d files ?

 

[rap1983]

I copied the files from ‘maps.gif’ and ‘Models’ into a file folder.
Then I loaded a 3ds into Blender using drag & drop.
When I change the views, Blender displays the model in grey or pink.
What am I doing wrong?

 

[AD]

I copied the files from ‘maps.gif’ and ‘Models’ into a file folder.
Then I loaded a 3ds into Blender using drag & drop.
When I change the views, Blender displays the model in grey or pink.
What am I doing wrong?

I suspect you might need to tell Blender what type of file they are... While it's a 3D Studio file it's an old one so you probably need to import it rather than drag and drop. I'll try it out a little later and see what happens.

EDIT: I'll have to look at this more tomorrow. The various 3DS plugins for blender do link the textures but they don't apply them. You have to do a bunch of manual work to create the materials for the object from the textures.

 

[Bob McDob]

This happens when Blender has no texture to display. The 3DS importer doesn't link the textures properties so they won't show up even if you put them in the same folder.
You have to click on the materials tab (the red sphere at the bottom of the right toolbar), select every material, click on the Base Color "Mixer" property and select "image texture", then select the texture with the same name as the material. You have to do this for every texture and most ships have several.
The "good" news is that all of the textures are shared between all of the ships so if you import them all into one scene you only have to do this once.

Alternatively you can use a program like 3D Exploration like AD is using.

3D Exploration (Version 1.5.00) : X Dimension Software : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

This is the setup file for 3D Explroation (Version 1.5.00), build date 22nd October 2000 by X Dimension Software.From the included help file:3D Exploration is...

archive.org

 

[rap1983]

Thank you very much.
I used “3D Exploration” to make the models colorful.
The spaceships really don't look as nice as they did in part 1.
Everything is quite angular.