Good evening, fellow makers! I wanted to share a prop build we worked on just as a "because we can" project! The Adam Driver Sci-Fi Movie was not well received globally at the box office, but for fellow sci-fi fans, it's an underappreciated gem! Dinosaurs, spaceships, and AMAZING props—what's not to love!!

I modelled the rifle over 8 weeks, starting to block out the significant elements. I relied on my tried and true reverse engineering techniques using the perspective adjustment and image overlay tool, which are absolute key tools unique to how Solidworks functions and allow us to make our replicas as accurate as possible.

Perspective distortion and lens correction all come into the process, making it more often than not a little bit of art on the science of alignment and using third-party tools like Photoshop to correct for lens distortion.

As I began to hone in on the shape, the images started to line up closer and closer. Still, as you can see, no one reference often is a 100% perfect lineup as there are so many lens distortions present between different cinematic shots and cropping that you really have to "feel" your way through to accuracy!

Due to my exposure to Keyshot, I always find it helpful to stop and take a render mid-way just to track my progress over time. I've been an avid user of that package with Solidworks for years, but I will certainly be looking to experiment again in Visualise!

After this stage, we began the prototyping physically (some final renderings are below before we got physical!

We designed our own custom LED Strip in Easy EDA and programmed it with a Nordic Bluetooth Microcontroller with the trigger to function just like in the movie to be a true "hero" prop

The final prop was industrially SLA printed in SOMOS Tough Evolve with CNC Machined elements. We also made a stunt casting mold so we could make rubber versions of the rifle!

All on our journey as Orbital FX to make the best Hero Props for Film & TV!

All the best!

Luke