Spring RTS Engine

I am attempting to 3d print the classic total annihilation units. So far I have had some success following the advice of spring players by taking the .3D0 unit files and using upspring to convert them to object files and then blender to turn them into .stl files. I personally don't have 3d modeling experience, but my brother has a bit and showed me the issue with the files, they are not complete/solid 3d models. They have unclosed faces on much of the geometry and many pieces that are not connected. He has had to rebuild and often redraw many of the parts of the models to make them solid for 3d printing.

I have a seen a few higher resolution 3d models of TA units online, I'm wondering if there are any projects that used the .3do files and did the work my brother is having to do to make them printable (closing randomly open faces and filling/connecting/rebuilding broken pieces; a process that takes hours per unit). It was suggested that perhaps in the development of Zero K there may be 3d models that could be of help. I have heard of TA3D, could this perhaps have 3D models for units that are more detailed?

If there are not any good existing 3d models, can anyone suggest good software/tools that might streamline the process of repairing these incomplete 3d models?

the old 3do files have geometric holes on the underside as part of an optimization in the past for that period of time. You will need to export them and seal the holes. Sorry man.

damn, not exactly the answer i was hoping for, but thank you for the input. I had hoped there would be an easier way

sorry man that stuff is from 1998. wow, 18 years ago. Anyway on the positive side, if you want a model most of them are fairly basic to recreate.

Probably worth asking over at TAUniverse. IIRC there was a mod which remodelled nearly all OTA models with additional faces - maybe not fully closed still but a step up from OTA.

If I remember correctly it was called Evolva models or something like that.

Two points here:
- some of the models are quite different from original units
- they still have 'optimizations' aka missing faces on sides which you can never see in OTA engine