Category Archives: 3D printing

Isle of the Beholders: 3D printed Axolote

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You know what to listen to for this:

 

And they* said 3D printing poses no threat to traditional miniatures…

well maybe not yet, but still:

  

This is a 3Dprint I printed out myself on my cheapo Flashforge Finder. Printed in PLA with .01 layer height. I scaled it a bit randomly to make a large one.

The original model is by Axolote Gaming, an unexpected bonus item from their second Kickstarter, and also one of the better models of a Beholder I have seen yet.

You can see the stepping from the printing process if you look closely. This is particularily obvious in the teeth and the eyeball as.the gloss varnish I used on the eye really made the stepping apparent. It was not half as bad before.

At any rate, the stepping is really only apparent when looked at closely, or when magnified such as in the pictures. The fangs are a bit misshapen here and there, mostly from my printer not being all that great. I have not used a file when prepping, just clippers and a sharp hobby knife. Maybe a file would have straightened those teeth out properly. Something to try next time.

The tentacles are hollow as their cross sections are to small to include any infill. This means they are quite brittle and prone to snappin off. Luckily only one of them broke during the removal of the supports though.

My printer also left a lot of extremely fine hair-like strings attached to the finished print, so together with removing the print-supports there was quite a lot of prepwork.

At least I did not have to wash it to get rid of the mould’s release agents, as I have realized the truth: there is no mould.

 

  

A note about painting 3D models: Neither drybrushing nor washes are good techniques for them, as the stepping will get accented and more pronounced. (and here I am with drybrushing and washes as my favorite techniques… argh!)

 

and to make the size apparent:

I used a 50mm lipped base with a paperclip to make the stand.

 

Beholder

model by Axolote Gaming

3D printed at .01 layer height

PLA

50mm base

 

*They still being Tom Kirby CEO of Games Workshop in  the 2014 GW Chairman’s Preamble to the Games Workshop CEO annual report.

 

Painted so far this month: 9/30 Just 21 to go

Painted so far this year: 167 / 365. Just 198 to go

 

KoW Undead Mounted Revenant Knights, part 2

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Back in March 2013 I made a post about the Mantic Revenant Knights, (well, it was actually more about the restic material they are made of than about the minis -the knights were some of the first restic minis I had seen and I had just struggled with building them).

…and now, in April 2017, I have at long last gotten round to actually painting them:

      

These are based on 50x25mm oval bases I printed on my 3D printer so they can do double duty for both skirmish games and block-maneuver games like Kings of War or even old WFB.

I have painted them in the theme of the Lost Crusade, my Kings of War skeleton army.

For some obscure reason, these give the distinct impression of being from England.

 

10 Revenant Knights

Kings of War, undead faction,

A part of the undead army I bought with the very first KoW Kickstarter.

Mantic Games

Restic

50x25mm bases

 

 

Painted so far this month: 73 / 30.  

Painted so far this year: 158 / 365. Just 207 to go!

 

3Dprint: Gorilla

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Just a few years ago, someone* wrote in their results statements thingy** that 3D-printing miniatures is not in any way a threat to the miniatures industry:

“We know quite a lot about 3-D printers, having been at the forefront of the technology for many years. We know of what we speak. One day 3-D printers will be affordable (agreed), they are now, they will be able to produce fantastic detail (the affordable ones won’t) and they will do it faster than one miniature per day (no, they won’t, look it up). So we may get to the time when someone can make a poorly detailed miniature at home and have enough for an army in less than a year. That pre-supposes that 3-D scanning technology will be affordable and good enough (don’t bet the mortgage on that one) and that everyone will be happy to have nothing but copies of old miniatures. (…).”

 

So, just three years later, in 2017, I printed this minature, which I downloaded for free from drivethrurpg.com as it was part of one of many totally free packs of critters, beasts and monsters that are downloadable from that site (and they also have many packs that are pay what you want or have a fixed cost of a few dollars.)

  

The only alteration I did was to cut away the integral base and print it on a raft instead so I could base it in the same style as my other minis.

 

This ape took about an hour and a half to print on my cheap as chips Flashforge Finder-printer, on “hyper” 0.1mm layer height. This needed supports when printing, and cost just a few pennies worth of PLA.

Yes, the details are not fantastic (but that has more to do with the tru-scale nature of this model than with the printer) and there are slight print lines visible. (not really all that visible unless it is zoomed in on as in the pictures.)

But still. We are getting there, and much faster than someone* would have thought.

 

*that someone being the then Chairman of Games Workshop, Tom Kirby,

**2014 GW Chairman’s Preamble to the Games Workshop CEO annual report .

 

3D printed Gorilla

by mx4250,

downloaded from drivethrurpg.com

PLA, 0.1 mm layer height

30mm base

 

 

Painted so far this month: 63 / 30.  

Painted so far this year: 148 / 365. Just 217 to go!

It’s Terraining Men: The Oathsworn Ruined Tower

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Almost a month has swept past with no new minis painted because life.

With my 3D printer currently clogging up every time I try to print and now in stasis awaiting a new nozzle, I thought it might be time to get some terrain done and dusted.

We start with somthing that is not 3d printed, but has been sitting around taking up space on my to-do shelved.

The husband and wife-run company Oathsworn Miniatures have been doing kickstarter after kickstarter, many of which include the option of pledging for some ace resing terrain made and hand cast by the lovely and talented Jo.

In their secoond Burrows and Badgers KS “FreeLances”, the main resin bits were a three part ruined bell tower:

  

The main piece is about 20cms long, the ruined bits of wall and cracked bell-pieces are about 15cms long.

 

There were also some strip-shaped pieces with barrels and chests and such in this KS, but those are for another day.

 

Ruined Tower scatter terrain

Oathworn Miniatures,

from their Burrows and Badgers FreeLances KS

sculpted by Jo Lovejoy

Cast in resin

 

bonus:


30mm base. about 50mm tall.

This is a piece from Axolote’s recent 3d KS that I printed as a test. It is actually a part to put on top of a cave dungeon tile, it has a butterfly-shaped hole underneath to match a stud on the tiles. I selected this for printing both to test the Axolote file and my printer that has started to clog up more often. It printed well enough, I think I printed it at .01 mm layer height.

At any rate, I had it lying about when I painted the bell tower parts, and used some of the leftover paint on my palette to paint it, as it would be useful to see what the 3D printed piece would look like when drybrushed.

For one thing, the print lines did become more prononced. Still I dont really think the print lines matter much because they are only really noticeable when viewed close up. And pictures being rather in-your-face close up do make the lines look much worse than they are.

At any rate, one lesson to take from this is to go easy on drybrushing 3d printed items to not make the print lines more pronounced.

The rocky pillar-thing

Axolote Tiles Nature Set 3d print files KS

by Axolote Gaming

 

 

Painted so far this month: 4 / 30. Just 26 to go! (plus 10 still to do from last month) 

Painted so far this year: 89 / 365. Just 276 to go!

 

 

 

A bit about base 3D printing; also Cry Havoc! And let slip the Hounds of Chaos!

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Last year I bought a unit of unbuilt Chaos Hounds off Ebay on a whim. Which turned out to have no bases and missing a horn. Sigh. When you buy on the cheap, youse gets whats youse gets.

First I stuck them on square cavalry bases, but that looked just wrong. I think I have decided not to use square bases any more, as I prefer the round ones, so I took them off again.  Then I tried some 40 and 50mm round bases, but the 40mm ones looked too small, and the 50mm ones take up too much space on the shelf for my liking, what with there being 10 models. Shelfspace turning out to be coming somewhat at a premium with all the minis getting painted these days…

So I tried oval bases from warbases, which did the trick. But still. Those square-cut edges clash stylistically with the chamfered/lipped bases I have come to prefer. So the dogs got stuck in a box with all the other “not entirely inspired to paint these yet, something is not quite right, need to think a bit” miniatures. Too bad no one seems to make plain, chamfered oval bases. And I have searched extensively for such.

And then in December a paradigm shift occurred. I got a 3dprinter. I started off happily printing out terrain piece after terrain piece, discovering that there are massive amounts of models of tanks on thingiverse, so printing a few of those, all the while learning what the printer can do.

And then some days ago it dawned on me. Why not print the bases I want myself?

well, the first reason would be I don’t know how to 3D model. My first admittedly very cursory foray was into a free program called blender. Woah, talk about your steep learning curves! How to even set up a working environment there? I will need to spend some serious time before making either heads or tails of that. Or start with a simpler program.

But the printer’s own slicer program does let me scale things, so if I only had a base model to work from, maybe…*search search search*

Some playing around with an excellent base model I found on thingiverse later:

170121-3dprint-oval-lipped-base3

Voila! One 50mm x25mm oval lipped base. That’s the same footprint as a cavalry base. I had to change all three dimensions to make this, as the original model was too tall. But it turned out all right. And is easily resized for other dimensions as well. So now I can get the best of two worlds, both my preferred, esthetically pleasing chamfered base for individual viewing and skirmish game enjoyment, and backwards warhammer fantasy / kings of war compatibility for practical mass battle game functionality. Just stick them on a movement tray and off we go!

 

170121-3dprint-oval-lipped-base2 oval-bases-unit

and so I rebased the Hounds of Chaos yet again. One and a half speedpaint session later:

 

170121-warhammer-hounds-of-chaos

To quote Lord Flashheart: “Woof! Woof!” Here are a few of the dogs:

170121-warhammer-hound-of-chaos-d 170121-warhammer-hound-of-chaos-c 170121-warhammer-hound-of-chaos-b 170121-warhammer-hound-of-chaos-a

Yes, there are some very fine print lines, but I can’t really see them IRL, just in the close up pictures.

You can download the oval lipped base model from thingiverse here.

 

 

Hounds of Chaos

Warhammer Fantasy Battle/ Age of Sigmar

Warriors and Beasts of Chaos / Grand Alliance Chaos Faction

Games Workshop

HIPS plastic

50x25mm bases, remixed and 3dprinted by me

 

Painted so far this month: 27

Painted so far this year: 27 / 365.  Just 338 to go!