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Post by 8rad on Oct 27, 2017 11:50:30 GMT -9
I have been quite on here of late, but pushing in to the 3d modelling world. The printers are getting small, better and cheaper. Literary my first try, took maybe 3 hours so far and not as hard as you think. Free program called sulptris.
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on Oct 27, 2017 12:01:42 GMT -9
TRAITOR!!! Nice job, though. did you mean to reference "Sculptris"? I'm hoping to get into 3d printing by the end of the year... I'll have to keep this in mind. Thanks!
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Post by jeffgeorge on Oct 27, 2017 14:06:01 GMT -9
3D printing is the future...but from what I can see, it's not the present, yet. The sub-$1500 machines I've seen still make models with a LOT of striation from the printing layers. On some terrain objects, that's not such a problem, but I have yet to see a 28-32mm scale figure that didn't have it's detail eaten up by the horizontal-line artifacting from the 3D printing process.
I think we're still 5-10 years away from hobbyist-level 3D printers having anything like the kind of resolution and print quality that we expect from commercial 3D figure manufacturers, and even then, I think it's going to be a niche thing, at least for a while. The great thing about inkjet printers is that literally everyone already has one, and they all produce prints of a quality that exceeds what we need for tabletop miniatures, so the machine to print 2D minis is effectively free, while the machine to print 3D minis is always going to cost several hundred dollars.
Don't get me wrong--as a hobbyist, I'm very psyched about the future of 3D printing, at least in the long run. If I were Games Workshop, though, I'd feel differently...
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Post by 8rad on Oct 28, 2017 3:29:07 GMT -9
lol of course you could use 3d models for paper minis =). And yes both the hardware and software has a bit to go for sure. Moreover the material used will be better and cheaper.
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Post by 8rad on Oct 28, 2017 11:42:30 GMT -9
Don't get me wrong--as a hobbyist, I'm very psyched about the future of 3D printing, at least in the long run. If I were Games Workshop, thought, I'd feel differently... Ill say =)
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Post by pavaro on Oct 29, 2017 1:18:11 GMT -9
It looks inviting but when will the traditional new figurines?
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Post by Dominic on Nov 7, 2017 23:15:29 GMT -9
jeffgeorge I do not own a 3D printer (yet) but I kinda have to disagree. There are better and better affordable models out there, and there are some workarounds to removing any artifacts that might occur. To me, the bottleneck is designing good-looking miniatures rather than the printing. Taking CNC as an example, I feel completely capable designing a 2D shape and then cut it out on a CNC. 3D is an entirely different ballgame. As for companies like Games Workshop, I am curious to see how they react to the trend. For now, I think if someone prints a model that could rival theirs, it would be a one-off and probably not cost effective. Who knows, maybe at some point they will offer 3D models themselves for you to print at home, saving money by not having to make molds and all that jazz, and being able to offer a lot more modifications, too. Come to think of it, they could devote more time to designing and less to perfecting the extrusion process, leading to a wider variety of models.
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Post by Papercraft Warrior on Nov 8, 2017 4:24:12 GMT -9
If they offer you a model to print at home, it could long term end with the model leeking to the public, and reduced profit margins. They would have no way to know which models are "pirated" when you bring them in painted to the tournament.
Big companies base their profit margins on selling small amount of plastic/metal for big amount of money, the 3D models are more for startups and medium sized competition.
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Post by oldschooldm on Nov 8, 2017 7:31:51 GMT -9
3D Printing is *part of* future, not "the" future.
I will not be replacing my flip-mat, tile collection with 3d printed anything. Nor do 3D printed "buildings" fold-flat.
If the resolution gets high enough, and there is a way to apply decent color at print time - I *can* see _augmenting_ my already mixed metal/plastic/paper character & monster minis with such - but that's a way off. The intensity of coloring, low cost, and speed-to-deply from printed terrain/minis is currently tough to beat.
---
Count me as one that was disappointed (but understanding of the financial realities) with FDGs shift from 100% paper to 100% 3d printed. We at Cardboard Warriors aren't a single company and not as profit driven - we don't have to chase the latest tech wave to do well at what we do. We can make the stuff that we want and/or is most useful for ourselves. Kitbashing so little effort comparatively. The shift at the FDG site buried many of our contributions and it felt like being abandoned. (I made several suggestions for board improvements to allow paper-based contributors to tamp down unrelated topics, but for naught.)
My only wish is that we don't expand this forum to include 3D printed files - there are plenty of places folks with similar to share with each other the hopes and trials of their medium.
:-)
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Post by nolabert on Nov 8, 2017 7:41:40 GMT -9
I'm skeptical of 3D printing killing traditional miniature makers like Reaper, Ral Partha (yes, they still exist), and Games Workshop. This doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. Prepainted minis didn't kill the hobby of painting minis. And so far, plastic minis haven't killed pewter minis. A big factor is going to be the quality of the sculpts. Personally, I don't think most 3D makers sculpts are of the same quality as those of Reaper and Ral Partha (and there are people who care about the artist behind the mini, just like here with paper minis). Plus, we're at the point right now with many rushing in to fill the demand for 3D sculpts. Many will flock to it, but only some will survive. Marketing is going to be important as well as the quality of sculpts. I think, right now, the people who should worry are those who are already the top 3D sculptors like Fat Dragon Games because they are sure to get lots of competition in the coming months/years.
And if you think that Hirst Arts Molds and plaster terrain are dead, Nord Games currently has a successfully-funded Kickstarter (with 13 more days to go from today) for a series of Hirst Arts terrain that you can see here:
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Post by nolabert on Nov 8, 2017 7:50:29 GMT -9
oldschooldm I know I read that fatdragontom said that FDG wouldn't abandon papercraft and that the hope would be for the two model streams to complement each other and encourage cross-pollination. But I'm skeptical that is happening.
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Post by 8rad on Nov 8, 2017 9:15:39 GMT -9
Either way one things for sure its going to change things very quickly once the tech is there. SLA printers are the ones to watch, they print using a UV light that hardens resin. Like it pulls a model out a vat of goo.
As Dominic mentioned there is a bottleneck in making the files. I found its not that much of a leap from paper to 3d and there is a lot of talent on this board alone.
Nolabert points out this could be a threat to the established company's and I would not argue that. However its may also be a release for the sculptors who work at them. No longer would they need to be part of these company's to ply their trade to a global market. Moreover certain company's have used their position to reem the most out the players for a very long time.
Paper minis will always have a place, there is always sub cultures that keep these things going and they have been about for literally hundreds of years.
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Post by oldschooldm on Nov 8, 2017 10:11:59 GMT -9
oldschooldm I know I read that fatdragontom said that FDG wouldn't abandon papercraft and that the hope would be for the two model streams to complement each other and encourage cross-pollination. But I'm skeptical that is happening. I'm sure the Company is still seeing revenue from the paper terrain (and good on them!) But the community is exclusively focused (measured by daily activity) on 3D printing. Login to fatdragon.proboards.com and look at the latest threads. How many pages do you have to scroll until you find one about paper terrain? I show more FDG terrain (and kitbashes for it) here and on other social media, and no longer post on the manufacturer's board. "Complement" is a stretch. :-) I'm happy Tom that he's found a way to catch the next wave. Something similar happened at WWG - except they chased VR. In both cases, paper terrain communities suffered. This is why I'm sticking here - where the community isn't about a single supplier, and not subject to the constantly shifting market. We get to mix and match the best stuff we find, no matter what the source.
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Post by nolabert on Nov 8, 2017 12:14:13 GMT -9
oldschooldm I'm with you regarding the lack of discussion of papercraft over at the FDG forum. It's what brought me here . I started out over there and then saw little about the paper models being discussed or shown. I don't even remember the last time I logged in over there. I'm just saying at one point fatdragontom claimed that he wasn't abandoning paper models and that he was hoping the 3D-printing crowd would get interested in papercraft and vice versa. I don't think that has happened. At first, I thought there are some things I don't expect to see as 3D models, like mountain/cliff faces, but nope, FDG has made those too now. I'm pretty sure they've almost duplicated everything in papercraft as 3D-printable, so I don't see why if that's your thing you'd look to the paper terrain too. It's hard for me to imagine the time and space required to have 3D printed mountain/cliff faces.
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Post by oldschooldm on Nov 8, 2017 12:57:19 GMT -9
It's hard for me to imagine the time and space required to have 3D printed mountain/cliff faces. I made mine fold flat (The tops and bottoms are "trays") Helps a LOT. Let's me build this: and this: and this: and transport them in a very small space.
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Post by nolabert on Nov 8, 2017 13:36:05 GMT -9
oldschooldm Exactly what I'm talking about. Imagine those as big hunks of plastic. How much time would it take to print them to start out with and then the space you would need to store them even if they are hollow and can be nested. I've made some of those same paper FDG ones like you, and mine fold mostly flat--they can be broken down and kept in a plastic storage bin.
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Post by jeffgeorge on Nov 8, 2017 23:59:50 GMT -9
oldschooldm Exactly what I'm talking about. Imagine those as big hunks of plastic. How much time would it take to print them to start out with and then the space you would need to store them even if they are hollow and can be nested. I've made some of those same paper FDG ones like you, and mine fold mostly flat--they can be broken down and kept in a plastic storage bin. Big hunks of plastic wouldn't be the way to do that sort of thing. If that's the kind of terrain you want, and you want it 3D, the best way to do it is to carve it out of insulation foam (the good blue or pink stuff, not the white, crumbly stuff) the way that Black Magic Craft does. That would be both faster and cheaper than 3D printing mountains and cliff faces. In general, I think papercraft has a long, if not high-profile, future ahead of it, as will crafted 3D terrain. 3D printing is here or nearly here for most terrain purposes, but I stand by my previous assertion that hobbyist-level machines are still several years away from any resolution that I would consider adequate for character models. We have been able to economically produce cardstock miniatures that rival industrially-produced cardstock minis in quality for many years, using inexpensive inkjet printers. This is not currently possible with 3D printing--not only is the output quality inadequate, but the production cost is too great, due in part to materials cost, especially with those draw-it-out-of-the-goo printers, but more importantly due to the time it takes to print a single piece. It's already easy to distribute high-quality 3D models in digital format; it's the vastly superior quality of molded plastic models over 3d printed ones, along with the massive economies of scale associated with industrial production, that will protect the major players in the minis market for many more years.
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Post by Dominic on Nov 9, 2017 0:30:28 GMT -9
I imagine you could make these big models fold flat even when 3d printed, by making them snap together and apart for example. It would not be as flat as paper, though. Which brings me to an interesting point. I do a lot of woodworking, and a few years back, a company that made CNCs spread a number of them throughout the community (I did not get one, and I admit I want one at some point). The idea was that those who got them should make project videos using them. It was fun to see what people came up with, and there was some stuff that is hard to do with "traditional" power tools. But there were also projects where I thought "I could do that in half the time with a router of a band saw". I think there are things new technologies can do better. Undercuts, inside-printing, transparent parts. But they will find their niche rather than pushing old tools out completely. 3d printing will be good for one-offs and small series, and custom or modified pieces (in a sense like what you can do with paper, frankensteining several minis into a new one). Looking at woodworking, people are always coplaining that new tools "are not proper woodworking" or "take all the craftsmanship out of it". They do not, they just move it elsewhere. And there are still those who use handtools only and make awesome pieces. Sorry for rambling on too long...
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Post by 8rad on Nov 9, 2017 9:41:14 GMT -9
For sure Dominic, its not a competition. Different tools to achieve the same end, if the PC could not the end tabletop RPG then paper is safe. Really all you need is one a4 sheet a die and a set of rules, the rest is cream. My main point is talented folks like the ones on here could leverage their skill to a whole new audience.
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Post by nolabert on Nov 9, 2017 11:20:47 GMT -9
jeffgeorge I knew I had seen Fat Dragon Games coming out with 3D printed mountains and it was in their most recent (and not surprisingly, very well supported Kickstarter). I wrongly thought you'd have to print out this huge hunk of plastic, but it's a modular (and pretty clever) system of columns and facades that attach to the columns. I'd prefer that system to a big hunk of crafted foam since the modular plastic system would break apart and be as storable as oldschooldm's fold flat mountain/cliffs. But I still don't like the visible striations of the 3D printing and the overall look of the model (but you could just as easily criticize FDG's paper models for looking like boxes since that's essentially what they are). I'm still not going out and getting a 3D printer. Maybe some day down the road. Maybe never. Definitely not now. Here is the Kickstarter page:
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Post by oldschooldm on Nov 10, 2017 10:51:30 GMT -9
the modular plastic system would break apart and be as storable as oldschooldm's fold flat mountain/cliffs. "as storable?" I accept this challenge! This 16" x 20"x 2" box with theses pieces (this is the box I used to transport it to/from my FLGS for play): Fold Flat Cliffs, maps, stairs, and doors... by Oracle Omega, on Flickr Here are to prison of "Velkynveld" using these pieces: 20160113_184313 by Oracle Omega, on Flickr Built out the cliffs about 30" and up to 4 stories tall. And I made them in less than 5 hours total (I'm sure it was less, but can't be sure how much less, I wasn't timing myself.) How much space would a similarly sized 3D print cliffs take? How easy would it be to transport? How long to "print". (Notice I didn't ask about cost, :-D) I'm not trying to harsh 3D printing, but when using comparative language such as "as storable" - I like to do the comparison when possible. :-)
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Post by Papercraft Warrior on Nov 11, 2017 4:04:19 GMT -9
Does it mean that you cut them and glued them in five hours after printing, or that you assembled them in five hours after unpacking them from storage?
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Post by oldschooldm on Nov 11, 2017 7:29:10 GMT -9
Does it mean that you cut them and glued them in five hours after printing, or that you assembled them in five hours after unpacking them from storage? Printed, cut and glued all the fold-flat cliff models in less than 5 hours - I was inventing as I went (texturing and hand-cutting the trays, etc.) The "inventing" part took the most time. I think now I could make another single cliff in 15 minutes, easy. Assembly of that scene (all of it) takes about 30-45 minutes, though the fold-flat cliffs part is about 5-10 of that. Again, later builds go quicker as I figured it out. Disassembly takes 5-10.
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Post by Dominic on Nov 16, 2017 23:04:15 GMT -9
oldschooldm: that is awesome, and makes a strong case against (huge) terrain from the 3D printer. I wonder, though, whether a 3D printer would be able to add to your set-up in any way, and I always come back to the miniature realm - as in statues, altars, etc. And most of that could probably be aproximated using paper, too, so... I still want to dabble with a 3D printer some day, but I probably will not even try to do that kind of terrain with it... (And it is a good thing you did not ask about "cost", too).
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Post by oldschooldm on Nov 17, 2017 10:09:59 GMT -9
... I wonder, though, whether a 3D printer would be able to add to your set-up in any way... I have ordered a prop or two (a dragon skull) from 3D printing places. I like some things in 3D media (I have a giant collection of minis, some 40 years old...) and I look forward to a day that I can get those with a high-enough quality and colored and cheap.
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Post by Dominic on Nov 20, 2017 1:08:05 GMT -9
... and I look forward to a day that I can get those with a high-enough quality and colored and cheap. You make a good point there. From what I have seen, quality should not be an issue (at least not for long). Cost will go down, too, as is the nature of such things. The main problem will be the color. There are machines with two extruders available for, shall we say, the hobby market, but anything beyond that... I think 3d printing will be an option for miniature wargamers who are used to painting their own minis. It will not rival the "normal" plastic minis that come painted and ready to use for a while yet. Although I woud not be surprised if someone built a cnc mini painter at some point... (And maybe there is a middle ground for terrain pieces that require only a base coat and a few washs over the surface...).
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Post by 8rad on Dec 17, 2017 9:57:42 GMT -9
3d print out bases then hand sculpt the fine detail, best of both worlds.
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Post by 8rad on Feb 11, 2018 3:58:47 GMT -9
EPIC, pretty good res for 6mm minis, not my files just finding the sweet spot.
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Post by whisper31 on Feb 11, 2018 6:11:00 GMT -9
... and I look forward to a day that I can get those with a high-enough quality and colored and cheap. You make a good point there. From what I have seen, quality should not be an issue (at least not for long). Cost will go down, too, as is the nature of such things. The main problem will be the color. There are machines with two extruders available for, shall we say, the hobby market, but anything beyond that... I think 3d printing will be an option for miniature wargamers who are used to painting their own minis. It will not rival the "normal" plastic minis that come painted and ready to use for a while yet. Although I woud not be surprised if someone built a cnc mini painter at some point... (And maybe there is a middle ground for terrain pieces that require only a base coat and a few washs over the surface...). Right now, we are at the crosspoint of this part of the hobby. You have quality, color, and cheap. Pick two of the three. I've owned a 3d printer for almost a year and haven't had much success with it up to now. I'll be getting a better one within the next 3 or 4 months and we'll see how that one works. Also, you can take a look on OpenBuilds or on the Instructables website if you really get the itch to make one of your own. Just like most other things, making yourself one from scratch is going to cost significantly more than one that is commercially set up as a kit/pre-built, but the "I made this" factor is almost irresistable. I still love and play with my paper minis, but I have so many projects on my mind that I want to do, I'm not sure if I will be able to get any of them done. *sigh* One step at a time, I suppose.
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Post by uptrainfan89 on Feb 23, 2018 14:51:13 GMT -9
Have to say for me I'm sticking to gaming with my Scifi paper models. I love the shear amount of character and art that paper minis and models have, plus modding is sooooo easy and building is even easier. I also love that with paper I can print as much as I want of something and all it cost me was paper, glue, and ink, definitely way more affordable for me. I actually recently put paper on hold and got a bunch of Hirst Arts molds and supplies to try and give it a go and while the detail of Hirst is really nice, the amount of extra steps, painting, stuff needed, and expense, ultimately ended up put me off on it so I actually ended up recently just selling it all in favor of paper. I've also dabbled a tiny bit with a 3D printer a bit (a friends) and at one point toyed with the Idea of getting one (before I tried Hirst) to print FDG's stuff but after research it again is costly and I think the tech still has a long ways to go (short of industrial grade) to make it consumer and cost friendly for your average low budget gamer, I don't think GW really has to worry for a while. Plus clearing a paper jam is way easier than a clogged 3D print head as my friend says, plus if a 3D print model messes up while printing then that's lost plastic, more expensive than a sheet of lost paper and a little ink lol. Lol all in all its neat to see new technology and how it improves the gaming world over time, heck maybe one day well play on hologram tables but untill then I'm happy with paper lol.
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