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Post by oldschooldm on Feb 25, 2014 9:12:15 GMT -9
My take would be: If the set has ground tiles and a few of them are Base 3 and it is still useful without the tiles that are not Base 3, then it's compliant. "Useful" is not a word used in a standard requirement. :-) (I find it very strange to be the pedantic one in a discussion like this...)
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Post by bravesirkevin on Feb 25, 2014 9:32:48 GMT -9
(I find it very strange to be the pedantic one in a discussion like this...) It's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it! This is true... It's far too ambiguous. I figured that we'd come up with something more ironclad and tightly defined after a little discussion on what would be allowed and what wouldn't. We are currently making a lot of concessions to try and make as many existing sets as compliant as possible, but having thought about it, if most of the existing sets were already up to scratch, there would not be much need for these best practices to exist at all. It really is not a tragedy if the hundreds of sets already out there, and even those currently in production don't make the cut. They'll still be useful and they will still sell, even without being updated. This should be more focused on the sets that will be coming out in the future and we should set the rules accordingly. What do you guys think? Here are my answers to the questions I asked of designers, for what it's worth: • Are you interested in being a part of this?Yes. • How many of your existing sets would not be compliant?None of them are compliant. • If the number is low, would you add this stamp (once it's designed and looks awesome) to all of your existing compliant sets?Not applicable. • If the number is high, would you consider adjusting your old sets to bring them up to standard at some point?Possibly, but very unlikely. If CUTS gets going, I would definitely update a lot of the older sets to that new system though, and as that system would be 28Terrain compliant, those updated sets would be too. • Would you consider putting effort into ensuring that all of your future sets are compliant and get the stamp?Definitely!
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Post by dungeonmistress on Feb 25, 2014 12:35:16 GMT -9
A consumers viewpoint: If I'm going to buy a kit or a bundle that is advertised to fit my games parameters, then I want all of the pieces to be 'useful' to me with little or no modification. Here's why: My dad was a teenager during the Great Depression. This means I was raised with sayings like - 'Waste not want not', 'If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing right', 'A penny saved is a penny earned' and the great granddaddy of them all - 'Prentice's Perfectly Peachy Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance'!
No wonder I have OCD tendencies, right?
My point is this, though; if you consider the shape of our ecology, being wasteful is not an option. So a PDF kit or bundle needs to be flexible, that way a customer can make whatever adjustments necessary before printing. You guys already know this. So, the next thing to address is the education of your buying public. Include in your PDF instructions, something to illustrate how a 2" wide corridor works with a Base3 terrain. For me, since I make my own maps, it's simply a matter of door location, most of the time. But if you are using a purchased or pre-gen map, then you may need a different option. That's for you all to figure out.
Regarding the logo, yes it needs to be simple and easily recognizable and still convey all the necessary information. To that end, have you considered color coding? (Red means this, yellow means that and green means something else) If I see the CUTS logo in red, that could mean 28Terrain, if it's yellow then it would be a different terrain system. Food for thought.
Cowboyleland, the point and the joke I was making was that I am exactly 60" tall, so a mini of me made to scale would be exactly 1" tall, which means my 'eyeline' would at 55.5". As I am vertically challenged, so too, would be my mini.
Finally, I want to say that I very much like what I see going on here. You are definitely on the right path.
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Post by cowboyleland on Feb 25, 2014 13:12:13 GMT -9
dungeonmistress: I knew that was what you meant. Let's see, 55.5/60= .925"x25.4mm/inch= 23mm to eye line. I'm only 5'7" but I don't say "vertically challenged," I like Phil Collins' attitude "I want my equipment to be like me; compact and dependable!"
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 8, 2014 16:19:48 GMT -9
I've updated the first post of this thread to make it a little easier for newcomers to the thread to work out what's going on. I've also put in a deadline to get things finalised so that we're working towards something. There are a few points that definitely need some discussion at this point: • I need feedback on the automated cutters section from people who actually know what they are talking about. • I need some input on ways to handle certain exceptions. - Are cutter reg marks necessary in a set that only includes 2d or 2.5d tiles? - Do all tiles need to be Base 3 for the set to qualify? If not, then how many "special" pieces are allowed? There are bound to be a few more points that need to be talked about, so if there's something you can think of then let us hear it! This thread is focused on the creation of a few basic guidelines that will make a set work well on its own, but also make it relatively easy to convert the set so that it works with existing linking systems. Following these guidelines is completely optional, but a set that follows these guidelines will get to use a stamp on their marketing materials that will instantly tell customers that this set will work well with all other sets bearing the same mark and that it is safe to buy it. While it would be great to get a lot of existing sets on board, it is more important that future sets work well and so our focus here is to get a solid set of rules going forward. If an old set meets the criteria without any extra work, that's awesome, but there is no pressure on anyone to go and update old sets to bring them in line. We want feedback from designers on the guidelines. • Is there anything that's not mentioned here that you think should be included? • Is there anything in the guidelines that you feel is too restrictive? • Would you consider building future sets to comply? • Are you working on a set at the moment that would like to put the stamp on? Fans and customers, we want to know what you feel about this too! • When you've bought from multiple service providers in the past, have you had any particular struggles getting the pieces to work together well? 28 Terrain Guidelines Last updated: 09-03-2014 These guidelines apply to terrain intended for use with 28mm miniatures and Clix. Other scales, like 15mm, will have their own best practices which will be dealt with separately.Scale and Dimensions:• Always use True Inches (ie. 25.4mm). • A standard scale of roughly 1:60 should be followed for details on the terrain • The dimensions of ground tiles should be in multiples of 3" (ie. 3x3, 3x6, 6x6, etc.) For simplicity, this will be refered to as Base 3. • Multiple grid options should be included, either as layer options or by releasing multiple versions of the PDF. At a minimum, options should allow for 1", 1.5" and no grid. Printing Requirements:• Standard page size of 11" x 8.25" if you're working in imperial units or 279 x 210 mm if you're working in metric. This is to ensure that it will work well whether the end user prints on US Letter sized paper or A4. (note: The imperial measurements and the metric ones are approximately equal, but not identical. They've been rounded off to keep things simple)• The should be a margin of 0.4" or 10mm on all sides, effectively giving an art area of 10.2" x 7.45" or 259 x 190 mm. Automated cutters:(note:mproteau (Paper Realms) has set up some templates for this)• Artwork should include registration marks for automated cutters. There are two types of registration currently being used and artwork should include both as optional layers. • Registration marks rely on the the automatic cutter's optical recognition of their shapes, it is best to avoid placing artwork too close to them (how close? I defer to the experts on this one: calling oldschooldm, mproteau (Paper Realms) and anyone else that knows more about this) • Rectangular shapes should be kept away from the edges of the artwork as the cutter may falsely interpret these as registration marks. I am currently have a set that's virtually ready to be released. When I do release it I'd like it to be among the first to get a stamp on it. In light of this, I'd like to finalise the best practices at the end of March 2014. Let's keep the discussion going and get the best possible set of guidelines we can manage before then!
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Post by oldschooldm on Mar 9, 2014 15:01:05 GMT -9
>I do release it I'd like it to be among the first to get a stamp on it. In light of this, I'd like to finalise the best practices at the end of March 2014
Whoa! Slow down there buddy...
--- Meta ---
How will you lock this down? Will there be a formal comment period? Will there be a vote? How will we know that the major vendors are on board? Is it a simple majority, a consensus, or Kevin's fiat (which is how it reads now.)
BTW, the data standard JSON is a 'fiat' standard - with the standard defined by and controlled by one person: Douglas Crockford. But it took YEARS for it be be adopted broadly. (I should know, I'm one of the co-inventors.) So it *is* possible, but be sure you know that's what you are doing.
-- On the proposal itself --
There are so many things implied by the suggested guidelines that aren't called out - always a recipe for confusion.
For example, the implication that layers are a part of the requirement is part of both "Grid Options" and "Registration Marks" - So this means PDF or PSD, right? If that's correct, be explicit.
Overall: remove "should" throughout - either require the item with the word "must" or drop the requirement.
Base 3: replace "The dimensions of ground tiles should[must] be in" with "Ground Tiles must offer "
Cutters: There should be a standard for positioning the registration mark (perhaps referring to a template) positions. There is a common non-standard practice of using a 8.5x11" scrap sheet as a carrier sheet (much smaller than the OEM sheet) which, if supported by this standard, would limit the position of the lowest registration mark(s). This would significantly impact the cutting area. This debate has not yet happened.
Cutters: Replace the last two notes with "Artwork should not be placed within 1/4" of the registration marks. Do not place cut-lines outside of the area delineated by the registration marks.
---
Again, your questions still seem to show that I'm not being clear what I mean by: The standard should apply only to the items/pages that it applies to, nothing else.
In short - There are no explicit exceptions, because these guidelines are not meant to be all-inclusive: Not all pages need to conform to every requirement.
- Large tiles are just one example of an edge case (Complies with scale & base3, but not cutfiles) - 2" Corridor Tiles and odd-shaped bases are too (Complies with scale and cutfiles, but not Base3) - There are certainly more exceptions...
There is no reason for the standard to anticipate them all: This is an opt-in set of guidelines.
I'll make a concrete proposal: "Each page that is in 100% compliance with these guidelines may display the official stamp. For pages that contain items that do not comply with all of the guidelines, do not display the stamp." (or "you may apply the appropriate partial compliance stamp"...)
Honestly, I'm more worried that the important players aren't even aware we're discussing this. I don't see their voices on this thread.
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Post by mesper on Mar 10, 2014 1:44:41 GMT -9
These guidelines apply to terrain intended for use with 28mm miniatures and Clix. Other scales, like 15mm, will have their own best practices which will be dealt with separately. What about 30mm or 32mm? Not useful/playable anymore? Why not 28-32 mm range as it was before? I'm afraid that it might kinda " exclude" many figurine publishers this way, which may lead rather to splitting instead unifying and setting common standard...
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Post by wyvern on Mar 10, 2014 4:25:08 GMT -9
End of March is far too little time even for discussion on this Forum, let alone getting other people involved. How many companies that may be affected by them have the proposed guidelines been circulated to for comments/suggestions away from this Forum, for example? You really can't assume people will be trawling every obscure corner of the Net on the vague premise that someone might have suddenly decided to do this, yet I have the uncomfortable feeling that's pretty much been the case up till now.
Trying to dictate a "standard" based on primarily just a handful of people's opinions, is somewhere between a recipe for disaster and a system that's simply asking to be ignored entirely.
Indeed, it's clear there still isn't consensus on the best way forward even here. It seems incredible Mesper's had to raise the question of scale again, at a point the proposed end-March deadline suggests should be almost the conclusion of the process.
If most papercraft manufacturers that could be affected by this haven't yet been involved, they need to be, and no deadlines should even be considered until that's actually happened, and they've had ample time to comment.
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Post by oldschooldm on Mar 10, 2014 8:36:08 GMT -9
No one should hold up a set awaiting the correct wording of the standard. Fortunately, updates are a built-in free feature at RPGNow, so you can always update it to be compliant after release.
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Post by oldschooldm on Mar 10, 2014 8:44:17 GMT -9
New designer requirement: "The kit must include the 28Terrain end-user description text, which can be found [here]."
More work for us to standardize: Write the end-user description text.
Proposed outline for end-user description text (NOT the designer requirements):
I. Introduction a. What is 28Terrain? b. Who made it? c. And most importantly (probably first?): Why? II. What does the iconography mean? III. Additional information and Resources a. Standard Version Number b. Link to Standard document and site - including feedback. c. Link to Additional Resources
We should put a limit on the size of this info, as it is to be included in every set. No more than 1/4-page? Smaller?
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Post by cowboyleland on Mar 10, 2014 16:47:53 GMT -9
To me, a stamp on a page is too late. If the stamp is not on the cover, it won`t help people decide to buy it or not. So: what percentage of the tiles in the product have to adhere to the standard for the product cover to get the stamp?
I think the end user description can mention "1-60 scale is generally usable with 25mm(?) to 32mm scale." This is for terrain products, a figure standard is for another discussion.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 10, 2014 18:01:11 GMT -9
It's nice to see a little controversy. I've updated the guidelines to reflect the new input. I've also removed the deadline as hindsight reveals that it was ill-conceived. It was always meant to be a "soft" deadline to get the most important bits agreed on so that it would be safe to put out a set knowing it would be compliant with the eventual final version, but in reading what I'd originally written it did not come across that way and as has been pointed out, it's a simple matter to go and update the file and images later. I was mistakenly under the impression that we'd agreed that this would cover all miniature scales from 25mm - 32mm, because the guidelines originally included this line: In polishing it up, I'd moved the latter sentence to the description and simplified it to "28mm and clix". mesper was right to point out that this was confusing, but part of the reason I did that is because a lot of this thread is currently dominated by a lengthy debate on 28mm vs 1:60, including a lot of conversation about how 28mm has a wildly inconsistent meaning etc, and I did not want to relaunch that discussion because I feel it's a little counter-productive to argue about the name of the standard when the requirements of the standard are the important thing. As stated before, this set of best practices is concerned with terrain used in games like Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, Malifaux etc. Focusing on 28mm is done because the primary manufacturers catering to our audience refer to their product as "28mm miniatures" and people know them as such. I have updated the description to reflect the full range of scales we're covering here. Thank you oldschooldm for your input on the automated cutters and the rest. I've included the things you've mentioned. I've also included a whole new section concerning the logo and marketing materials along with the note that we're not ready to discuss that at this point. I think your suggestion to handle exceptions on a page-by-page basis is a really good one... it will allow a set to be compliant and still have additional material that doesn't quite meet the best practices. As for your question about whether or not this is a fiat standard, it was not intended to be one. In my mind, all of the points in the best practices are fluid and can be changed and I am changing them and updating them as people have their say. On the other hand, where decisions have been made, I have been the one making them. It was intended that the decisions would be made democratically by all the designers who got on board, and I still stand by that, but a lot of designers have taken a wait-and-see approach which is why I've asked specific questions like "Is there anything that's not mentioned here that you think should be included?" and "Is there anything in the guidelines that you feel is too restrictive?" to try and get differing opinions so that there is actually some discussion going. When it comes to the "Major Players", their buy-in basically comes down to them choosing whether they want to put the stamp on their products or not, because a lot of their sets are already 95% compliant anyway. Because the major players were the ones that got there first and had the most impact, they are also the ones that wrote the rules. This set of Best Practices is not about reinventing the wheel, it's about closing the small gaps that exist between the hundreds of sets that already exist so that they can work better together. People will buy in if it's easy to do and clearly beneficial to them. It is definitely easy for the big names to do, but the benefits to them are far from clear at the moment. Their silence doesn't necessarily indicate that they are unaware or uninterested... some have specifically told me that they are waiting to see where this goes. All the same, we benefit from as much input as possible and I'd like to keep the discussion going so we can get as many opinions and insights from as many designers as possible. Below is the updated version of the proposed best practices: Proposed 28Terrain Guidelines Last updated: 11-03-2014These guidelines apply to terrain intended for use with 25-32mm miniatures and Clix. Other scales, like 15mm, will have their own best practices which will be dealt with separately.Scale and Dimensions:• Always use True Inches (ie. 25.4mm). • A standard scale of roughly 1:60 must be followed for details on the terrain • The dimensions of ground tiles should be in multiples of 3" (ie. 3x3, 3x6, 6x6, etc.) For simplicity, this will be refered to as Base 3. • Multiple grid options must be included, either as layer options or by releasing multiple versions of the PDF. At a minimum, options should allow for 1", 1.5" and no grid. Design and Printing Requirements:• The kit must include the 28Terrain end-user description text, which can be found at (a link to be provided later)• Standard page size of 11" x 8.25" if you're working in imperial units or 279 x 210 mm if you're working in metric. This is to ensure that it will work well whether the end user prints on US Letter sized paper or A4. (note: The imperial measurements and the metric ones are approximately equal, but not identical. They've been rounded off to keep things simple)• There must be a margin of 0.4" or 10mm on all sides, effectively giving an art area of 10.2" x 7.45" or 259 x 190 mm. Automated cutters:(note:mproteau (Paper Realms) has set up some templates for this)• Artwork must include registration marks for automated cutters. There are two types of registration currently being used and artwork should include both as optional layers. • Registration marks rely on the the automatic cutter's optical recognition of their shapes, it is best to avoid placing artwork within 0.25" (6mm) of the marks.• Rectangular shapes must be kept away from the corners of the artwork as the cutter may falsely interpret these as registration marks. Logos and Marketing Material: This section will cover the guidelines for optimal use of the stamp, as well as informational text that should be included in product descriptions on sales pages. It is deliberately being left empty for the time being as these discussions are low priority at the moment.
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Post by oldschooldm on Mar 10, 2014 22:32:04 GMT -9
Time to move the standard to a Wiki or Google docs or Github. Not all of the suggestions I made are in the latest text, and describing them again isn't the best approach. We should be able to either make (or propose "in-place") changes to the actual standards - something that having a single editor introduces delay and problems with understanding. What tech do you all like? Each has their pluses and minuses.... bravesirkevin wrote: "When it comes to the "Major Players", their buy-in basically comes down to them choosing whether they want to put the stamp on their products or not..." That's not a good answer in my book (or it really just means that this is a fiat standard....) Has there been a real-time meeting? How do we know who's been contacted for participation, and who hasn't? There can't be a meeting of the minds, without at meeting. This thread is not remotely a meeting. We need a place to store this all anyway, so why not use something neutral that's good for coordinating shared documents and files with multiple editors (and controls on submissions and changes...)?
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Post by glennwilliams on Mar 14, 2014 8:05:02 GMT -9
OK, here's a real world sample. I'm working on an Old West train station from Billy the Kid country. The station is designed as are all my 28mm sets at 1:60; it sits on a platform 6"x8." There is NO "base." So, it,s not 28T, but if I add an extra two pages, increasing the cost to the customer, to add a base, if does conform? I'm not sure in such cases the "standard" makes any sense.
Another example is from several of my ruins sets. My corner ruin design sits on an L-shaped base. Do I design all my [future] corners to fit a 3x3 base? No 1" long wall segments?
When I include base plates in a set, I can see the 3x3 basic unit argument, but I'm not sure that's what's important. The scale is critical. If I design at 1:60, Joe at 28mm exact, and Trisha at 32mm exact, that's a bigger problem. Windows, doors, wall heights would all be different.
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Post by cowboyleland on Mar 14, 2014 16:15:01 GMT -9
All good points. The "base three" is a great solution to accommodating the 1.5" grid but it seems to be a sticking point for many.
Is the Clix customer base is large enough to warrant "distorting" other common features, like 1" wall sections and 2" wide corridor tiles?
Is the 1.5" grid (and therefore the base three design) something that Sir Kevin (and others) might do to help sell more models but isn't a requirement in the 28T standard.
Would that make the standard say so little as to be meaningless?
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Post by oldschooldm on Mar 15, 2014 7:52:11 GMT -9
glennwilliams and cowboyleland make points borne in the imprecise language of the proposal. Proposed disambiguation: If the standard talks about tile sizes at all (Base 3) it should us the term "Ground Tile" and distinguish it from Model Base (not Base 3) I already proposed language to deal with non-base 3 ground tiles. I don't know why it is missing - (hence my shared-doc proposal...) --- I'm going to resurrect an early image to help with the idea of partial compliance: (this is an example - please ignore the style/paintbrush icon) Imagine that the requirements were split up into "flights" and applied per-page: Presently that would be "Scale" "Printer" "Ground Tile" and "Cutter" - not all pages would have to comply with all flights. Each page is marked with the flights it complies with. The Kit-Cover Icon standards would then mean something like. 1) The "Scale" and "Printer" flight must be on every page to get the checkmark on the cover page 2) The "Ground Tile" is only checked if there are more ground-tile pages that comply with flight than not to get the checkmark on the cover page 3) The "Cutter" flight must be on every page with more than 8(?) cut lines to get the checkmark on the cover page The question is, how many checkmarks are required to for the kit to be compliant. Certainly "Scale" and "Printer" flights are minimum But if it is a ground-tile set, shouldn't that flight be included? I'd personally like to see the "Cutter" flight as required along with "Scale" and "Printer" (except on pure large ground-tile sets.) Thoughts? (How does one create a poll on this thing?)
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 23, 2014 15:23:41 GMT -9
I've been a bit tied up the last week so I haven't really had a chance to contribute to this discussion for a while. I think oldschooldm is perfectly right about setting up a wiki or something. Does anyone know how to do that? If not, I'll look at doing that myself later this week. I also agree that perhaps it would be a good idea to actually have a proper "meeting" about all of this. We can do that as a conference call over skype, unless someone has a better idea for it. If you're up for that, PM me your contact details and I'll add you there.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 30, 2014 13:44:37 GMT -9
28Terrain: I'm not convinced the 28Terrain concept is really going anywhere, or that it'll provide any help for customers beyond what stating the scale, giving a complete description and showing good images of the product on OBS, for example, already does. Maybe just one of those things that seemed like a good idea until the discussion started... First off, if I understand bravesirkevin correctly, the Best Practices format he is trying to put together is meant to be global, but there are areas that need to be addressed separately. For instance 15mm and 28mm represent two very different terrain systems with different needs. Sir Kev is not excluding one in favor of another, simply addressing the 28 mm terrain first and establishing Best Practices for that before moving on to 15mm and the rest. However; I cannot say that I am unhappy that your concerns have have triggered this current deluge of creativity! The idea of 28Terrain was to define a set of best practices for people designing terrain suited for 28mm miniatures. The sole idea there was to define things so that designers of that type of terrain were all working with the same definitions, and were all aware of bad ideas so that they avoided them. The goal of this was that that standardisation would make it very simple for anyone to pick up any set and make them compatible with each other with a minimum amount of effort: ie. if they've always built TLX, for example, they could take any non-tlx set and convert it by copying and pasting the flat artwork into a template and hitting print... they wouldn't need to muck around with rescaling and cropping and all of that stuff because it would always be the right size and the right scale. 28mm terrain would have a completely different set of guidelines from other scales because the requirements would be very different. 15mm stuff seldom needs interiors and wouldn't really bother with dungeon tiles or other modular set-ups most of the time. I think a lot of the issues with the whole thing is that most people didn't really understand that that was the whole point of the exercise. Incidentally, on the surface the only thing it would have done for customers would be "stating the scale, giving a complete description and showing good images of the product on OBS" but on a deeper level what it would have meant was that pieces from different designers wouldn't have clashed so badly that using them together required hours of photoshop work.
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Post by wyvern on Mar 31, 2014 9:37:20 GMT -9
15mm stuff seldom needs interiors and wouldn't really bother with dungeon tiles or other modular set-ups most of the time. I think a lot of the issues with the whole thing is that most people didn't really understand that that was the whole point of the exercise. Which comes right back to one of the things that really bugged me about all this from the start. Effectively by concentrating on just one scale, you're automatically suggesting (if only in people's minds) that this is the "one true scale" for gaming, models, etc. Now fine, you may not be bothered about interiors in 15mm (or any but 28mm) scale, but I am. I've been modelling interiors and exteriors for buildings and vehicles in a variety of scales and media from 6mm upwards for decades. I have an entire set of cast modular dungeon scenery and figures in 10mm scale, for example, ( Pendraken's, in case anyone's interested!), and which have been used to run adventures in. One thing that strongly appeals to me about paper modelling is that ability to re-scale, without feeling I'm being trapped by someone else's interpretation of what I'm supposed to be doing in my model-making! Personally, rather than lark about wondering what different "standards", "formats" or "styles" might mean, I'd much rather manufacturers showed and told me exactly what their product contains, so I know what I'm buying up front. The PERMES products are an excellent example of this, because you get to see exactly what's being offered without having to chance the will-it, won't-it-work "previews" on OBS (assuming any have been provided at all), thanks to artwork like that shown here for the Ancient Temple Ruins, and images of the actual pages of minis you can print out. To be fair, many manufacturers already do this (including Papercraft Dungeon/Kev's Lounge, I should say!). A better way to design a "standard" to me would be to provide newcomers and those who aren't already doing this with guidance as to how they need to be presenting their products so people can tell what they're buying. Having to rely on OBS reviews to tell me basics, such as what the scale of a model is, or whether minis have full back artwork, etc., is frankly somewhere between irritating and dishonest, though it's probably really only a simple oversight. If manufacturers want to design products in different ways, scales and styles, that can only be a good thing for paper modelling generally. "Forcing" a set of design parameters is only going to deter creativity ultimately (and no matter how you rephrase it, there is an implied degree of coercion involved, because you're effectively saying anyone who doesn't comply with the "standard" is thus doing something "wrong"). Guidance to avoid mistakes for technical issues like, say, page sizes or how cutfiles are presented, is fine. Trying to shunt people into designing their models and minis in a way not of their choosing, isn't.
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Post by squirmydad on Mar 31, 2014 12:21:54 GMT -9
Interesting, I can see how it could be read that way, but my understanding was that each scale would have it's own standards and that this particular discussion was focused on the most popular scale of 28mm (ish). Also my understanding was that this is intended as a guide for compatibility, not a restriction against other scales and styles.
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Post by glennwilliams on Mar 31, 2014 14:13:15 GMT -9
Which brings me back to my main theme: it's scale that's the critical variable, not style. 1:60 gets you 25mm-32mm (or thereabouts); 1:100 roughly 15mm. Think of the range in figure sizes for troops advertised as 28mm. The "box art" tells you the style, so I'd drop those two icons. Cutter compatibility ought to be noted (I don't design for cutters--but that's because I've never successfully gotten mine to print/cut). When there are base plates of standard size, why not just say, 3" bases, 4" bases on the cover or in the blurb? Of all the restrictions imposed by standards, the base plate is the most annoying. Years ago, Jim had us submit graphic images for the figure bases; we could do the same for the base plates and house standardized base plates here. (ooh, ooh--why not update those figure base textures? Sorry--don't thread drift on my brain sneeze)
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Post by squirmydad on Mar 31, 2014 16:25:46 GMT -9
Send me more textures and I'll add them to the bases downloads page.
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Post by erk on Mar 31, 2014 17:45:15 GMT -9
Why not have the standard make 'soft' and 'hard' recommendations? Hard recommendations need to be followed to qualify for a piece being 28terrain standard. Soft recommendation deviations just need to be noted on the nifty sticker you're making. Terrain base size would be a classic 'soft' example, but other things could be included such as standard wall height.
What about DPI? Is it worth standardising that at least to a range?
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Post by mesper on Mar 31, 2014 17:56:34 GMT -9
Why not have the standard make 'soft' and 'hard' recommendations? Hard recommendations need to be followed to qualify for a piece being 28terrain standard. Soft recommendation deviations just need to be noted on the nifty sticker you're making. Terrain base size would be a classic 'soft' example, but other things could be included such as standard wall height. Sounds reasonable What about DPI? Is it worth standardising that at least to a range? This!
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Post by glennwilliams on Apr 1, 2014 5:39:12 GMT -9
DPI's a problem for those of us who publish large sets. Most of my modular terrain sets are 10-20+ pages. An increase in DPI from 150 to 300 scales file size upward by 400% Probably ink use would see a similar increase. Having someone print 20-40 pages at four times the ink consumption is problematic and seems unfair to customers whom I've promised won't pay "an arm and a leg." I have stayed with 150 because at "tablevision" range, it's a pretty good compromise. There's also the cost to the producer. If you're using Pepakura, you have to spring for the costly version. I don't. I use the wonderful Ultimate Unwrap 3D.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Apr 1, 2014 10:45:07 GMT -9
DPI's a problem for those of us who publish large sets. Most of my modular terrain sets are 10-20+ pages. An increase in DPI from 150 to 300 scales file size upward by 400% Probably ink use would see a similar increase. Having someone print 20-40 pages at four times the ink consumption is problematic and seems unfair to customers whom I've promised won't pay "an arm and a leg." I have stayed with 150 because at "tablevision" range, it's a pretty good compromise. There's also the cost to the producer. If you're using Pepakura, you have to spring for the costly version. I don't. I use the wonderful Ultimate Unwrap 3D. I'm not certain that you're correct about a correlation between the DPI and the ink consumption. The digital resolution of an image and the printing resolution are two wildly different things. The former is basically a measure of how many pixels it takes to make an inch of image (so 300dpi means a printed inch has 300 lines of pixels describing the detail), while the latter is specifically a measure of how big the splotch of ink fired by the inkjet head would be in ideal conditions (so 300dpi means the dot is 1/300th of an inch in diameter). The latter also only applies to inkjet printers as litho and laser printers use a different set of rules (ie. They measure the resolution in LPI, or lines-per-inch, and that measurement corresponds to the count of grid lines in the half-tone grid... they also have DPI, but in this case that number indicates the diameter of the smallest dot it is capable of printing and that only affects the gamut of colours achievable, not the actual resolution). Whether the digital resolution is 1DPI or 1000DPI it will take the same amount of magenta and yellow ink to print a 1"x1" red square. The amount of ink used is only affected by the efficiency of the printer and the settings you use when you hit the print button. Up ahead I'll explain a bit about printing and resolution, but there are a couple concepts that need a bit of explaining first: Half-tone: Litho, Silk-Screen, Laser-printers and a few other methods make use of half-tone screens. A half-tone screen is essentially a grid of uniformly spaced dots of varying sizes. Variations in colour are achieved by changing the size of the dots. A light area will have tiny dots and a dark area will have dots so big that they overlap each other leaving only a tiny bit of white showing in the gaps. The true measure of resolution here is LPI(Lines per Inch) and DPI rating of the machine only affects how much variation you can achieve in colour gradients.
Continuous Tone (or Con-Tone): This is the method used in ink jet printers. There is still a pattern to the placement of dots, but it is not a uniform grid like the half-tone. All dots are the same size, and colour variation is achieved by varying the density of the dots. A dark area will have lots of dots and a light area will have very few dots. DPI here affects the size of the dot and thus affects how smooth or grainy an image will look.The reason 300DPI (as a digital resolution) is considered to be a magic number is because that resolution is considered to be ideal for about 99% of full colour litho printing operations. Without going into too much detail on how it works, it is incredibly common for a litho press to use plates with a half-tone screen at 150LPI... Newspapers may use a screen with a resolution as low as 60LPI, and some art publications may go above 200LPI. The half-tone screen for each of the four colours is printed at a slightly different angle, forming a continuous rosette-like pattern: To get a crisp printed image you need 4 pixels per "rosette", a 2x2 square, and so it's ideal to set your image's DPI resolution to twice the LPI resolution you are going to use on your plates, and in virtually every instance that means you want to have a 300dpi image. There are exceptions... Comic book art is generally set at 600dpi, for example but the reasons for that are complex and outside of the scope of what we're talking about here. The point here is: 300dpi (digital resolution) is ideal only if you intend to get your stuff litho printed at some point.Because we're dealing with people printing the stuff for themselves at home, we only really need to worry about a couple types of printers: Laser Printers: High-End professional laser printers may have a resolution of 110LPI, but most home printers are likely to be in the region 75LPI and using the 1:2 ratio, a 150DPI image will print absolutely perfectly and any more than this would be a waste. Ink-Jet Printers: These commonly advertise DPI's of as much as 1200DPI... Remember, however, that this only means that the diameter of a solid splotch of ink is 1/1200th of an inch. In truth, it takes about 100 splotches of ink (a 10 splotch x 10 splotch grid) to make a single pixel, so even with a super-fancy ink-jet printer, you'd see almost no perceptible difference in quality between a page printed on photo paper from a 150DPI image and one printed from a 300DPI image. Because plain and matte papers are absorbant, the ink actually spreads out and the dots get a lot bigger. The printer will compensate by reducing the print DPI accordingly, and when printing on this medium even 100DPI digital resolution is enough to get a perfect print.
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Post by squirmydad on Apr 1, 2014 11:04:55 GMT -9
Not sure I follow; how would doubling the dpi double the page count? It would certainly push up the file size in mb's, and would use more ink, but I think it looks better at 300dpi, crisper images at least.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Apr 1, 2014 11:23:37 GMT -9
Not sure I follow; how would doubling the dpi double the page count? It would certainly push up the file size in mb's, and would use more ink, but I think it looks better at 300dpi, crisper images at least. I think you may have misread that. It wouldn't affect the page count, it would only multiply the file size by 4. As I explained in the very lengthy post above, it's unlikely that it would affect the ink use, and the only place where you'd really see an improvement in graphics is on your screen. In reality, the main benefit of using a 300dpi resolution for your PDFs is theatrics... it makes the customer feel like they're getting a much better product even though in reality it would print out exactly the same as a 150dpi one, because when they zoom in on screen they can see all of that delicious detail that will barely survive even when printed on high-end photo paper.
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Post by erk on Apr 1, 2014 12:41:37 GMT -9
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Post by bravesirkevin on Apr 1, 2014 13:15:36 GMT -9
Yeah, pretty much. The best practice is to make your PDFs with a resolution of 150dpi for home printing - no more, no less. That said, 300dpi has it's uses: it allows for high-quality professional printing, it looks a lot better on-screen and it's a better resolution to do your detailed hand-painting in, so that high-resolution stuff shouldn't be outlawed. Less than 150dpi will result in blocky or blurry prints. Higher than 300dpi is incredibly wasteful. One more point that does need to be made in this regard: If you've got an image that's 300dpi or higher and you downsample it to 150dpi, the downsampling is likely going to result in a little blurring as sharp edges get diluted. There are two ways of dealing with this: If you downsample in Photoshop you can opt to use "Bicubic (sharper)" interpolation in the Image Size Dialogue which will force it to preserve the sharp edges. The other way, (or the only way if you're working with GIMP) is to add the sharpness back in with an Unsharp Mask filter. You should always do your downsampling before assembling and optimising your PDF because Acrobat's downsampling engine does not allow for this kind of control.
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