3D Terrain Modeling

With the help of a friend, I've been learning Onshape to produce CAD drawings of terrain we need for our tables. I am astonish by how quickly I am taking to it. This is not normally how it goes when I start learning a new trade. With only a few days under my belt, I've managed to design two terrain pieces for 6mm wargamming. The first is a 28mm 40k-ish building. The second is the beginning of a freeway. I was initially worried about too much detail at such a small scale, but the Form 1+ SLA printer picks up so much detail, that I could easily go with smaller features.

The first print of the building looks fantastic on a Form 1+ SLA printer. I think our Epic Armageddon tables are going to look fantastic!

3D Printed Terrain Painted

I've been printing out loads of terrain on my 3D printer, but this is my first finished piece. This building represents a French town hall typically found in Normandy and will be used in our WW2 club games. I wasn't sure how well the print would take paint, so I painted this fast and loose using a giant brush and very little care. This was completed in about two hours. For a piece costing around fifty cents of material, I think it works pretty well. I did have to sand the raw print and fill in some holes using green stuff.

I guess the question now is whether this terrain is good enough for a board, or if I should go back to buying resin pieces? I like this more than MDF buildings, but maybe I should experiment with some kind of hybrid MDF+FFF.

3D Printed Terrain is Here

I've been experimenting with 3D printing for a couple of years now. I started using an XYZPrinting SLA printer, and after that failed decided to try one of the inexpensive filament printers. It turns out that two years make a huge difference in quality. Using a Prusa i3 clone, made by Wanhao(duplicator i3 plus), I've been able to print at lot of interesting terrain. I'm only printing at .2mm resolution here, which is half the vertical resolution possible, but that is just due to impatience on my part. My goal is to have a new model to paint every day. The prints do require finishing, but the bones are here for some really nice resin-ish quality terrain.

Since I'm currently printing in PLA, the only way to finish a model is to sand it. However, once this spool is done, I'm going to switch to ABS (lego plastic), which can be smoothed using acetone. With that with, the time between printing a model, and having it ready to paint will be nominal.

I'm still dialing in my printer, so the quality keeps improving. I've even printed out some printer parts to upgrade the printer itself!

3D Designs for Zone Mortalis and Space Hulk

I've always like the idea of space hulk combat, and have decided to print out some master pieces for casting that will allow me to assemble some various space hulk configurations. I couldn't find any nice STL files, so I decided to give 3D modeling a try. This is my first attempt at an overall look and feel. The software I am currently using is a bit too primitive to do much with, but it allowed this proof of concept. The process was surprisingly fun, though tinkercad is extremely limited.