A (relatively) Short Gripe

I love 3D Printing!

The sheer genius that one can take either a roll of plastic 1.75mm in diameter, heat it up and layer by layer create something. Or the more crazy, Resin, a liquid, that when you expose it to some Ultra Violet Light cures hard, half of a tenth of a millimeter at a time!

From the moment I first learnt of 3D printers I knew I wanted one. I didn't even consider at the time that it could have been used to create Miniatures or Terrain for the Wargaming Hobby I so enjoy. Just the consideration that I could create random upgrades, fixes and trinkets for around the house had me sold on the idea of it.

Then along came incredible digital sculptors and designers who made terrain, and even Miniatures for printing! Along with it the printers became better and better and more and more affordable. 

Before I knew it, I had bought myself a Phrozen Sonic Mini. The 1920x1080p screen and a print volume of a whopping 130x70x130! What an absolutely wicked little machine it was! I ran that thing consistently for days on end when I first bought it. Printing Loot Studios miniatures and an assortment of cool characters and enemies for my Dungeons and Dragons campaign that I had been running for friends. 

The ability to design a combat scenario on a Tuesday afternoon, spend Wednesday searching the internet for the models and by Friday night have a printed and maybe painted enemy that fit the description I was explaining to my friends was unreal.

From there on out I knew it was only onward and upwards. Or at least that's what I believed. Buying "Presupported" models for relatively cheap, plugging them straight into the slicing software and exporting to a USB and off to the races is what I thought. 

I tell you what, that was a short lived hope. More and more incredible sculptors put out incredible models on Patreon or My Mini Factory on a monthly basis, claiming they were presupported and ready to print. When I started to see fail after fail after fail of prints with these "presupported" models that had been "test printed successfully" I began to realise that in everyone's race to release better and better models, that were more and more detailed, they were no longer easily printable. Just because you can infinitely zoom in on your digital model and sculpt more and more detail, doesn't necessarily mean you should. Kind of like the GW issue of overly sculpted and detailed miniatures with so many greebles and pouches it's unwieldy to paint. 

Now, I have worked my way up and have a good grasp on printing and supporting models, but for a newbie to the hobby who may have never tried supporting or wouldn't know where to look for quality supported models, they are bound to fail and be disheartened. And with the disheartening, the love for a wonderful hobby will be lost and left to gather dust. 

When one buys a model and the creator claims it is presupported, there surely should be some onus on them to have ensured the model can print and be properly supported. Instead they are seemingly just run through a single round of average Auto Support in a slicing program and shipped out as "ready to print"

Now maybe I am too finicky when it comes to printing and like to ensure all islands down to half a pixel in size are supported, but can one blame you when you are wanting a model to come out with as much of the detail sculpted onto it by the creator. The sheer amount of additional time that one must spend now checking a "ready to print" model to ensure it is ready for print seems ludicrous.

Comparatively when it comes to the FDM market, I am a little newer to all of it, but a majority of files don't advertise themselves as presupported, or give you a recommendation for the slicer that you would be using and suggest how to support or what to do to ensure quality prints.

Thankfully, there is a community of people who have created literally a mini rater, a website that has community voted and rated spreadsheets for an assortment of creators and sculptors. Giving one a better chance to make an informed decision before backing a Patreon or buying models. Should you find yourself in the position of considering buying models to print for yourself or getting someone to print for you. Give it a look at 

https://minirater.com/

 

Anyways, gripes aside, I still love 3D Printing, and still print and buy an unnecessary amount of models to gather dust on a hard drive with the plans that one day "yeah, I'll print them and make an army or a warband out of them"

I'll climb off my soapbox and get back to supporting some models and printing them out so I can keep growing the pile of shame in my garage.

I'll leave a few photos below of my old printers and the history of my different printing setups

 Where it all started. My Phrozen Sonic. Sitting on a coffee table covered in painters plastic, just in the living room of my rental house. The only piece of safety I knew was I didn't want resin on the carpet. No respirators, maybe gloves occasionally but that was about it. 

 

 I was a little better when I upgraded my printer. It no longer lived in the living room. Instead it was under my desk in my study and I ran a little Ikea Air Purifier next to it at all times. I did have gloves and a respirator this time round. 

 

This is my most recent and current set up. 2 Elegoo Saturn Printers. The S and the 2. As well as a Bambu A1 and P1S both with AMS for multicolour printing.

 

A glimpse into the Past

 

When your pregnant wife wants to use your main PC in the house for the afternoon, one must improvise and thus these two dudes were painted up. 

Back in January I picked up a couple individual Sprues of some Victrix Romans and Greek Hoplite warriors. Mainly for kitbash potential bits and great big shields. 

But my best mate is a history buff and into Wargaming too. So figured I'd get them to perhaps give a red hot go at building an army or force for Hail Caesar or some other historical game, whatever he'd have in store when we catch up to run some games. We've run some games of Hail Caesar in 10mm scale and they're a blast, but surely one must go bigger to 28mm. Especially with such cheap minis from Victrix and in such large quantities!

 

I wanted a minimalist paint job using only a handful of paints where I can, to reduce the brain space necessary for decisions. 

Both models were primed in a Crimson Red rattle can and then hit with a zenithal of a Desert Yellow.

I figured given both were from relatively dusty area's, the desert yellow helped give the feel of history and desert dirt and dust. 

I did a brief amount of googling to find a rough baseline image, especially for the shield that I liked or felt confident enough to give a shot at free-handing.

the bronze metallics were a mix of Vallejo Metallics Gold and Hoplite Armor Speed Paint, and the steel was as named by Vallejo Metallics. A Heavy Gold Brown was the Yellow for the shield and the Hoplite's garments.  AK Blood Red for the Roman's Robes and Cork for the skin. I did a Vallejo Turquoise for the Feather, but I don't like it, so it'll get repainted to a brown black colour.

 

The shield. That was fun! I traced in the lines with a light brown colour first to figure out placement knowing that it would make the patching over with yellow a lot easier. Once I was happy with the placement I went over them with a light grey up to white. I added a bit of AK Smoke Black around the outer edges of the design to try and add some emphasis to it as well as for the zigzags and banding in the middle. Some of it I'm less happy with but for a first go and breaking the slump of not painting, leaves me pretty pleased. 

 

 

I didn't wash these dudes down with anything, but would likely use a mix of Reikland Flesh and Agrax Earthshade to dull down everything. Then it'd be picking out some highlights here and there on skin or on clothing etc...Honestly though, for an army of these dudes, should I decide on one or the other, just the 4 or 5 colours and speed running would get them batched out, and looking decent. 

All in all for a quick hour or 2 of painting I'm pleased with these dudes and am keen to give a shot to painting a unit of them to rank up and have as a display or for slinging dice on tabletop with. 

 

[No Title]

 #### Incoming Signal ####

"Sir the lifeform has vanished"

"What do you mean vanished?"

"It was there, and now it's not. Ehrm, sir the Railgun, where was it?"

"Enough of this nonsense. It was right there. Find the lifeform, bring it back up on the HUD now."

Noises of rustling and cracking

"Halt, in the name of all things holy what is that thing?!"

#### Transmission Ends ####

A fun Sunday afternoon with the local crew kitbashing a warrior/champion/hero/entrants for a game of Skirmish in the vein and vibe of Quake // Unreal Tournament.

We each spent the morning trawling through an immense communal pile of bits. My original concept was the body of a beast man augmented with cybernetics and weapons.

Then I found the pieces of the flagellant from the Penitent engine and knew I was onto something

Thus birthed my entrant. With the currently place holder name of Cherubael, as its pose and manner reminded me of Inquisitor Eisenhorn's demon host of the same name.

The being fought well in the game, taking out other opponents with swift and carefully placed shots. The final blow was one that traded its life with its opponents drawing the game to a tie.

As the last remaining contestsnt peacefully rode the elevator on the battle arena to the top floor, Cherubael aligned its immense chest cannon with the split in the doors and awaited for the slightest movement. As the doors gently slid open there was a swift crack of shots and both Cherubael and its foe, slumped to the ground.  Bullet holes in the others skull

Now for some paint and a proper name!

Making a start

G'day, I'm Banway. I can't vlog, or stream and I can barely write or link sentences together, but I know social media is killer. So let's bail on that and join the blog revitalization

 

  

I've been absolutely pumping out some terrain on my 3D printers recently . The Novocastrian local crew have been planning to either hook into a Trench Crusade or Mordheim campaign over a couple months. So no better time than the present to pump out terrain for it

The above tower is a singular building from the Throne and Ash kit by Printable Scenery and came together in very minimal time. 

A vision of a semi abandoned cityscape style board with a towering cathedral as the centre piece is taking the stage in my vision and planning for the board. Trenches are cool and all, but nothing beats the streets for skirmish combat and modularity of game systems

 

Couple other big ol buildings coming off the print bed, these are from the second Hexengarde Kickstarter

 

3D printing is honestly a blessing and a curse in the same breath. One can get themselves anything they could dream of at a fraction (minus initial setup) of the cost of an official branded item of equivalence from GW, but the pile of shame just grows. I am absolutely guilty of it. The amount of unpainted terrain I now have must be painted. 

And that's the goal. Or at least somewhat with this blog. Give me somewhere to post up and remember the paint jobs of terrain as I paint them, and give others a chance to read along. 

Death to Meta and Death to the endless doom scroll!