Reply To: Open gaming mini license

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It does feel little like we’re all answering this based on our own personal experience of 3d printing, rather than looking at the “bigger picture” – and I’m probably going to be doing the same right now, but here goes.

@onlyonepinman says 3d printing isn’t replacing “off the shelf miniatures”. Except it is. In my house at least – where it totally is. And along with at least three other people I know from my FLGS who haven’t bought a mini since buying their own 3d printers early last year. No, we’re no typical of the entire industry, and it’s only minute number – but it’s a start; more and more people are following the same route – printing instead of buying. And the number of people going down this route is increasing.

I also think some of us are discussing where 3d printing is now, and some where it could go to. My first intervention on this thread was “I wouldn’t be surprised if *by the end of this decade* GW wasn’t also offering downloadable .stls (along with the hundreds of creators already doing so).

Yes, 3d printing is an “enthusiast pursuit” – but it’s no more difficult to learn (in fact, I’d argue less so) than “traditional” modelling – and again, it’s the personal point of view that seems to be influencing how we see things progressing (rather than taking an objective view). For example, I personally find 3d printing a doddle – I spend an hour or so preparing all 6-10 minis, hit print, then go to bed or go out for the day and four/five hours or so later, I’ve 6-10 new minis waiting. Rinse in acetone and they’re ready to paint. The thought of assembling multiple plastics, gluing, fixing, filling gaps, cleaning mould-lines – all things decribed as requiring “little thought or effort” fills me with dread! Give me a screen and mouse for an hour over that any day!

Similarly the “advanced stuff” that was almost dismissed as requiring “just a little extra skill and experience” is enough to put me off buying multi-part plastics. And let’s not even get started on drilling and pinning lead, cleaning flash and all the filling required to get a nice finish!

So the stuff that “anyone can do” is enough to stop my buying (at least multi-part) plastic minis, when I can just switch on the printer, give it a few hours, and I’ve a mini ready to paint with no extra work. But just as what I see as a nightmare, many see as “easy-peasy”, I’m also trying not to be so dismissive of what some perceive to be a lot of work, to print their own minis. I just feel we’re each discussing this based on our own experience alone.

But the truth remains that there’s a massive library of print-your-own minis. It’s growing exponentially. And the demand for 3d printers is such that when mono-screens were announced at the middle of last year, manufacturers are still struggling cut months-long waiting lists, even today. And tabletop miniatures is driving a lot of this demand (there can’t be *that many* dentists printing dentures – which is about the only thing ever shown in the adverts!)

I keep going back to mp3s. When I first discovered them, my wife couldn’t understand why I bothered with them. You had to boot up the computer, get online (we were still in the mid-90s days of 56kbps  dial-up) untangle the speakers, find the dodgy website hosting them, there wasn’t much choice and you could only have what someone else had uploaded – while she would pop a CD into a player and hit “play”…. mp3s were a massive “faff”; if not playing them, then finding them. Today, I walk into my kitchen, say “Alexa, play me some Alice Cooper” into an empty room and it just works.

We’re not there yet with 3d printing. But from where mp3s were, to where they are today, it feels like 3d printing will get there. The amount of work *today* to 3d print a mini isn’t as much as some think it is – and neither is the amount of work to assemble “traditional” off the shelf minis quite as simple as some of us believe it to be. I’m fully aware that, looking at things from “the other side” these statements could easily be reversed.

But the direction of travel for 3d printing only seems to be going one way.

3D printers aren’t replacing off-the-shelf minis *for everyone*. But for a few people, they are. And that number is growing….