Amon Hen: Middle Earth SBG Terrain.

Got Amon Hen meshed out this afternoon. And started breaking it down into parts for printing.

Time to start the printing process tomorrow.

Got a few hours in on redesigning Amon Hen. Until my computer locked up on me. I was tired and not paying attention to the poly count which was 1.2 Million. Computer was able to render this much of the model before it locked up. I do believe I could possibly finished meshing the model out tomorrow.

Some of the design changes.

-Steps are 20-21mm deep so minis should be able to use them.

-Pillars and Platform should now be tabbed correctly for the pegs.

-Stairs now properly lines up with the Pillars

-Redesigned the base section to have a void space instead of being solid. For future casting processes. Plus this should help speed up the print time.

-Cut 12mm off both sides X-axis and removed 25mm in the Z-axis.

-Increased the height by 10mm

Got a nice jump start on weathering out the stone head late Friday night. Yet it was early enough to get a test print done.

Not the best pictures in the world. But I was on my way to my local GW store when my partner asked how it turned out. Hey! When your Mordor Catapult arrives after being out of stock for awhile. You put the fallen kings head in your coat pocket and head to the store.

Cryptic enough of a title??

Soo….. I am going to redo Amon Hen this weekend. Make the steps more miniature friendly. Rework the broken titles, to avoid any repeative pattern. And the most important of them all. Make it so it could be castable! =)

I am still in talks with a possible partner. Everything is extremely positive and I think we both agree pooling our resources and skill sets makes more sense. Than lone wolfing it and never getting to far.

So more of this will come as it progresses. Until then lets get back on reworking Amon Hen.

More posts will follow this weekend on the rebuild.

Since I am still working on the seems for Amon Hen and waiting for glue to dry.

I did a quick weathering look.

1st pass was a great primer. 2nd pass was a light layer of stone grey over all of it. If some of the primer showed through. I didn’t care about it and encouraged doing so. This gives a layered look of possible aging. 3rd layer was a green wash around all of the edges. While going a bit heavy handed in areas closer to the ground. Think how moss and undergrowth takes over stone works . Once that was dry, I dry brushed a grey with a hint of blue in it over most of the surface. I did this going one dirrection starting where light would hit the object and go straight down. Think Noon till 6 position. After that had a bit to dry I took an fawn color and dry brushed a few areas where the light would hit the most. This would help break up the lightly colored areas where light would hit it the most. Again, its about the layers and breaking up how light hits the model.

By hitting the edges earlier with a green wash and then using a grey with a blue tint to it. This helps show some aging to the stone. So we are sitting at 5 layers at this point and we are going full circle again. By dry brushing most of the raised areas that would see light with that Stone Grey used back in step 2. This gives the model a look of minerals that maybe leaking towards the surface and trying to break threw that stone grey.

Last step was to use an Earth Shade wash to the areas closest to the earth or any area that may collect dirt and forest debri over the coarse of 100 years.

And if it looks good at this point stop. At the very least leave it along for a few days and look at it again with a fresh pair of eyes.

Next step would be adding basing material to it. This should bring enough color contrast to make it really show its again. Again using the green wash and the blue tinted grey will really make any green grass stand out.

The test print finished some time earlier this morning. I grabbed a few quick pictures before I headed out the door this morning.

I was taken back how well it turned it out. I spent 5 hours trying to get this model to print correctly. One program was hallowing out the model and leaving paper thin walls. The slicer program would recognize these walls and calculate the printing path. But no slicer or printer can print out .001mm walls. So several hours of computer work, test print and failures until I found a work around. Oh the problems of working in 3 programs for 3D modeling. Each program handles exporting the file differently.

Next step is priming it up and learning how to paint statues.

Here are all the parts to Amon Hen, minus the minis.

You will notice I removed the tabs off the pillars. The platforms recessed area for these to fit into where not deep enough. I need to make these holes 2mm deeper so they will fit properly.

Currently it is getting glued up so I can work on the seems and prime it.

The eyes where really bothering  me. They where not almond shaped enough. So I smoothed out that area and tried doing them again.

This version looks much better than the past posting.

Doing a test print of this Ruin of Arnor currently.