Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

Warming up the 3D printer again, I have revisited a few of the beasts from one of the Axolote Gaming kickstarters.

Here is a Death Tyrant, which is an undead Beholder. It should have a smattering of floating, ghostly eyes surrounding it. Not sure how I want to do that though. Maybe bend some pins with round heads and stick them in?

It is printed in PLA on my Flashforge Finder with standard options, 0.18 layer height. It took about a hour and a half to print out. I gave it a 50mm base and used a paperclip to make the stand.

As I printed it on standard the stepping is a bit more pronounced than if I had printed it on extra fine. Which does not matter much as it is not really visible on the tabletop anyway.

This is a really rough and ready five minute paint job, started out painting the whole thing skeleton bone, and then globbing some leather brown in all the recesses, and then going over with some more skeleton bone. Fangs in grey and lighter grey. Some dark blue, light blue and a dot of white on the central eye dot. (I am thinking of revisiting this and adding some OSL inside the eye socket.

I did the base in black scatter as I think that fit the model better than the green meadow I ususally do.

Death Tyrant

design by Axolote Gaming

printed in PLA at .18 layer height

50mm base

Originally posted @themountainsofminis.com Jan 13th 2019

Just a few years ago, someone* wrote in their results statements thingy** that 3D-printing miniatures is not in any way a threat to the miniatures industry:

“We know quite a lot about 3-D printers, having been at the forefront of the technology for many years. We know of what we speak. One day 3-D printers will be affordable (agreed), they are now, they will be able to produce fantastic detail (the affordable ones won’t) and they will do it faster than one miniature per day (no, they won’t, look it up). So we may get to the time when someone can make a poorly detailed miniature at home and have enough for an army in less than a year. That pre-supposes that 3-D scanning technology will be affordable and good enough (don’t bet the mortgage on that one) and that everyone will be happy to have nothing but copies of old miniatures. (…).”

So, just three years later, in 2017, I printed this minature, which I downloaded for free from drivethrurpg.com as it was part of one of many totally free packs of critters, beasts and monsters that are downloadable from that site (and they also have many packs that are pay what you want or have a fixed cost of a few dollars.)

The only alteration I did was to cut away the integral base and print it on a raft instead so I could base it in the same style as my other minis.

This ape took about an hour to print on my cheap as chips Flashforge Finder-printer, on “hyper” 0.08mm layer height. This needed supports when printing, and cost just a few pennies worth of PLA.

Yes, the details are not fantastic (but that has more to do with the tru-scale nature of this model than with the printer) and there are slight print lines visible. (not really all that visible unless it is zoomed in on as in the pictures.)

But still. We are getting there, and much faster than someone* would have thought.

*that someone being the then Chairman of Games Workshop, Tom Kirby,

**2014 GW Chairman’s Preamble to the Games Workshop CEO annual report .

3D printed Gorilla

by mx4250,

downloaded from drivethrurpg.com

PLA, 0.08 mm layer height

30mm base

Originally posted @themountainsofminis.com April 16th, 2017

And they* said 3D printing poses no threat to traditional miniatures…

well maybe not yet, but still:

This is a 3Dprint I printed out myself on my cheapo Flashforge Finder. Printed in PLA with .08mm layer height. I scaled it a bit randomly to make a large one.

The original model is by Axolote Gaming, an unexpected bonus item from their second Kickstarter, and also one of the better models of a Beholder I have seen yet.

You can see the stepping from the printing process if you look closely. This is particularily obvious in the teeth and the eyeball as.the gloss varnish I used on the eye really made the stepping apparent. It was not half as bad before.

At any rate, the stepping is really only apparent when looked at closely, or when magnified such as in the pictures. The fangs are a bit misshapen here and there, mostly from my printer not being all that great. I have not used a file when prepping, just clippers and a sharp hobby knife. Maybe a file would have straightened those teeth out properly. Something to try next time.

The tentacles are hollow as their cross sections are to small to include any infill. This means they are quite brittle and prone to snappin off. Luckily only one of them broke during the removal of the supports though.

My printer also left a lot of extremely fine hair-like strings attached to the finished print, so together with removing the print-supports there was quite a lot of prepwork.

At least I did not have to wash it to get rid of the mould’s release agents, as I have realized the truth: there is no mould.

A note about painting 3D models: Neither drybrushing nor washes are good techniques for them, as the stepping will get accented and more pronounced. (and here I am with drybrushing and washes as my favorite techniques… argh!)

and to make the size apparent:

I used a 50mm lipped base with a paperclip to make the stand.

Beholder

model by Axolote Gaming

3D printed at 0.08 mm layer height

PLA

50mm base

*They still being Tom Kirby CEO of Games Workshop in  the 2014 GW Chairman’s Preamble to the Games Workshop CEO annual report.

originally posted @themountainsofminis.com May 21, 2017