If any of you play table top games like Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder you will know there is no limit to the companies providing high quality miniatures for your games. However if you want to stray from the norm, and for example have a steampunk Dwarf or Elf, where do you go?
Games Workshop make great miniatures but they are limited to the armies that they use in their games. Places like Dark Sword Minis or Reaper provide a more traditional set of miniatures for fantasy type games and even a few for Sci Fi, but what if you need that one miniature that suits your character perfectly but doesn't exist?
Well with the advent of 3D printing, some companies have begun to offer online customisation of miniatures which you can order printed or even download the STL files to print yourself at home. The most well known of these sites is Heroforge.
Heroforge allows you massive amounts of customisation for your miniature, from race and gender all the way down to clothes and equipment.
Up until last year, you had to have your custom mini printed by them and shipped to you, which was very expensive causing me to only get one; a Dwarf Decker for Shadowrun (which I have still yet to play) but the quality was amazing as you would expect from a SLA print.
Well with the advent of 3D printing, some companies have begun to offer online customisation of miniatures which you can order printed or even download the STL files to print yourself at home. The most well known of these sites is Heroforge.
Heroforge allows you massive amounts of customisation for your miniature, from race and gender all the way down to clothes and equipment.
Up until last year, you had to have your custom mini printed by them and shipped to you, which was very expensive causing me to only get one; a Dwarf Decker for Shadowrun (which I have still yet to play) but the quality was amazing as you would expect from a SLA print.
Shipped - Cost $44.99 shipped to the UK
This print is flawless. Full stop. The end.
Seriously though this was printed using a SLA printer, as far as I'm aware - the Form2 from Formlabs which is a printer I would very much like to get my filthy hands on (if you're reading this Formlabs, feel free to get in touch!).
As the Form 2 SLA printer uses a laser to cure the resin, the level of detail is phenomenal;
Was it worth the money? Before digital download became an option allowing people to print their minis at home, I would have said yes. But $45 is a lot of money for a single miniature, even if it is totally custom. You'll have to make up your own mind as to how much having a customised miniature is worth to you.
As the Form 2 SLA printer uses a laser to cure the resin, the level of detail is phenomenal;
Was it worth the money? Before digital download became an option allowing people to print their minis at home, I would have said yes. But $45 is a lot of money for a single miniature, even if it is totally custom. You'll have to make up your own mind as to how much having a customised miniature is worth to you.
Digital download - Cost $9.99 each.
If you have a printer at home (if not, why the hell not?!) this could be a much more affordable option. You create the miniature in the exact same way on their site, but instead of getting them to print it for you on their fancy schmancy SLA printers, they give you a downloadable STL file to print at your leisure, as many times as you want.
Obviously the detail is unlikely to be as good on a FDM printer as on a SLA, but you can still get some pretty damn good results. I do find however that there is some experimentation required with generating the support structure, which I tend to do in Meshmixer. Also printing the model at around a 30degree angle seems to give the best result as far as detail is concerned and once painted the layer lines do seem to be less noticeable. (In fact the layer lines are a hell of a lot more obvious in the photos than in real life).
If you have a printer at home (if not, why the hell not?!) this could be a much more affordable option. You create the miniature in the exact same way on their site, but instead of getting them to print it for you on their fancy schmancy SLA printers, they give you a downloadable STL file to print at your leisure, as many times as you want.
Obviously the detail is unlikely to be as good on a FDM printer as on a SLA, but you can still get some pretty damn good results. I do find however that there is some experimentation required with generating the support structure, which I tend to do in Meshmixer. Also printing the model at around a 30degree angle seems to give the best result as far as detail is concerned and once painted the layer lines do seem to be less noticeable. (In fact the layer lines are a hell of a lot more obvious in the photos than in real life).
In a later blog I will be discussing the differences between SLA, SLS and FDM printing.
So is it all worth it? I'll let you guys decide for yourselves but honestly, for under a tenner you can have a completely customised miniature in a few hours. If that's not living in the future than I don't know what is...
See y'all next week.
Troez.
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