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Every now and again these 3D printers pop up, and every time they do they're a little cheaper and seem to be a little more accurate. Now while I appreciate that printing models may be a long way off I wonder how far off they'll be for printing off your own scenery. People producing digital kits to print off 2D/3D paper scenery have existed for some time now. I wonder if there's a future market for printing your own 3D scenery.

What are your thoughts?

Of course there is. It is exactly the same as printing a miniature. You just have to wait until the quality gets better. It seems to be a long way off though.

Unfortunately right now the quality of the prints is pretty poor. The ones I have seen are actually rather hideous to be honest. As soon as this gets fixed you will be able to do it easily. The interesting part for me will not be what you can print but what it will do to miniature prices. The problem is you are still going to have to get someone to do a nice 3d sculpt and buy it from them. Now this will change once 3d scanners become common and cheap.

So for me the question is when will 3d scanners start to see widespread use. This is what will really change the industry as anyone will be able to buy a GW miniature once and pump out as many copies as they want.

I think so! In fact, I have purchased one of said cheap 3d printers, and am going to try making a few basic scenery pieces (wagon wheels and the like).

Nothing organic-looking, or really anything close, with the level of detail I can get, but more geometric shapes should be very possible.

Will post up pics when I have it working, it's a kit so that won't be for some time yet...

Edit: brettz, I think you're missing the point. Scenery doesn't necessarily have to be as detailed, and definitely not as "fluid" as a model. Some of the popular scenery pieces are nothing more than blocks, really, and it's much closer to being able to be done on a home 3d printer than an actual model.

RiTides wrote:I think so! In fact, I have purchased one of said cheap 3d printers, and am going to try making a few basic scenery pieces (wagon wheels and the like).

Nothing organic-looking, or really anything close, with the level of detail I can get, but more geometric shapes should be very possible.

Will post up pics when I have it working, it's a kit so that won't be for some time yet...

Edit: brettz, I think you're missing the point. Scenery doesn't necessarily have to be as detailed, and definitely not as "fluid" as a model. Some of the popular scenery pieces are nothing more than blocks, really, and it's much closer to being able to be done on a home 3d printer than an actual model.

No I get that but I don't really agree with you. While the detail is poor so is the quality. What I mean by that is you don't get smooth surfaces and I think you would need to do a lot of work to make even basic terrain pieces look good. Just my opinion but I would think trees, buildings, and even rock formations would be inferior to anything you can buy on the market.

Of course you could do it and if you were satisfied that is cool but it would look significantly worse than a commercial product.

Now again the quality you want for yourself may be different in which case 3d printed terrain may be something you are interested in.

I think it depends on the terrain. Things that are organic like trees might not work so well, but walls, floors or roads probably could.. They may not look like COD walls, but you could do patterns like bricks or shingles.. or do tiled or cobblestone looking bases for you models

It's so easy to make your own scenery I don't see the point of 3D printing it.

If you aren't into making it there are tons of companies who sell it ready made.

Even if you can print your own it will still need painting.

The 2D card models are good because they come ready painted.

I would like the doubters to go to this site:
http://moddler.com/

and have a poke around, paricularly the 'portfolio' section. 3d printers are very capable machines already, but like anything you get what you pay for. Getting something of such high quality done isn't cheap.

brettz123 wrote:Of course there is. It is exactly the same as printing a miniature. You just have to wait until the quality gets better. It seems to be a long way off though.

The point is that scenery requires a lower level of detail than models, therefore it is possible that 3D printed scenery could become commonplace before models do, possibly becoming an alternative to home casting with resin. Also there is a pre-existing 'print our designs' market that is arguably larger in the gaming community than 'model' mold manufacturers such as Prince August.

Purely for speculation: I wonder how well a basic 'Rhino' or M-113 style chassis that could be printed would work. The company could then provide doors, headlamps, hatches etc. in more traditional materials such as metal or resin. Essentially you would buy a digital 'chassis plan(s)' and a number of 'accessories' to print and build your kit at home.

@RiTides: It will be interesting to see what you come up with.

Bigger equals more expensive. If you are making more than a few of something it will always be cheaper to use something else other than rapid prototyping to make it.

brettz123 wrote:What I mean by that is you don't get smooth surfaces and I think you would need to do a lot of work to make even basic terrain pieces look good.

This is true; the best things will I think be items that a "grain" would look OK one, such as wooden wagon wheels... hence why that's going to be my first attempt (and Jin needs some, to boot). Or warmachine chassis for fantasy...

Great point KK, and you're right- terrain is available from so many sources that it might not make sense to 3d print it for most / a lot of things. However, I'm sure as these become more common people will be trying it! I know I will be...

There's about to be a huge drop in the price of certain types of 3D printers (the ones that use plaster and solvent - like these: http://www.figureprints.com/)

The patents on these are about to expire and a number of companies (most notably HP as well as a bunch of chinese companies) have products ready to hit the market.

These printers produce reasonably well detailed models and they can be printed in colour. Cost of printing is not huge and it is currently enormously inflated by the patent holders, this will drop along with the cost of the machines. The only downside is that the models produced are reasonably fragile.

Well, it's hard to say what will happen.

I remember when a 200dpi mono desktop scanner cost £6,000. Nowadays you can get a 600dpi colour scanner/printer for £40.

chaos0xomega wrote:I would like the doubters to go to this site:
http://moddler.com/

and have a poke around, paricularly the 'portfolio' section. 3d printers are very capable machines already, but like anything you get what you pay for. Getting something of such high quality done isn't cheap.

Okay, these look as good as any resin or plastic casts I've ever seen. Their "ballpark estimate" feature puts a dynamically posed, chunky 2" figure at under $30. This seems acceptable for one-offs for players and certainly is very, very reasonable for creating masters for recasting.