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Hey Everybody!

After a long time out of the hobby I've put myself to work on some urban terrain. My goal is to make something that doesn't look so much like a plastic kit, but more something that looks like it was used by actual people in the past. Another goal is to make terrain that can really block line of sight to the larger units being produced by GW (titans, riptides, hovering flyers). This is going to be an 8'X4' board. maybe for larger scale games. I'll be keeping up to date with posts as often as I can. Let me know what you guys think. My eventual goal is to be able to build terrain well enough to sell them, but I have no idea when or if that's even possible based on my skills. Please tell me what you think of my WIP project. If there are some things that are just bad please let me know. Thanks again!

Also, I haven't posted very much on Dakkadakka in the past so please forgive me if I'm bad at this whole posting thing . I don't know how to add spoilers to pictures, so some help with that would be nice too.

A good start but my main gripe with most peoples home-made terrain & GW stuff is that walls & especially floors are way too thin.
Minimum you should be looking at the equivalent of 300mm.
At 1:50 (approximate scale of 40K) this equates to 6mm.
For a tall building I would raise this to 500mm (or 10mm @ 1:50).
For storage I would also recommend that every 3 floors be sectioned so you can pack it away more easily. You can do this by using that feature band you've added - just put a strip halfway above the wall line. Then the next floor up or even a roof can just slot in.
I don't mean to sound so negative - sorry, these are just my views.

I understand about the thickness. The problem was the building materials I could find for the building. Most boards and foam seemed to be either way too thin or too thick. This was the best I could manage in my local area. I hadn't thought about the height for storage. I'll keep that in mind. I'll try to section the next one for easier storage. thanks for the input.

You're most welcome.

I think they look good, though I kind of agree with bubber that maybe you want to make the walls thicker.

If you want thicker walls or floors, the common sizes of foamcore board are 3mm, 5mm and 10mm. You could sandwich two pieces of board to make a thicker wall.

Another way to add visually effective thickness is to put on buttresses, which would increase the neo-gothic effect too.

I salute you in your quest, I for one am sick of the unrealistically sized buildings that we see everywhere...

Just going to point this out: Every element of that building that was destroyed needs to go somewhere... (hint hint, there should be LOTS of rubble).

Maybe try some plaster for the floors. The plaster will add rocky feel and texture.

Plaster is heavy and might actually cause the terrain to break under its own weight, wouldn't recommend. If you need texture (yes, you do need some texture) get yourself some textured spraypaint/primer and have at it to give it the look of a concrete sructure

Thanks for all the advice again. I need to make a greater effort to find some thicker boards for the next buildings before I start on them. I've plastered the outside of the building. Those bars across the buildings need a bit more work. I've also done work on the bottom of the this section of the game board. I'm trying to make it seem like the building will fit seamlessly into the terrain. kind of molded in. I had a very old Chimera with that was missing all of it's guns so I decided to throw that in with some other bits. Maybe I utilized matchsticks too much, but I think they look alright.

I added the rubble piles on here from a mix of bits, slightly carefully cut sprue and some pieces of wood. I also threw in some foam pieces. I'm not sure if it's enough rubble, I didn't want the pills too steep otherwise models would just fall over. I think I need to add some more though. I need to add quite a bit to the inside of the building too. I was thinking of also adding so broken furniture to use for cover in the larger spaces of the building. Like a broken counter or table. I'll post more pics after I touch this up a bit with more rubble.

I agree that the walls should be thicker. And adding rubble helps a lot in making it realistic. Looking good so far, am I the only one who gets reminded of the WTC on the third photo from the top?

I love the iron rods sticking out of the concrete floor, very cool.

Looking forward to more and subscribed!


EDIT: Posted this reply when you posted more pictures; I like the rubble but would add some larger chunks of concrete. Now it looks like a brick building collapsed instead of a concrete tower.

I think you're right. I'm going to cut out some larger chunks of debris and throw them in too. I was looking at WW2 Stalkingrad and Battle of Berlin rubble pics for inspiration. But I think most of those buildings were brick too. Back to work

piping, cables, vents. For formerly plumbing, air circulation and electrics. I'd have done larger chunks of masonry fallen down and piled up on the floor and around the base of the building. I'd also add signage, iconography, doodads (lighting fixtures, bike racks, steps, broken glass, destroyed goods, etc.

Maybe also pools of standing water on the bottom, along with points on the inside of the building showing water damage from a burst uncontrolled pipe, uhm. I'd be tempted to add oil stains and machine leaks, wrecked machinery, etc, but, this is an office type building. IF possible, I might have done a bit more roof adding the remains of an elevator. I've recognized stairs are pesky things to work out for terrain, but, having the odd elevator adds a bit of character. Last step might be spent shell-casings, or smashed out portions representing someone had set up a tripod for some type of weapon. I might have also marked out where the floors used to have been with jagged debris. Then office furniture. Cabinets, desks, and smashed up computers that were thrown into a pile. Cubicles that were stripped out and reconfigured to walls... etc. And for amusement sake, you will need to put an arm-chair in there somewhere. Maybe pots with smashed up plants, ferny things.... you could spend an entire month on this. I know I would. This is a pretty big thing.

If this REALLY was me though, I'd have done a section of this to be interchangeable with two pieces, or have created a crater/blast in a wall that can receive a building-linking footbridge at a few different points.

addendum
Go play battlefield. Something with more than 500 tickets. Inspect the buildings as they collapse. The office building with penthouse on siege of shanghai isn't the best example because none of it remains standing. The hotel on Hainan Resort is a good one, as the wings crumple, the central column stays standing. Otherwise, most of the side-buildings also show decently well what it'd look like. I think Golmud Railway shows reasonably well what kind of a mess it'd look like if it were a village pulled to the ground.

I end up doing a lot of these, and you have some good bones. The downside is that by the time you finish the last one, you want to throw the first ones away because you have refined things with practice.

The big thing is figure out what you are actually building. Things like brick and CMU constructed buildings go together (and subsequently come apart) much differently than something like reinforced concrete. Getting a handle on that, and then figuring out how they are built allows you to realistically deconstruct the building.

Dont worry too much about having a huge rubble pile at the bottom. Most building like these have at least one basement floor, and when the building collapses, that becomes a big hole to hold a lot of debris.

Do do a lot of research if you want it to look real. There is no shortage of pictures online of war torn urban regions. WWII is pretty good up to 5 or 6 story buildings of a variety of construction options. The various dust offs in the former Soviet Union in the past 30 years or so offer somemore modern buildings which have been blown apart rather well.

Although a different type of damage than conventional weapons, take a look at earthquake damage too. Eldar Sonic weapons and the various other fantastical weapons used in sci fi games can probably do localized earquake type damage.

For materials, I usually use MDF and plaster. MDF for parts which I intend to still be standing. The variety of thicknesses from 1/8" all the way up passed 1" allow most building materials to be dealt with. It is cheap and reasonably easy to work with with even basic wood working tools.

The plaster is used for rubble and certain broken areas. Plaster bricks and CMUs work wonders for scattered debris. I embed welded wire mesh in plaster castings, then after they have set up crack them as needed cutting the mesh and leaving bits hanging out to simulate things like rebar in reinforced concrete.

Tall glass and steel buildings are built up using H and I beams from Plastruct with a glitter bomb in the streets and various heat bent and twisted columns and beams.

Things like fire escapes (both interior stair cases and exterior metal options) also offer interesting modeling options. They are designed to survive damage, so often when a building colapses the staircase remains standing, or at least is standing high than the rest.