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Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




Central California

My group is having a debate and I am hoping there is someone about who has specific knowledge. Anyway, here is the debate, one of my friends insists that the original green sculpts for most major companies putting out 28mm figures are NOT done in 28mm scale, but larger. The process then involves a laser 3d scanner taking the green and putting it into a computer 3d imaging program, which is then used to adjust scale and make the test models that eventually become the molds for mass production. Anyone have real information that this is the case? I looked at greens on Reaper and other places and they look to scale to me.
Anyway, as a man learning to sculpt myself, I am curious, so any information or links appreciated.

Keeping the hobby side alive!

I never forget the Dakka unit scale is binary: Units are either OP or Garbage. 
   
Made in gb
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It depends. Some are done as "3-ups", some are done "at scale". Other companies will "sculpt" entirely digitally.

Most, as far as I am aware, are done at scale and cast directly to produce a series of masters, which in turn are re-cast to make production moulds.

   
Made in de
Longtime Dakkanaut




 SilverMK2 wrote:
Some are done as "3-ups", some are done "at scale".


I think the difference was "3-up" for injection moulded plastic (because the process allowed for it) and "at scale" for resin and metal. These days more and more sculpting is moving into being done digitally.
   
Made in us
The Hammer of Witches





A new day, a new time zone.

edwardmyst wrote:
My group is having a debate and I am hoping there is someone about who has specific knowledge. Anyway, here is the debate, one of my friends insists that the original green sculpts for most major companies putting out 28mm figures are NOT done in 28mm scale, but larger. The process then involves a laser 3d scanner taking the green and putting it into a computer 3d imaging program, which is then used to adjust scale and make the test models that eventually become the molds for mass production. Anyone have real information that this is the case? I looked at greens on Reaper and other places and they look to scale to me.
Anyway, as a man learning to sculpt myself, I am curious, so any information or links appreciated.

Doing the master models to scale is something that is done, but traditionally, a lot of master models were 3-ups, master models 3x the size of the final product. Lasers were involved in no way, shape, or form, it was a mechanical process where essentially a pantograph was used to trace the details on the 3-up and carve them into the mold block at the proper size.
The third segment of this show is all about how metal minis are made, and shows the 3-up copying in action.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/06/12 22:36:14


"-Nonsense, the Inquisitor and his retinue are our hounoured guests, of course we should invite them to celebrate Four-armed Emperor-day with us..."
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Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




Central California

Great answers. I knew I could count on dakka! Thanks guys. Anyone else, please add on! 3 up would explain some of the amazing details I guess (well, besides the even more amazing skill level involved from some of these people)

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/06/12 22:47:17


Keeping the hobby side alive!

I never forget the Dakka unit scale is binary: Units are either OP or Garbage. 
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka






Glasgow, Scotland

3-Ups were done due to the type of molding process. Molds are better now, so they aren't necessary, though GW was still using that process up till a few years ago.

Large scale companies use software fort heir's now. However plenty still sculpt stuff by hand (sculpting by hand and software isn't always a transferable skill). You'd never see Kev White or the Perrys touch a CAD file (knock on wood. ...Though Kev's habit of sculpting stuff on a whim may play into that).

Personally I'd never touch 3-Ups as they're just obtuse. I've made 3D models for video game mods before, but prefer just to do stuff by hand than send files off to a third party company to print for me.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/06/12 22:56:23


 
   
Made in us
The Hammer of Witches





A new day, a new time zone.

And anyways, for the most part these days, there's no need to make a miniature first, scan it in to a CAD program, and then mess around with it there. It'd be easier to just make it in digitally in the first place, because then you have the complete, digital model in all of its components, that you wouldn't get with a scan, and scanning a 3D piece with the complexity of a miniature would be rather troublesome in the first place.

"-Nonsense, the Inquisitor and his retinue are our hounoured guests, of course we should invite them to celebrate Four-armed Emperor-day with us..."
Thought for the Day - Never use the powerfist hand to wipe. 
   
Made in eu
Fixture of Dakka






Glasgow, Scotland

Plus you'd need to smooth the hell out of any scanned sculpt. A miniature scanned into a CAD program would could be compared to what a cue ball would look like if scaled up to the size of the Earth.
   
Made in gb
Impassive Inquisitorial Interrogator




England

Greens are sculpted at 3x the actual size for hard plastics production via pantograph, as Bookwrack says. However, the only company I'm aware of still producing plastics tooling this way is Renedra; most other plastics manufacturers work from digital files, not 3-ups.

For metal or resin production, you sculpt at actual size. So Reaper stuff is all sculpted actual size, as is the work of pretty much all the smaller manufacturers.
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka






I have never heard of a physical model being sculpted, scanned and then resized. Now due to casting processes and material changes, I have seen where greens get turned into metal masters and then when cast into resin, the resins naturally shrink and end up smaller compared to the originals.

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nkelsch wrote:
I have seen where greens get turned into metal masters and then when cast into resin, the resins naturally shrink and end up smaller compared to the originals.

Interestingly, that exact mechanism is used in some industries for 'downsizing' sculpts. Ceramic ornaments, for example, can often be found with a range of different sizes of an identical sculpt... They take the (large) original sculpt, make a mould off it, run a cast and take a mould off that, and keep on going until what's coming out of the mould has reached the desired reduced size.

You lose some amount of detail along the way, of course, but it gets the job done

 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





Armpit of NY

A good example of this can be seen if you have a look through the recent Codex:Apocrypha from GW. It has an article reprinted from White Dwarf on the then new Land Raider kit. It talked about the model being done at 3:1 scale and the weapons at 2:1, and had some photos showing this and the pantographing to cut the mold to actual final size being done.
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka






 Bookwrack wrote:
.
The third segment of this show is all about how metal minis are made, and shows the 3-up copying in action.


No, the 3-up models sculpted there are the master models for [/I]plastic[/I] models; you also see masters for metal models being sculpted at the actual size.

I did hear of GW scanning physical models, but that might have been a transition phase as they introduced their entirely-digital design process.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/06/17 19:27:58


 
   
Made in us
Gargantuan Gargant





New Bedford, MA USA

GW/Citadel's old metal models they were spincast in vulcanized rubber molds. Those models were sculpted at scale.

All the early plastic kits, like the Landraider, were done 3 up and painstakingly mechanically scanned, via pantograph,and resized to cut metal molds.

Finecast resin was pushed through the same style molds that made the metal minaitures, instead of proper molds for resin, which is why you had air bubbles because they were not vacuumed to degass them.

Modern plastic GW models are all digitally designed.

Most, if not all, Forgeworld stuff is still sculpted by hand to scale, often green stuff over plastic models, or at least it used to be.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/06/21 23:25:39


   
Made in au
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 adamsouza wrote:

All the early plastic kits, like the Landraider, were done 3 up and painstakingly mechanically scanned, and resized to cut metal molds.

They weren't 'scanned'. A pantograph was used to reverse the model and carve out the mould at the appropriate size. This was a mechanical process,



Finecast resin was pushed through the same rubber molds that made the metal minaitures

Not quite... They were similarly spincast, but used a silicon mould, rather than the vulcanised rubber used for metal models.

 
   
Made in us
Gargantuan Gargant





New Bedford, MA USA

I said mechanically scanned because I couldn't remember the name of the device, pantograph, but there is no need to split hairs over what constitutes being scanned.Instead of lasers running over the surfaces the pantograph uses a more primitive method of physically dragging a device over the surface to generate the data.

Silicon or rubber, spincasting was the important part. It's not the preferred method of casting with resin, and more of using what you got method of production, on GWs part

   
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Under the couch

 adamsouza wrote:

Silicon or rubber, spincasting was the important part. It's not the preferred method of casting with resin, and more of using what you got method of production, on GWs part

Not so much 'using what you got' (as it required all new moulds to be made, and going by the amount of silicon that people found stuck to their models, probably several times over the course of 'Fine'cast's lifespan) as trying to mass-produce a material not really suited for it in order to save on material costs.

GW (supposedly) put a lot of work into developing a resin formulation that would work with spincast machines, but they've never said if this was only ever supposed to be a stop-gap solution until they could expand their plastic lines, or if they genuinely expected this to replace metal models but dropped it due to it being such a dismal failure...

 
   
Made in ca
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I like the fact that show used the perry brothers and renedra...cool beans
   
Made in gb
Fresh-Faced New User





I know GW tend to use three ups for allot of stuff and reduce the design via pantograph.

There's a guy in their sculpting team who uses Games Day UK to show off the process by working on one throughout the event.

They put allot if them on display in the WHW museum which is cool to see although depressing for me as a INQ player as so many of the three ups are an amazing almost perfect size for me. I wanted to take home the bloodletter to frighten my players with *grins*

I think the digital vs 3 up is a personal choice based on what the sculpters are comfortable with tbh. Some of the guys who have been in the industry years will work one way others another.

The finecast thing was only ever a stopgap from what I have been told a means to keep models in production without falling foul of rising metal costs and EU mandates that made white metal problematic. The moulds allowed the original metal masters to be used from what I understand which unfortunately because of the increased detail that the resin plastic composite that makes up finecast was capable of meant some models didnt look great belakor and the LOTR vampire thing being two examples I saw.



Plastic is great for mould longevity and once the cost of the mould is made back has really low costs BUT a single sprue kit can be over 10000 gbp to produce so for things like characters and one per army models isnt really affordable.



If someone can tell me if I am allowed to post them I have White Dwarf 262 here (the original Tau release) which has an article called 'making the devilfish' which has the whole process from sketch to block out to mockup to 3:1 to to sprue which shows the pantograph process.

Interestingly one titbit from the article says once the final design is done and they have the 3:1 resin negative done and pantograph processed for the final sprue design. They take a cast of the 1:1 model and send those to the Eavy Metal team and its these resin casts that are used for box art shots and codex/promotional photos because they cant wait for the sprues to come back in quantity and using the technique for producing the test frames for approval isnt cost effective or efficent enough.

So um if anyones interested and I am allowed tonpost the pics let me know"
   
 
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