This is such a great idea. But if your concerned about cost, then don't use resin. Your using one part molds for these, just use plaster instead. Plaster can easily hold this level of detail, is resilient enough for what your doing, and far, far cheaper. I've never played Space Hulk, but if your not moving the tiles around very much using a hard shore strength plaster should work just fine. I use it for fine art casting all the time. It would also allow you to realistically weather the tiles. A bit of paint and you'd hardly no the difference.
That is looking pretty good so far.
I think the shorter walls might be the way to go just to give the impression of walls without blocking the isometric views of the models. I think the taller walls are going to be a bit too high to really appreciate much other than a top down view like you said.
For the floors, have you considered making the resin detailed part very thin and gluing it to a plasticard section? You could get a For Sale sign on the cheap, cut square sections from it, and then make your floor tiles only as thick as the detail requires. After gluring that to the plasticard it ought to be just as strong, but a lot cheaper.
I might agree that plaster would be the way to go, though I don't have a lot of experience with it. The floor tiles might well be made from plaster though to save cash since they really don't need to support any weight or flex at all.
the problem with selling these are the obvious recreation of GW material in your molds. while I am all for it and have made molds of my COD tiles and wall sections. I would not recommend trying to sell them. now if you were to make your own tiles and mold and sell those you would have a lot less legal troubles
What about a pourable Urethane plastic? I think that stuff normally goes for about $80 a gallon, but it seams that you could get a ton of pieces from that kind of volume.
Do you plan on keeping the floor tiles double sided? if you just used a single side you could reduce the volume even more and make them a bit thinner.
I like the shorter walls since you can see the action from more angles. Also there doesn't have to be a ton of details on the floor pieces. Using a hatch every 6-8 spaces I think would be adequate and just use the regular tile design for rest.
Just a quick thought. Could you not stick together the three wall sections that you have, and then cast them as one compete unit? That way it would cut down the casting time immensely, not to mention the set up time when you want to play!
This is a FANTASTIC project and I really like what you've done using the Cities of Death panels. I'll admit, I prefer the taller walls with the added banding detail. After all, if you're going to go through the trouble of building a 3-D board, go all the way. Besides, aren't unclear views and uncertainty of the Genestealers wherabouts part of the "Space Hulk Experience" ?
Stellar work whatever direction you take this !! And your material/cost analysis is really helpful to other fanatics considering doing something similar (like me).
Good stuff, Paulson!
I'm really enjoying seeing all the different approaches people have to making a 3D Space Hulk.
From a gameplay point of view, I´d advise to keep all the walls the same height. If only to prevent arguments because the marine player couldn´t see that one critical genestealer hiding behind a higher wall section...
With your corridors made from Cities of Death parts, have you considered how large the Space Hulk maps will be? If I recall correctly the CoD tiles are 50mm. The Hulk I'm building (on and off) has 40mm squares (with some extra width for the 'Stealers' wavy arms) and I can just squeeze the Suicide mission on a 4x6 foot table. Some of the larger missions I will need to push 2 tables together. It'd be a shame if you went through all the effort of making this only to discover that won't fit a single table in the house...
I like where that Broodlord is going! Is the head from a Carnifex?
paulson games wrote:I'd also make alternate design pieces available, infested sections, pipe sections, damaged sections, etc, that way you could make a more advanced board by using more moulds but if you're looking for a budget 3-D board it would be possible using just the base mould set.
I think alt designs are key, really... because you don't want to anger the IP lawyers Looks great.
The lower walls might be the way to go, would cut down costs, etc... especially if you can rig up an upper section as well, if you wanted to drop a roof onto a section for dramatic photography, etc.
It's a guant head! This log looks great and a can't wait to it get some paint. The models are excellent to with the small, but significant, conversions on the Termies and Broodlord.
I think this is awesome. Even though the new SH Box turned out to be way cool, I think your work is right up there as well. It gives the whole thing a different feel to it for sure. Looking forward to more!
paulson games wrote:Decided to go ahead with what looks cool, might generate some crybabies because they couldn't see a guy or forgot to move their mans, but for that I say chin up sissy boy sometimes the hulk works against you, and if you forget your guy better luck next time.
The top will be optional and also fully removeable in case peopel have a hard time seeing things.
Hehe, gaming the hardcore way... I like it.
Good to see you're going to build your tiles from scratch. That way it'll be ALL yours. (Plus, you won't get into IP trouble when someone inevitably walks up and says "How much would it cost me if you make me one too?" and actually means it.)
I think you could reduce the aligment problems even more by not making individual tiles, but but lengths of corridor instead. That way, if there is an inaccuracy in size of the tile, there will be less repeats. (Not picking nits, just trying to help you get the most out this project. I really like what you're doing.)
I've always enjoyed Space Hulk and yes, I've preordered mine here in the US. BUT, it has always been something of a mystery to me as to why any game I've ever seen played is ALWAYS single level. I'm curious to see the new "ladder up/down" in the new rules.
One way I've done a multilevel game using the Space Hulk tiles is to make additional levels with sheets of plexiglass supported about twelve inches above the bottom (table level). We did a 4 level game one time that was a lot of fun.
I think the flat single level classic Space Hulk really misses out on some wild game play by not having multi-levels. Hard enough as the SM player with blips all around, but even hairier when they are above and below you too!
migsula wrote:Argh - can't see the pics - recommend DAKKA GALLERIES! Free and reliable.
This.
You can also use Imageshack, that's pretty reliable... but the Dakka gallery is not only free, but right here on this very site (durrr!) so it's even easier
I found the old GW website, and there they have a tutorial on making a three dee space hulk through using pipes, though, I think yours is more suited to the new space hulk, you may want to make a memorial of your first game of space hulk, win or loss, by creating a scene depicting the triumph or fall through the retro styles of this, Just my opinion.
Here is the page
KILL TEAM SPACE HULK TERRAIN
You don't need fancy terrain to play with the Kill Team Space Hulk modifications, but it helps. Building 3D Space Hulk terrain for your Kill Team missions is not as complicated as it might seem at first. All it takes is a little forethought and the right materials, and you'll have some cool modular terrain for your games.
You can get a good sense of how to do this type of terrain from Mike McVey's awesome diorama that appeared on the inside cover of the 2nd Edition Space Hulk Rulebook (one of those pictures is shown right). You are trying to accomplish a three-dimensional cross-section of the Hulk that's still playable.
On the next few pages, we'll show you how to build this type of terrain.
Step 1 Vinyl gutter joints come in all shapes and sizes, and they cost less than $5 USD each. We found a drain drop joint that would work great as a compartment with three entry points. What's more, vinyl is fairly easy to work with (though it can warp a bit when it's manufactured – try to pick straight pieces). As you can see in the pictures above, the side wall of the drain will serve as your compartment floor. Mark off a line where the "overhang" of the gutter starts to curve up dramatically. You want to clear enough room for you to reach in and place models on the section while maintaining the feel of a room.
Step 2 Following the mark you just made, cut off the overhang with your cutting tool. You can use a variety of cutting tools to accomplish this step, from a hack saw to a band saw. Regardless of the tool you employ, make sure you take the necessary precautions (kids, ask your folks for help). We used a Dremel rotary tool with a disc cutting tool attachment – it took a while, but it worked just fine. Also cut off the small U-shaped connectors on the floor of the room.
Step 3 Crochet grid is great for 40K grating – the only problem is that primer won't always stick to it right off the shelf. We found that a good scrubbing with soap and water eliminated this problem (they must use a releasing agent when they make it). With a permanent marker, delineate the room section area on the grid. Cut out this area with scissors.
Step 4 Now that you have the crochet grid cut out, it can serve as a floor template while you work. Center it over the floor of the room with the middle entry point lined up in the "doorway" like shown in the image above. Mark off the edges on the gutter drain with a permanent marker.
Step 5 With your cutting tool, cut off the edges of the room along the lines you made. While you're at it, remove the screw brackets from the floor of the room so it lies flat on the tabletop.
Step 6 Though you could leave the rectangular frame around the doorway, it will make moving models nearly impossible when you play games. Remove this frame with your cutting tool.
Step 7 There are several building materials you can use for doorways, but the ones we thought would work best are gutter C-clamps like those shown above. They look like cross-sections of doorways, have a built-in "door control" recess, and won't block model movement. You can get these for about $1 USD each.
Step 8 Glue these to the floor of the room section with super glue. Make sure you use your crochet grid as a guide on how far back along the floor to place them.
Step 9 Find some 2" wall vents like those above. You can get a six-pack for about $5 USD. The ones we found had a slightly rough texture to the plastic, which will be ideal for drybrushing later.
Step 10 The vents are probably going to be too deep, so you'll need to cut down the back ring so it's only 1/4" deep. Use your cutting tool to cut off this ring like shown above.
Step 11 Glue one of the trimmed-down vents on the back-right angled wall with super glue. Cut two lengths of plasticard 4-mm pipes to serve as Hulk plumbing. You'll have to angle your cuts on both sides so each will press flat against the door frame while not extending past the border of the floor, either. Glue these tubes in place under the vent. Add the handle bit from the Dwarf Bolt Thrower in the Warhammer range (file off the Dwarf icon, of course) as a plumbing valve to finish this wall's details.
Step 12 Just like the last step, attach two parallel plasticard pipes. This time, place them vertically just next to the doorway you glued down before. Attach another handle from the Dwarf Bolt Thrower. One last bit of plumbing: add a pipe over the doorways to cover the overhang cut.
Now for the engineering panel. Cut out a 5 cm x 4 cm section from a 1-cm grid sheet of plasticard to serve as the backdrop. For the metal bitz, just attach them in a pattern that looks mechanical – we grabbed bitz from the Dwarf Flame Cannon and Bolt Thrower (minus any Dwarf imagery that we filed off). To fill in the empty area at the bottom of the panel, cut out a small square of V-grooved plasticard to look like a ventilation grate. Once all this dries, glue the entire engineering panel to the wall.
Make the door controls from thin plasticard and place them in the slots in the doorways you glued down before. Cut out two thin plasticard triangles, glue them to a square of thin plasticard, and glue the square to the door from the backside so the triangles fit in the slot.
Step 13 You'll need some structure to lift the deck grating off the floor to clear the doorways and look more like an actual Hulk. We found the perfect thing: the covers you put over fluorescent light panels. Find the one that looks like the picture above (the one we got was called "white egg crate"). It should measure about 1/4" in depth. You can get a 2' x 4' sheet of this material for about $5 USD.
Step 14 Lay your crochet template over the lighting grid so the grid will provide the most support and mark off this area. Cut out this section from the lighting grid with sprue clippers – be careful, this stuff can go flying. Place the lighting grid on your room floor and see where you have to trim it to get it to fit and cut it down to fit between all the doorways.
Step 15 Once you're satisfied with the lighting grid fit, glue it down to the floor with super glue. If your gutter drain has a slight bend to it, you can use the grid to correct for this by applying weight to it while it dries (you'll need at least 18 lbs.). You'll need a lot of glue to get the grid to force the vinyl flat.
There you have it, a Space Hulk compartment ready for paint. Don't glue down the crochet grid just yet – you'll have a much easier time painting without it in place. Just make sure it lines up right for now.
Step 1 Vinyl gutters are great for this project – you can get 12' of it for about $5 USD, and that length will last you a while. Plus, it's fairly easy to work with (though it can warp a bit). For this corridor section, we measured out the length of a 5-square Space Hulk board section (with 40-mm squares for the new Terminators). Decide on an appropriate length and mark it with a permanent marker.
Step 2 Next, cut off that length of gutter. You can use a variety of cutting tools to accomplish this step, from a hack saw to a band saw. Regardless of the tool you employ, make sure you take the necessary precautions (kids, ask your folks for help). We used a Dremel rotary tool with a disc cutting tool attachment – it took a while, but it worked just fine.
Step 3 As you can see in the pictures above, the side wall of the gutter will serve as your corridor floor. To finish with the cutting, mark off a line where the "overhang" of the gutter starts to curve up dramatically. You want to clear enough room for you to reach in and place models on the section while maintaining the feel of a corridor. Cut off this overhang with your cutting tool.
Step 4 Crochet grid is great for 40K grating – the only problem is that primer won't always stick to it right off the shelf. We found that a good scrubbing with soap and water eliminated this problem (they must use a releasing agent when they make it). With a permanent marker, delineate the board section area. Obviously, the picture above shows a room section, but the same technique applies to the corridor sections.
Step 5 You'll need some structure to lift the deck grating off the floor to clear the doorways and look more like an actual Hulk. We found the perfect thing: the covers you put over fluorescent light panels. Find the one that looks like the picture above (the one we got was called "white egg crate"). It should measure about 1/4" in depth. You can get a 2' x 4' sheet of this material for about $5 USD.
Step 6 Cut out the crochet grid area you marked out before with scissors. Lay this section over the lighting grid so the grid will provide the most support and mark off this area. Cut out this section from the lighting grid with sprue clippers – be careful, this stuff can go flying. You'll likely have to trim down your lighting grid section to make room for the doorways, but you can do that later.
Step 7 There are several building materials you can use for doorways, but the ones we thought would work best are gutter C-clamps like those shown above. They look like cross-sections of doorways, have a built-in "door control" recess, and won't block model movement. You can get these for about $1 USD each.
Step 8 To give this corridor section a nicely infested look, we decided that we were going to cover the walls with what can best be described as Tyranid "creep." Pretty much every Tyranid in the range has some bio-mechanical ribbing on it, and we wanted to incorporate that look here. If you just want a regular corridor, skip our Tyranid infestation steps. If not, find some 1/2"-diameter electrical cord tubing like that shown above. Cut off about a 5" length of this tubing and cut this section in half lengthwise to get two hemispherical 5" sections.
Step 9 Time to start bringing all this stuff together. Glue the doorways on the edges of the corridor floor with super glue. Depending on how far back you cut the overhang, you'll have to push the doorways in and force the gutter to accommodate them – it will bend into shape. If that's the case, add some glue to where the door and the gutter meet. Once the doorways dry, trim down your lighting grid section to fit between the doorways. Glue the grid down with super glue – if your gutter has a slight bend to it, you can use the grid to correct for this by applying weight to it while it dries (you'll need at least 10 lbs.). Next, glue in the tubing halves to the back wall of the corridor with super glue.
Step 10 Find some 2" wall vents like those above. You can get a six-pack for about $5 USD. The ones we found had a slightly rough texture to the plastic, which will be ideal for drybrushing later.
Step 11 The vents are probably going to be too deep, so you'll need to cut down the back ring so it's only 1/4" deep. Use your cutting tool to cut off this ring like shown above.
Step 12 Glue one of the trimmed-down vents to the center of the back wall with super glue.
Step 13 Time to bulk out the Tyranid infestation with Apoxie Sculpt putty from Aves Studio (though you can do this step with any epoxy putty, including green stuff). Use your imagination and go for the corrupted organic look – just make sure you incorporate the tubing you glued in before.
Step 14 Do this step before the putty dries. Don't glue it down just yet, but lay down the crochet grid to make sure your putty work won't block it. You can make a few infestation tendrils stop right at the edge of the grid. This way, after you paint everything and glue the grid down, you can extend the tendrils over the grid with green stuff and paint them to give the scenery more depth and enhance the "eww" effect.
Step 15 You're almost done. Get some plasticard 2-mm square rod and cut it into three sections. Two should be about 1" in length – place these on the floor of each doorway to support the crochet grid that overlaps the doorways. The other will serve as the handrail. Measure it out, cut it down, and glue it between the doorways with super glue. Make the door controls from thin plasticard and place them in the doorway slots provided. Cut several lengths of plasticard pipes of varying diameter to serve as Hulk plumbing and glue them to the deck and over the doorways to cover the overhang cut. Add a couple of metal bitz from the Dwarf Flame Cannon and Bolt Thrower in the Warhammer range (file off any Dwarf icons, of course) to get the plumbing valves and the like. Ta-da: Space Hulk corridor ready for paint!
Again, don't glue down the crochet grid just yet – you'll have a much easier time painting without it in place.
Wow, fantastic terrain. It look amazing, but also very hard to make. It is on of the best SH terrain I saw but i think also one of the most expensive... To save some money You may use silicon to make molds from your corridors and then make some free casts. You might want to se post on my blog, it is about 3d space hulk terrain. You might find some usefull links there. http://akozz-wh40k.blogspot.com/
If you do try to magnitize the ceilings, consider magnitizing a few genestealers bases also... it'd be pretty awesome to see them hanging from all sections of the hallway.
Awesome job so far!
I think the tau ship pieces are an excellent idea. You might want to look into one of the Last Chancers novels (I forget which one), as it has some descriptions of the interior of a tau ship.
I totally Love what your doing, keep it up. I had a buddy who helped me mold up some stuff in the past using Smooth-on. It was super easy and fast to do. So much in fact I have stayed far away from it as I know I would be casting everything in a heart beat. Much as you have done. Well done Sir, well done!
Wolf: I agree with you BUT if you thought people lost their minds at $100 box price you wont believe what would come out of peoples mouth with a price to go along with a 3-D set.
Very impressive. Do you have your own 3d printer? If so, I can see you doing a good trade in 'Popular Space Corridor Game Tile Sets'! Even if not, keep up the good work, it'd be great to see this all come together.
I'll be keeping an eye on this for sure. Floor sounds more than fair. If I may make a suggestion though, make sure to cover the more unusual tiles from WD and the hardcover Spacehulk book! If that is too pricey or difficult, maybe a 2 frame pieces, a 90 degree corner, and a straight edge, both 1 tile wide? Then also a single tile piece. That way people could make custom tiles while still using your bits!
These look very nice! I am no expert at casting in resin, but the pipes around the edges look like they would be very hard to produce. Also, how big would a 'set' be?
You only ever see imperium style hulk boards and they are allways so neat. It is my understanding that Space Hulks are an amalgamated mass of ships and other space debris. I would love to see other sections of perhaps Eldar or Tau style architecture... even Tyranid sections from a impacted hive ship???
Anyway... that would be tricky i'm sure.
I rememeber when Necromunda came out and i couldn't stand GW's printed terrain... i don't think i ever used it... so continue to liberate us from cardboard hell.
Highly promising results! This is shaping up to be a very impressive set. Your attention to detail is very welcome, and it's fascinating to see the process broken down into steps.
