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insaniak wrote:

LunaHound wrote:I think you quoted the wrong person insaniak, Im not the one that is saying its infinite. Note the 3 parts in red.

No, I quoted the right person. I was not questioning the original statement, just your interpretation of it. You took what was said and turned it upside down.

What about this part?

Slarg232 wrote:If it's a new product, like most of the Finecast stuff is, then yes, you do have a near infinite amount of demand, until the "New"ness/shinyness wears off.

That just makes no sense at all.

I picked up a finecast Commissar Yarrick the other day. He had one very small loss of detail on his coat trim. Other than that he looks pretty darn nice. Overall I was happy with this purchase.

I am waiting on a Commissar Lord from GW mail order. We will see how that one turns up.

So I called them back today and had them send me another replacement for the ones I gave up on before. They asked me about what previous issues I have had with finecast as the majority of my replacements have been finecast. I told them about all my issues and send the guy an email with this link in it. I don't know if that will actually get anywhere but maybe GW is gonna see the thread. Who knows, probably not but worth a try when they ask about it!

I have a Hellcannon replacement coming in the mail in the next few days, I'll let you know how the replacement is. The first one was BAD. Is it usable? Yes. But it's gonna take a lot of work to make it look right, and it curves a bit to the left. With a new copy coming in, I feel it's acceptable, but Finecast still has some issues. This is only the second FC model I've called over. Everything else has had less issues than metal, when you combine prep time and getting the flash/sprue bitz off.

I would like to point out that I was not slamming metal manufacturers, or indeed anyone. I was simply highlighting a fundamental flaw with metal. I can accept I may have phrased it wrong, I know that high detail in metal models is perfectly possible, I've seen and assembled many nice metal models, like the Zoanthrope (although it is, of course, a swine to assemble). However, barring actual casting errors, resin will almost always produce better levels of detail, simply due to the nature of the material.

Again mate, the evidence out there says otherwise .. take a look at an Infinity miniature, and then re-asses that claim.

The switch to resin was made purely for economic reasons - the switch to 'finer levels of detail' (and, indeed as has often been remarked, it photographs better) was simply a well thought out marketing opportunity for the new material which sought to justify it beyond the above.

Pacific wrote:Again mate, the evidence out there says otherwise .. take a look at an Infinity miniature, and then re-asses that claim.

The switch to resin was made purely for economic reasons - the switch to 'finer levels of detail' (and, indeed as has often been remarked, it photographs better) was simply a well thought out marketing opportunity for the new material which sought to justify it beyond the above.

Metal and resin are both capable of holding extreme amounts of detail. My Lietpold the Black, Wight King, and Enforcer/Cyber Mastiff are on par with some of the best casts I've gotten from Corvus Belli.

We can all agree that metal and resin both are superb mediums for character/individualistic models, yes?

Yes.

Material wise there is nothing wrong with resin.

What people need to realize is, Finecast does not represent what resin is.

LunaHound wrote:Yes.

Material wise there is nothing wrong with resin.

What people need to realize is, Finecast does not represent what resin is.

Finecast is resin though...

All Finecast are resin. Not all resin is Finecast.

Mcdonald's burger contains beef. Not all that contains beef is Mcdonald's burger. Unless Mcdonald's is a part of a restaurant Illuminati who produces ALL the beef of the world (hint: unlikely).

purplefood wrote:

LunaHound wrote:Yes.

Material wise there is nothing wrong with resin.

What people need to realize is, Finecast does not represent what resin is.

Finecast is resin though...

Read the post below what you just wrote :3
think outside the box.


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heartserenade wrote:All Finecast are resin. Not all resin is Finecast.

Mcdonald's burger contains beef. Not all that contains beef is Mcdonald's burger. Unless Mcdonald's is a part of a restaurant Illuminati who produces ALL the beef of the world (hint: unlikely).

/squee yes! you got it.

Kanluwen wrote:

We can all agree that metal and resin both are superb mediums for character/individualistic models, yes?

Yes, that is what I was trying to say!

Kanluwen wrote:

Pacific wrote:Again mate, the evidence out there says otherwise .. take a look at an Infinity miniature, and then re-asses that claim.

The switch to resin was made purely for economic reasons - the switch to 'finer levels of detail' (and, indeed as has often been remarked, it photographs better) was simply a well thought out marketing opportunity for the new material which sought to justify it beyond the above.

Metal and resin are both capable of holding extreme amounts of detail. My Lietpold the Black, Wight King, and Enforcer/Cyber Mastiff are on par with some of the best casts I've gotten from Corvus Belli.

We can all agree that metal and resin both are superb mediums for character/individualistic models, yes?

This is correct.

Polystyrene is less capable of holding detail, though for wargame figures of 15-30mm scale, it's irrelevant.

To express this in another way, if you are looking for sculptural detail in a model you should be buying 54mm and above. Detail isn't what we buy wargame figures for.

If anything they are too detailed and have become cluttered. There seems to be an impression that a high level of 'stuff' happening on the figure, with ridiculous amounts of little fiddly things, means that the figure is high quality. It's become an exercise in manufacturing quality rather than trying to make figures in which all parts of them have some meaning and thought behind them. Perhaps the idea that detail=quality has fallen on its face a bit with Finecast because the 'detail' is just creating opportunities for bubbles to form during casting, but anyway...

Nice detailing are things like buttons and piping on uniform, the DKoK are good examples of these. They are finely made figures with crisp detail, but otherwise look fairly sensible as futuristic soldiers go. What GW usually does for 'detail' is smother the figure in tiny skulls and various other baubles that just make it look cluttered and a bit silly.

Just because you can make something hyper-detailed doesn't mean you should, not when there isn't meaning behind it beyond making it look fussy for the sake of it. I think GW to make their figures look busy and complex to partly justify the prices they put on them. The fact that other manufacturers make simpler models isn't a sign of lower quality, many figures simply look better that way.

I need to understand the reason for the detail being on a figure before being impressed by it. Otherwise, as I said, it's just an exercise in sculpting and casting technique taken to the extreme. Clever, but unnecessary. They could reduce the silly 'detail' making figures more reasonable in appearance and easier to cast, but I suppose GW are hoist by their own petard now. So long have they sold the idea that detail=quality that if they were to simplify figures, for any reason, people would perceive it as proof of a decline in quality.

Howard A Treesong wrote:If anything they are too detailed and have become cluttered. There seems to be an impression that a high level of 'stuff' happening on the figure, with ridiculous amounts of little fiddly things, means that the figure is high quality. It's become an exercise in manufacturing quality rather than trying to make figures in which all parts of them have some meaning and thought behind them. Perhaps the idea that detail=quality has fallen on its face a bit with Finecast because the 'detail' is just creating opportunities for bubbles to form during casting, but anyway...

Nice detailing are things like buttons and piping on uniform, the DKoK are good examples of these. They are finely made figures with crisp detail, but otherwise look fairly sensible as futuristic soldiers go. What GW usually does for 'detail' is smother the figure in tiny skulls and various other baubles that just make it look cluttered and a bit silly.

Just because you can make something hyper-detailed doesn't mean you should, not when there isn't meaning behind it beyond making it look fussy for the sake of it. I think GW to make their figures look busy and complex to partly justify the prices they put on them. The fact that other manufacturers make simpler models isn't a sign of lower quality, many figures simply look better that way.

I need to understand the reason for the detail being on a figure before being impressed by it. Otherwise, as I said, it's just an exercise in sculpting and casting technique taken to the extreme. Clever, but unnecessary. They could reduce the silly 'detail' making figures more reasonable in appearance and easier to cast, but I suppose GW are hoist by their own petard now. So long have they sold the idea that detail=quality that if they were to simplify figures, for any reason, people would perceive it as proof of a decline in quality.

Give an example of a model you think is too cluttered/busy. Not that I'm disagreeing with you , just curious what your particular example would be.

My nomination:

Nothing like being told your model is miscast to motivate you to paint a figure.

Unfortunately, having only my mobile on hand, the pics look ABYSMAL... I guess I can only give my reassurances that it looks better in person.

At any rate, they're so fuzzy I am expecting to get told that it's miscast anyway. Which it is, but not where Lunarhound suggested. The only problems on the figure *at all* are on her hands and the bat on her chest; the hand with the sword has a strange growth and the one around the goblin just looks like it's merged with it somehow... not that noticeable though. The legs are flawless. The bat I have taken a closer picture of; it just looks skewn and asymmetrical.

Edit: all the white spots are either where the paint didn't take (do you have to wash Finecast in soapy water? ) or where there were little air bubbles that made depressions that the paint couldn't get to. I've since cleaned the model up a little as the spots weren't visible except in very bright light.

Edit Edit: Uploaded better images and put them further down.

Yes, you do have to wash finecast.

Sorry, and I don't mean to sound harsh, but your painting isn't really up to where (not comically bad) miscasting will have a huge effect on it. It seems pretty thick and lumpy, and you're not really picking out details. Right now it's pretty low-end TT stuff and it's obscuring as much as exaggerating the sculpt.

Once you're a bit more practised and you're hitting up those details, and trying to get smooth blends going down on larger surfaces, you'll understand more why a lot of the more... skilled? experienced? modellers and painters are really starting to despise this stuff.

In terms of your cast, it looks... ok?... I think. There's something up with her chin, but it doesn't look major. Can't really tell what's going on with the mouth / teeth. The corset seems to have all the points - those missing is a very common problem. The bottom edge of the cloak is raggedy, but I can't really tell if it's bubbling, meant to be there, or poor cleanup. Really can't tell if the rough surface on the skirts is just from thick paintwork or the quality of the cast.

The chin has a bit of a lump on it, not sure why.... I had to cut the mouth up a bit because the teeth had a crap-ton of flash. It could be another miscast.

I'll try take a better picture... perhaps even with another camera if I can find the batteries. All I can say (in a slightly egotistical tone) is that my painting isn't lumpy and I assure you that the model looks fine in person... It's the darned mobile's camera :(

I tried in natural light, as I took the other pictures on full zoom, indoors late at night... but it still looks a bit bad.



I am worried I am starting to look like a primadonna though, so I'll stop whining about how bad the camera is now

It's probably the cast then. In particular the surface on the left side skirt on the bottom image (left as we look at it). It could probably have done with sanding down, or resculpting down the inverted V shaped creases to smooth them in. This isn't always a major issue, but it's certainly not the sort of quality I'd expect on a high-end mini.

I should point out I am most definitely a painter, not a gamer, and I make judgements on minis based on how good a paintjob I think they can take. I want minis that I have to work to do justice to, not that I have to work to make look decent.

That's true, I often ignore Finecast defects because I cba to work on them; glueing and assembly bore me to tears... I'd describe myself as a painter first (I am useless at the game) but I think I definitely want instant-gratification. I have never spent more than 3 days max working on something. I'd say my minis tend to be upper-tabletop quality.

This one was a bit of a departure from my usual style, though, as it was the first time I've used a white undercoat. I also wanted to paint her asap so I could move onto skeletons. I want to finish this army within a month or two.


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I put some better pics up at any rate; I don't think I'll do any better with this camera, so C&C will be taken more objectively and with less protests now

Kilkrazy wrote:Polystyrene is less capable of holding detail...

Polystyrene has nothing to do with it. It's the current two-part injection molds that are less capable of producing detail. Resin and metal casting produces better detail because they are made in a flexible mold that can be pulled away from a model in order to get it out of the mold. You can't do this with metal molds - they're rather anti-flexible if you get my meaning. When working with metal molds, you can achieve greater detail by increasing the amount of components that make up the basic shape of the model or even by increasing the number of metal pieces that make up the assembled mold. Still, as long as you are working with two metal molds that stamp together sandwich style and can't be bent away from the cast to pull out a complex sculpt, you are going to be limited in what you can do. This would be true even if they were injecting resin into those same metal molds.

Is there a reason they don't squeeze in the crispness of details on plastics? I'm asking honestly, since I don't know a whole lot about plastic casting other than the obvious lack of cutaways.

When I look at, say, my plastic Carnifex, at parts like lines of the face, the muscle striations, little bits of extreme detail, they're quite mushy compared to my finecast Hive Guard, Zoanthropes and Forgeworld flyrant, and the few metals in my collection (primarily Infinity sculpts).

I always throught it was due to the plastic used in casting in its liquid form not quite being as thin as metal and resin, and not being able to fill such details as well, so things like that are intentionally a bit mushy.

-Loki- wrote:Is there a reason they don't squeeze in the crispness of details on plastics?

As I said above, it's due to how the molds are made. With injection molding, you basically have two metal bricks that have a design cut into them. These bricks are slapped together with the design forming a hollow cavity. The mold is then shot full of molten plastic. The plastic is cooled and the metal bricks are pulled apart to eject the newly cast sprue. This means that any design detail must facing the direction in which the two mold bricks are brought together or the sprue will be destroyed when the bricks are separated.

It is possible to use more than two bricks in a single mold as seen in this video but that gets really expensive to do and isn't cost effective for making little toy soldiers.

After receiving more and more fault free finecast models, I finally got my event only Skin Wolf from Forgeworld yesterday after buying it at the open day a month ago. It seemed like it was made of finecast, certainly the sprue looked the same. All the parts were fine except for those on the sprue containing the main body of the wolf and an arm, it was almost as is the resin hadn't set properly and was VERY bendy and flexible. I've emailed them asking for a replacement sprue, but it's weird how for me the quality has switched.
I know forgeworld have said that they have used finecast resin in the past but still.

With the Skinwolf, check the fingers, especially the pinky finger on the hand holding the corpse. Very commonly bubbled away. I'm waiting on my second replacement of that sprue, and the sprue with the hands on - similar issues with fingers bubbled through. :-(

winterdyne wrote:With the Skinwolf, check the fingers, especially the pinky finger on the hand holding the corpse. Very commonly bubbled away. I'm waiting on my second replacement of that sprue, and the sprue with the hands on - similar issues with fingers bubbled through. :-(

Thanks for that, I've checked and the pinky is there but not half of his thumb. Really frustrating as it's already a month late. I really think Forgeworld should not use finecast if this is how it's turning out. Also just noticed the cloth hanging down between the wolf's legs is tissue paper thin and see through. Sigh.

Just got a Necron Lord w/ rez orb.
Every well, a few bubbles, but it was near perfect.
Better then the marines.

I've just had to ring for a replacement necron overlord. Fething annoying. Cape has holes, left leg missing a chunk. They guy said the miscast rate is similar to that of their metal. I've been 3 for 3 which have been un-useable,
my lamia needed replacing - no hands, my castellan crowes banner was nonexiistant and now the cron lord.

Now I have to waste *my* time going back to GW in town or to the post office to send the blasted thing off.

RAAAAAAAAGE!