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 Kosake wrote:

 adamsouza wrote:
10 years from now, the whole process will probably be point and click, but by then they will have figured out some ridiculous DRM tool to prevent IP infiringement.

I have yet to witness a single successfull way to prevent piracy of any kind that does not bite the company right back into it's flabby buttcheeks.
Music? Haven't even heard about a successfull protection mechanism.
Movies? Same here.
Games? Either you provide a decent platform for your game that actually works and makes having an original copy enjoyable (think steam, battle.net, GOG, GMG,...) or your malfuntioning overzealous DRM mechanism drives your customers off (EA had to remove the installation limit on RA3, Ubisoft got a horrible reputation (and their games were pirated even more because playing the game cracked was preferable to having to put up with whatever bastard offspring of starforce they used).

And even if by some miracle 3D files will have some sort of working, unremovable DRM protection - what about models you design for yourself or get from other artists on the web? Yeah, you may not be able to print the original GW(R) Rhino Phobos Pattern(TM)(C), but someone's custom-made Awesomus Pattern might look much better to begin with (considering the Taurox and the orkonauts and that SW flyer, making better desings than GW doesn't seem to be that difficult).

There is a technology which goes hand-in-hand with 3D printing which makes ANY form of copyright protection absolutely impossible:

3D scanners.

Which have begun to move to the palm of your hand, as people develop AI to seamlessly assemble photographs from a cell-phone into a 3D mesh.

This means that EVEN IFF you manage to restrict a file to being able to be printed exactly once all someone would need to do to duplicate it would be to take a few photos of it to "scan" the figure to create a new, printable, 3D mesh.

Eventually, 3D printing is going to make life extremely difficult for sculptors and modelers, who will be able to profit exactly once from any design they make.

Unless, of course, you find a way to make it preferable to buy the figures rather than the file to print them.

Overall, though, in ten years time it is going to look very bleak for 3D artists who do not have a patron.

MB

Or game companies become the equivalent of music streaming services--paying for access to the periodic expansions, and balancing and rules support. And, the under rated benefit of being able to point to something produced by a neutral third party and say "That's the game we agreed to play. Those are the rules, these are the stats, and those are the scenarios."

Then again, look at game like Infinity with free PDF rules and the option to buy a hard copy rulebook. Even if you have a really expensive home printer, the store bought rulebook takes less time to get, is less hassle, and probably looks nicer. I mean, the printer/scanner sitting next to me doesn't do book binding and doesn't have the same DPI that the publisher does.

"Give us money and we'll send you these models that you could print yourself, but in exchange for your money we take care of making sure they got printed nicely the first time."

 solkan wrote:

"Give us money and we'll send you these models that you could print yourself, but in exchange for your money we take care of making sure they got printed nicely the first time."

Works as long as the prices are reasonable. Let's do the math.
A kilogram-spool of plastic for 3D-printers costs about 15 bucks, give or take (at least it did so over a year ago when I was looking for it). The average space marine weights roughly 5g. That means we get about 200 dudesmen per kilogram. Even the most basic core tacticals box costs around 40 $ for 10 dudes. So for the same price we get 2,7 kg of plastic or 540 attempts to print it right. I guess even with some minor flaws, for most of us non-professional non-godlike-level painters and modellers it is preferable to get 5400% more models for the same price at "serviceable" quality, never mind the "basecoating and a layer of drybrush counts as painted to start playing, right?"-guys.

 solkan wrote:
Or game companies become the equivalent of music streaming services--paying for access to the periodic expansions, and balancing and rules support. And, the under rated benefit of being able to point to something produced by a neutral third party and say "That's the game we agreed to play. Those are the rules, these are the stats, and those are the scenarios."

Then again, look at game like Infinity with free PDF rules and the option to buy a hard copy rulebook. Even if you have a really expensive home printer, the store bought rulebook takes less time to get, is less hassle, and probably looks nicer. I mean, the printer/scanner sitting next to me doesn't do book binding and doesn't have the same DPI that the publisher does.

"Give us money and we'll send you these models that you could print yourself, but in exchange for your money we take care of making sure they got printed nicely the first time."

EXACTLY my point (which I may have made badly).

Eventually, though, we will be seeing home printers that do binding (Canon already make one that costs about $700 - and they are not alone). Xerox has made copiers/printers that do several kinds of binding for decades (usually intended for business use, though: corporations and big companies that need reports made).

But even with that eventuality, the cost of other types of binding will drop, resulting in publishers still being able to offer an even higher quality product than could be printed at home (at least for the next 15 to 20 years).

The same is true of miniatures.

It will likely be the case that companies will be able to provide a better quality product for sale than one could get by 3D printing.

I know that even with very high resolution 3D printing, I STILL need to sand, or finish the surface of a 3D printed master to remove printing artifacts (usually layer pixelation) from the miniature. Only wax stereo-lithography does not require this kind of finishing, but it is the most expensive 3D printing process there is for miniatures, and it requires that the printed pieces be used as masters in a lost-wax process to create usable miniature masters (you have a multiple step process that leads to more expensive, but higher detailed masters).

Even the new CLiP technology does not approach the soft-medium Stereo-Lithography in resolution, and the Stereolithography process isn't ever going to be suitable for home use (it would require owning a kiln and a swing-arm caster, as well as a furnace that could meant brass or bronze to create the masters for the miniatures, in addition to the "3D printer").

So manufacturers will retain an edge in satisfying a demand that typical home 3D printing could not provide, exactly like the Infinity Rule Books.

MB


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kosake wrote:

 solkan wrote:

"Give us money and we'll send you these models that you could print yourself, but in exchange for your money we take care of making sure they got printed nicely the first time."

Works as long as the prices are reasonable. Let's do the math.
A kilogram-spool of plastic for 3D-printers costs about 15 bucks, give or take (at least it did so over a year ago when I was looking for it). The average space marine weights roughly 5g. That means we get about 200 dudesmen per kilogram. Even the most basic core tacticals box costs around 40 $ for 10 dudes. So for the same price we get 2,7 kg of plastic or 540 attempts to print it right. I guess even with some minor flaws, for most of us non-professional non-godlike-level painters and modellers it is preferable to get 5400% more models for the same price at "serviceable" quality, never mind the "basecoating and a layer of drybrush counts as painted to start playing, right?"-guys.

You are talking about a technology that will likely never produce an acceptable gaming miniature.

Extrusion deposition printing has a resolution of roughly .25mm - .1mm.

That is HUGE on a 28mm miniature. It produces pixelations on the flat surfaces that take hours and hours to smooth. And the plastic used in this kind of printing is sort of like the plastic used in soft-plastic miniatures: freakishly hard to get a smooth surface with, or trim without it stretching and pulling.

I tried to find an image to support what I am talking about (but being on an iPad limits my ability to link or embed images). Do a search for "Images of Makerbot Printed items" to get an idea of what I mean.

In doing so you will see another reason why extrusion-deposition 3D printing will never work for miniatures as it exists now:

Overhangs.

Overhangs require extensive supports to print, requiring even more finishing work (roughly an hour to clear the supports on a part like an arm on a 28mm miniature).

So, for your "200 - 500 miniatures" you will be spending about 500 - 1000 hours to clean them and prep them to paint.

This is another reason why manufacturers only print masters for products to be manufactured in some other process, even with higher quality 3D printing.

3D printing is GREAT for printing things you need ONE or two of. But it SUCKS for doing mass production of ANY kind.

MB

@BeAfraid:

I know the tech still needs a lot of refining. But from what I understand there is no actual physical limit involved here. Those .25mm are what can be achieved with current tech reasonably cheap. It's not a hard physics-imposed limit. All hail Mars, the Emperor will provide, in time...

 Kosake wrote:
@BeAfraid:

I know the tech still needs a lot of refining. But from what I understand there is no actual physical limit involved here. Those .25mm are what can be achieved with current tech reasonably cheap. It's not a hard physics-imposed limit. All hail Mars, the Emperor will provide, in time...

But they are not really "cheap" if you have to invest 1000 hours in cleaning and prep work.

At minimum wage in the USA ($7.50) that is $7,500 of cost on top of the material. Material costs for goods are not all there is.

And this does not even take into account the time it would take to print all of those figures (roughly two to three days).

The issue is not so much the physics.

And, "In time."

Well, duh! Of course in another five to ten years we will see advances that might make home printing an option (having worked in this field for a long time, It is likely to be closer to ten years than to five).

3D printing is just a horrible substitute for manufacturing methods. Even CLiP technologies are not going to eliminate a lot of the problems that make manufacturing certain items difficult via 3D printing.

MB

There are people who raise their own vegetables and chickens. It is cheaper.

Most folks will always choose to pay someone else to do it and stop by the market.

It is easier than learning a new skill set and buying new tools.

I think this is the future of 3D printing.

For the hard core modelers it will be a viable option. The average person will take the easier path and just buy models the old way.

While I agree with some of those points, I think the bias is a bit off.

Ask someone who lives in an apartment to raise their own vegetables or chickens. Even the home owners that I know who have their own gardens don't have yards anywhere near large enough to produce more than a trip to the grocery store.

Growing your own vegetables and chickens may involve giving other people less money, but it requires more land (which costs money) and more time (which could be spent doing other things, like making money or playing wargames).

I mean, a few years ago, my brother was trying to talk me into buying a laser cutter. The most compelling reason for me not to get one was "I have nowhere to put it. I would have to rent a house instead of an apartment if I bought this."

 solkan wrote:
While I agree with some of those points, I think the bias is a bit off.

Ask someone who lives in an apartment to raise their own vegetables or chickens. Even the home owners that I know who have their own gardens don't have yards anywhere near large enough to produce more than a trip to the grocery store.

Growing your own vegetables and chickens may involve giving other people less money, but it requires more land (which costs money) and more time (which could be spent doing other things, like making money or playing wargames).

I mean, a few years ago, my brother was trying to talk me into buying a laser cutter. The most compelling reason for me not to get one was "I have nowhere to put it. I would have to rent a house instead of an apartment if I bought this."

I was going to point this out. My mother is a botanist and horticulturalist (Agronimist), and had dealt with the trope that raising your own food is "cheaper."

Only in the Third World (Developing world) where that is ALL you do: Grow the food you are going to eat. It is called subsistence farming.

In the USA, Western Europe, and in Developed Asia (Urban Korea or China, and all of Japan) only the wealthy can afford to grow their own food, because they are the only people capable of owning the required capital (land, primarily) to produce enough food.

For those not independently wealthy, particularly in the Hipster Scene, raising a few chickens, growing your own herbs, and producing roughly enough produce for a week or so remains a "hobby" in which they mostly gain a smug self-satisfaction that anything else (because they aren't helping the environment with that they are doing).

3D printing remains something that is Identical to this, in that a person must be wealthy enough to afford the infrastructure to support a 3D printer that is capable of producing usable miniatures, or they own a toy printer (like a Makerbot) that they use to make largely wasteful items that could be more easily bought at a store (and which work better). Some artists use 3D printers, and for that role it is well suited (producing one-off 3D designs not intended to be reproduced).

And YES the technology is getting better (how many times need this be repeated???), but it is not improving so fast to be a significant game changer for the typical gamer.

It will alter the way manufacturers produce their masters over the next decade, but it will not replace traditional manufacturing methods prior to the next decade at the earliest (even CLiP technology will not likely do this, and it is at least a few years away, given the difficulties in scaling production of the printers, and then tooling up a factory to produce the printers - which the current group working toward this goal has MASSIVELY underestimated the difficulties involved)

MB

Hello guys i have read all the comments, i would like to share my point of view as 3D modeler with printed and produced miniatures..

There will be always those who will have their things made in-house, and those who will buy: you can think of a man who buys a PDF (if it is not free, but there arent free miniatures so this option doesnt count here), a BOOK, or make a "ilegal" photocopied version, because he cant not find the book , cant buy it because it is expensive, or because he has no close book shops, adn the book + shipping make it way more expensive and so, he decides to just photocopy another guy book..

So, there will be people that will see unnecesary to buy 3D printer, take care of it (maintenance), buy the consumables and learn to use the softwares to JUST PRINT 3D models made by other, or to also learn to sculpt, and will just buy ALREADY produced miniatures and convert it, put bits from here and there and woila! "customization done" , those will be the majority always.

ANd then, a smaller portion of hobbysts with "lot of free time", will buy the pritner, learn to use it, take care, find good raw materials provider(printing materials), and find the space where to put the printer A PROPER, CLEAN space, and from ther they will do their own models and bits.

And here is where the discussion enters a spiral of doom (?: what do you mean with printing OWN MINIS... good quality 25 MICRONS (40 layers per MILIMETERS), or poor quality 200 microns ( 0,2 mm) prints that are nonsense? you would not buy at a store not even at 10cents, but you would spend a lot of energy (eletrical) and time and the whole process of setting the printer to get it? i would prefer to print a 2D coloured sticker and stick it to a plastic standee.

SO, i guess that we are talking about good high quality miniatures.. that now and always will be expensive with home printers, (if in the future home printer that reach 25 microns are available, they will make it more expensive to produce than by empress, its always like that). right now a 25microns model in 28mm scale costs +120 dollars.

You have to think that, yes, the tecno will advance and there will be home printers with good quality, faster and cheaper, but at the same time the tecnology industrial production will advance, so there will be also fast, good quality and cheap means of production, with companies that have all the infrainstructure to keep it cheaper.

While in home NO, it wont be never that cheap, not in means of PIECE, because yes, you will print it and the money in material useed will be low because you are not selling and adding a extra value as it were a product, however, you spent lots of hours ONLY to have it printed, you were not able to use that time to PAINT, make sceno, or even PLAY, time that is already few cause of "life" (work, studie etc etc)...

SO, it is worth? that with the false idea of saving money, you are actually losing money and TIME that you will never get it back? your money is already an indicator that you sepnt time working, so you will spend again, more time and more money?

In resume, as i said, it will be the FEW that will actually buy the printers to constantly use them and maybe because they see a way of making money, more than making then making a hobby (at least you are making money with something you like, but you are not doing HOBBY, painting, playing)

However this does NOT stop NO ONE, to , learn 3D sculpting and making own models and TERCIARIZE the printing, and you will receive an already done piece, that you maybe will have to clen and thats all...
But what kind of minis? HEROES, champions characters etc, that are REALLY SPECIAL AND UNIQUE, designed BY YOU.

You want to have an army as well? ok, print 1 archer, 1 spearmen and 1 mounted unit and send them to mould, and make pewter copies at 1 dollar each, 3d printing never will be that fast and cheap.

In resume 3D printing , is for "one off" and for "one off for moulding and production ends".


If i have to give ap ersonal example, i modelled miniautures, had them printed and made moulds out of them to have production made (yes, as a """company""", but i am a 1 person company for now)

Out of this:



i got this masters for moulding (after doing a mould to the printed piece)




In conclusion, the most close way of mixing 3D print with customizing, is that companies havea list of "customizable miniatures", lets say that they have the head quarters of each faction in that list, and for an extra money you can have it modified in pose, facial expresion blabalbal , but not 2 or 3 GENERIC poses like "create your hero" , 100% customizable pose, we are talking about a sculptor modifing the model for you, and then have it printed (paying what it takes, to have a tournament/event legal/official miniature customixed in LIVE by an sculptor).

You know, in house stuff will be always the less, like those EPIC modellers that make BIG EPIC scenarios, dioramas and painting workds, those are the 2% of the hobby comunity ,and taht kind of people is more likely eager to get in 3D printing and the WHOLE world that it carries.

As info , generally speaking, sculpting a generic 28mm model costs no less than 300 dollars, costing an average of 10 dollars per milimeter, so that, a 50mm miniature will cost you 500 dollars, and why? because it is an investment, you are actually PAYING a comision to a professional sculptor, however of course that customizing already done models, like lets say a on-foot general would cost "20 dollar facial expresion change, 50 dollars arms/torso change, 50 dolalrs legs customization, 15 dollar shield logo change" etc etc

Essentially echoing the points I have been making through this entire thread.

MB

Yes , i wanted to say "as XXXX and XYXY said.." but i decided to writte it all and joint the points togheter in one single reply.

I mean, even i, that sculpts miniatures, dont find it "cheaper" to buy instal and maintain a 3D printer, faster easier and with a good result print, is to terciarize the print.

Salutes!

 Menhir Games wrote:
Yes , i wanted to say "as XXXX and XYXY said.." but i decided to writte it all and joint the points togheter in one single reply.

I mean, even i, that sculpts miniatures, dont find it "cheaper" to buy instal and maintain a 3D printer, faster easier and with a good result print, is to terciarize the print.

Salutes!

I sculpt miniatures AND have access to every form of current 3D prototyping technology there is, yet I still would not use it for anything but producing masters.

In fact, the company which owns all of the machinery only uses the CADCAM mills to manufacture the end-product.

Everything else produces molds, masters, or one-off parts.

BTW, from looking at your work... I would invest in a modeling program like Silo to create your base-meshes.

ZBrush is good for doing simpler modeling, but for those who have not been using it long, it is easy to cause distorted proportions when sculpting (in the same way that working with epoxy putties can cause "inflation" in parts being sculpted, digital sculpting produced a sort of "digital drift," where the lack of haptic feedback causes parts of a sculpt to drift off in the direction of the tool).

Working with a base-mesh that has the roughed out anatomy helps to prevent that drift, as you are only detailing the sculpt, rather than pulling out the mesh using Z-spheres and Dynamesh.

MB