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 Wyrmalla wrote:
@ Dr H

I'll be the only guy at my club with lavatory based objective markers for some time I think. ^^

@ shasolenzabi

Heh, what in that those super mutants are essentially orks? No idea why Bethesda dropped the previous game's canon for that weird business with Vault 87. I suppose they needed to include Super Mutants somehow, but, as with other elements, they could have handled it better.

...Just don't download any one of the loads of 40k related mods though. I think there was even a full conversion planned at some point which fell though.

Just have what I loaded into the X-box console. I have seen some of the space marine armore/weapons mods. Yes, that all the vault 87 descriptors indicate the Mutants from there are more like orks just not fungus -animal hybrids.

Now the feud is on at my thread, Supermutants are always angry as the soda and snack vending machines i have are not working, or empty, they blame my SM-Centurions for this.

A few more filing cabinets were slapped together yesterday. I opted for basic drawers with these ones (just two pieces of plasticard, no runners or sides, like the Fenris Games ones). Once they're painted I may stick in some bits of moldy paper for effect (and 5.56 bullets. Always finding those in filing cabinets).



And more of those office tables too. They're lacking clutter for the moment as I don't know whether to allow them to be placed on any of their faces (like barricades). Drawers on these too.



These are uh.. toilets? ...Maybe? My camera's knacked with the exposure being set way too high for some reason. With these being white too their difficult to photograph. I throw these up anyway to say that my package from Dr H here on Dakka arrived today. The one on the left's supposed to be a makeshift campfire (which I think I took from one of the games). I've 27 of these, so other than regular ones just sitting about in homes I'll have plenty to use as things like flower pots (well radioactive mushrooms) or sources of loot (why do people keep hiding their good stuff in these things?).



Many a new toy was bought last night. Amongst that I picked up a squad of Troopers in Combat Armour, an Exo Suit and a pair of Black Ops soldiers in American Stealth Armour for the Enclave (whom I haven't begun painting yet, but with the upcoming robots would be on par with the NCR in their numbers-discounting all the unpainted other faction stuff I have though).

I'm behind on my courswork (blame the lecturer for not informing me that two weeks of work wasn't necessary) so I'm cut short on how much time I'm willing to spend on my models. Sure I can find time to do some work on them, but that's only extending to making more (which I'm not admitting is a problem just yet). Actually painting the things takes a bit more effort from me unfortunately. I'd like to finish off the robots soon, but that's up to how much sugar I intake. =P

The furniture is awesome! I don't like to read, so I'll just ask. Do you intend to cast these? I would buy them in a heartbeat.

Cast? Probably not. I mean I've never done anything like that before so I wouldn't know how to. The insides of the drawers would be miscasts heaven I suspect, so the cabinets would need to be closed I think. That and I'd actually have to bother with quality control. Right now I'm only putting these together because I'm not in the mood for painting. As a result I didn't spend very long cutting the pieces properly, so they're a bit uneven (with my commissions though I do put a lot more work into cutting the bits right, filling, etc, and well just adding more details in general). Anyone with a clue about resin casting would know more about casting these things up properly, but I have no idea. MDF's probably a better material with all the flat bits.

But... Casting up some bits and pieces may be an options if there's interest (after my college course is finished though, too much stressing right now sorry).

Oh, and again, if there's interest, I'll stick up tutorials for making any of the scratch built terrain pieces I make.

Yeah, the white resin is a right pain in the rear to photo well. Best results I've had are with the light from an angle that accentuates the shadows, but still not what I would call "good" photos.

What do you think of the bogs up close?
Good to see an inventive use already.

If my camera wasn't shot I'd probably give a go at lighting them to achieve maximum contrast and put them through photoshop, but yeah, like you said, white objects are a to photograph. Don't worry, like the Deathclaw, I'll take a photo of them painted (with a bit of dirt) and see if they turn out better.

Ah, they're fine. Breaking the bowls from the sprues doesn't impede the detail. The flash is a given, and not particularly difficult to remove. With the cisterns I'm concerned over how strong the attaching resin stand is, and may replace it with a bit of brass rod later on, but I'll see how they hold up. The connecting pipe could do with having an insert in the top of the bowl for ease of positioning them and stability perhaps (I just drilled one in). Probably not something others would think of, but the cistern's not having their tops on could have been useful (in the Fallout games people have a habit of hiding things in them). Varying levels of water is something I may have a go at too, but its hardly a noticeable detail, nor would most probably be buying so many as I did so they may not considering making their own toilets more distinct from one another. The height's fine. I think my own one's taller, but with 28mm scale the number of different sizes of models means that whatever size they were models would still be too large or too small for them. I'll have to see how strong the material is as I'm considering cutting up a few of them to represent shattered bowls.

Hmn, and I'll need to chase up the guy making my Vault bits maybe. I'd like to put together some bathroom specific pieces (ie cubicles attached to the walls, with another set of pieces with sinks and hand dryers).

Oh and have you considered making urinals? Youknow, just so you have a complete set.

Thanks for the feedback.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Ah, they're fine. Breaking the bowls from the sprues doesn't impede the detail. The flash is a given, and not particularly difficult to remove.

Not having worked with resin before, I was quite pleased how easy it is to clean up the casts.

With the cisterns I'm concerned over how strong the attaching resin stand is, and may replace it with a bit of brass rod later on, but I'll see how they hold up.

Yeah, to be in scale it had to be thin and that does lead to potential fragility. I used a paperclip for the original, but brass rod would work too.

The connecting pipe could do with having an insert in the top of the bowl for ease of positioning them and stability perhaps (I just drilled one in).

Yeah. My original actually had a hole for the purpose, but it was off centre so I though giving someone a flat surface to drill was better than an off centre hole.

Probably not something others would think of, but the cistern's not having their tops on could have been useful (in the Fallout games people have a habit of hiding things in them). Varying levels of water is something I may have a go at too, but its hardly a noticeable detail, nor would most probably be buying so many as I did so they may not considering making their own toilets more distinct from one another.

Yeah, I did consider making the cisterns hollow, but it was proving a bit too hard to achieve so I ended up carving a sealed cistern from a piece of sprue with a bit of card on top to look like a lid.
That, and adding the rim to the bowl, are things I will do for mark II... one day...

The height's fine. I think my own one's taller, but with 28mm scale the number of different sizes of models means that whatever size they were models would still be too large or too small for them. I'll have to see how strong the material is as I'm considering cutting up a few of them to represent shattered bowls.

I went back and forth over how large to make them (originally calculating the dimensions) and ended up with a height that was at the back of the knee of an Eldar guardian (if it's on the base with him, they look really tiny with a model on a base next to them).
With careful scoring/drilling I think it should be pretty easy to create broken bogs.

Yeah, urinals are on the list.

Look forward to seeing what you do with them.

Ah right, I forgot to stick up this scale shot too. Again, yeah it could have been better. Bubba the Elvis Impersonator will be the model for the painted scale shots too I suspect. Some cruel irony that he's just the model I use for scale shots.



Hmn, I may look into making a seat and lid for these too at some point for those toilets in use in civilised areas. Were there plastic seats in use in the 50s? Maybe all the wooden furniture on them's why none of the ones in the Fallout games have any lids... (where else did all that firewood in that toilet come from?).

Dr. H makes some excellent toilets. But I agree. Urinals and tubs especially would round out the set nicely.

Ha. Well your Elvis impersonator look in good shape, so he should be fine around the toilets.

I did always wonder where all the seats had gone in the games and why no-one has replaced them. Maybe they don't use toilets any more and that's why it's safe to drink from them...

Thanks Dave.

...for a relative value of 'safe'....

Perhaps the wearing of toilet seat around one's neck is a sign of power within certain communities? Maybe once I've worked out how to make the seats I'll make a tribal elder or raider wearing one...

Raider with toilet seat around the neck? awesome!

Here's a few of the filing cabinets that I painted up (no use in showing all twelve of them). They're still short of paper scraps, but I don't have any PVA glue to hand right now to add them. The blood stains on the middle one? Well you know that scene in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels where the guy has his head slammed in a car door...?



And you lot thought I'd be using those things in a civil setting...

Barrels. Yup. I've had these sitting painted for a while, I just couldn't be arsed basing them. The yellow ones read "H2o", though I wouldn't be so confident drinking from them.



A very WIP Brahmin. I've only laid out the structure for it right now, all of that needs texturing. Its also missing its second head. I had a search for a spare horse one to no avail, and the results of my sculpting one didn't turn out great. So we'll see what happens. I think the base models (I have five) come from a series of models listed under "Border Reiver" if anyone happens to be looking for similar ones (I can sift out some similar models that're still packaged if anyone needs the full details).



Till next time. I'll work on the Brahmin and finishing off some pieces that have been sitting about for a while. The furniture that I made over the week's started being painted, though for the moment I'm leaving off adding any clutter on them bar paper scraps. Future furniture certainly will though (I just forgot to add any before I started painting them). I should make little packs of cigarettes, magazines, lunchboxes etc at some point (though I'd probably have to cast them up for ease).

Very cool cabinets and barrels, now for the second head for the Brahmin

Love the cabinets! I have a couple Armorcast Brahmin I need to paint up one of these days.

I made it through the last of the office furniture tonight. I'll stick together some other bits some time. These bits still need to have waste paper stuck to them, so I'll see about buying some PVA glue and an old newspaper come Monday.


Lavvy/ campfire


Brotherhood of Steel
Circle of Steel Agent


Another one by the same manufacturer as the other female agent (who I actually came across another model of, but in a different pose, but forgot to pick up). She's posing dynamically atop that desk because the model's in a horrible pose for photographing btw.

A WIP of a wasteland knight. I seen a model of a knight with an SVD a few weeks ago, but it was too expensive. The original model for this however was 50p I think. Someone who's looted a museum I guess for a suit of armour. Good at fending off spiked baseball bats, bullets not so much. Perhaps a little more suited to the Across the Dead Earth setting.


Now to go back to my wonderful course work. =P

Ok, just a little idea I've had bounding in my head. If I were to make a modular kit from which to build shacks from, would it be preferred if the shack's walls were made up for two 6'' x 3'' (front and back) and two 3'' x 3'' (sides) pieces, plus a 6'' x 3'' roof piece, or rather four/six 3'' x 3'' pieces with either one or two 3'' x 3'' roof pieces? Having everything made from 3''x3'' pieces would give more options, but more could be don with the larger 6'' x 3'' face. I'd also have to be a bit clever about how the roof pieces slotted together if going for 3''x 3'' too. I'm inclined towards the 3'' x 3'' faces, but unsure.

The floor pieces would come in 3'' x 3'' segments. Problem here: wall inserts. The way I'm thinking the walls should have tabs on the bottom that slot into indents on the floor piece. Now, what if people want to make larger rooms? These tabs would be exposed. I could include pieces of various sizes to cover up these inserts, but that could become messy fast (they'd only be like 0.25'' across).

And... The way I'm designing these entails that they'd be glued together (you paint them first of course though, otherwise the interiors would be a bitch to paint). It would be possible to have them so that wouldn't be necessary, but that's outside the bounds of my capability (I'm using plasticard and balsa wood, with, if I ever go anywhere with this, the final pieces being made out of herculite plaster ...probably. Its up in the air).

Obligatory crap paint diagram. The shapes with the two interior rectangles are walls. The shapes with the four rectangles/rim are the roof pieces.


And are those dimensions all right? I was just trying to keep things symmetrical with the 3'' height. My plasticard sheets are 12'' x 6'', so it just makes things easier to have the bits multiples of three. 3'' is roughly double the height of a Hasslefree Bubba model (he's what I use for scaling everything). At that height the doors to the shacks would be set at 2'' x 1.5'' roughly to allow access (I'm still pondering if my existing door style will be easy enough for others to work with, or just to make the doors back of the wall's design; ie non removable).

Ah, anyways. This is purely a theoretical endeavour right now. The idea's been in the back of my head for a bit, I'm just trying to work out how plausible it could be. I've had guys at my club asking me to sell my terrain on a larger scale than I am currently (right now I put together pieces on demand-yes at a higher quality than that crappy office furniture-, rather than creating batches and placing them on Ebay), this is me wondering if that's achievable. =P

Nice work on the various furniture pieces. Especially like the desks and shelves, they both look spot on.

I would always encourage the customisability of the 3x3 pieces. You could then offer varying sizes of building by just adding walls/floor/roof pieces, rather than one single kit.

If you make the tabs small enough, then it's not a problem for people to chop them off if they want to build them differently.

And filling gaps is always expected with models.

Hmn, keeping things to 3'' x 3'' would reduce the size of the molds required. Didn't think about that.

As the roof pieces would overlap with other bits though, it'll be hellish to design the pieces so they can be slotted together in any manner. Eugh...

When I say tabs I mean there being a square indentation located in each of the floor piece's corners. I'm trying to work out a way of building the connecting pieces that has minimal impact on the floor piece. Personally I wouldn't be bothered by the exposed inserts, which could easily by covered up by a bit of plasticard, but others may be.

Ah and on miscasts. Again, this is all just an idea, but depending on the number that would be cast I'd see about handling any filling on my end. Herculite doesn't produce that many bubbles, but the largest pieces that I've seen cast are 2''x2'' ish, so that'd be something I'd need to look into.

Ok, back to playing with rulers and plasticard. The actual detailing of the pieces is the easy part. Working out how the bits will fits together's what'll kill me. =P

Yeah, minimising the size of the mould is also a good thing to think about.

You'll also want to think about how the walls meet in the corners. Otherwise you end up with sides that are 3" plus the thickness of the adjoining wall(s). Then your roof won't fit.

I'll see about posting up a test design in a bit (right now I have four walls done with the square corner style). I'm not sure about how I'm currently designing them. I'd rather have the corners correct via diagonal slots to form a square. However that would mean cutting square pieces of balsa in half, which would be a real bother.

Here's the two options I've came up for with the corners. The one on the left's just rectangular lengths of balsa wood which would take up more floor space, but be easier to cast I think. The other uses triangular lengths, that take up a third less space. The bottom two diagrams represent how the double sized (or more) walls would work. They would require an additional piece to be made which slots in the gap created by the corner connecting pieces. In the case of the triangular corners this plug piece would be necessary as I don't find triangular pillars aesthetic. The square pillars however may not need this piece.

Need advice again. Opening doors. Yay, nae? Yay = more work.

What this design doesn't allow without a redesign:

Interior walls:
There's just too much overlap to use the existing walls between two floor panels. For that to work the floor pieces would need to be redesigned to have a lip along their edges. The walls would also need to have a small detailess area along their lower halves and have their design changed to make it a little more difficult to position them. See Diagram.

* Black represents usable area for detailing. The shapes on the left are the existing design, the ones on the right would be the modified ones. The top shapes represent the floor pieces, bottom are the walls.


So I could adapt the current design to allow this, but it would create a chequered effect on the floors and lead to these parts looking more uniform. Not my idea of a shack. So separate interior walls pieces would need to be created, not good.

Second Floors:
Possible, but they would need the addition of dedicated pieces, rather than reusing the existing floor panels (there's no rim for another wall to latch onto if a floor piece is put on the top edge of a wall piece). Creating these as well as an accessible roof tile set -low walls, roof hatches, ladders- wouldn't be too difficult though. However they could lead to there being a load of unused pieces if bunched in with the regular set, so I'd either have to include them in small numbers or put together a roof kit addon or something.

Ah, and and the way that things are designed means that a building could be a couple of floors tall and remain stable (hopefully, I'd need to start casting these to see). Again, these aren't snap fit. Glueing the bits together and using the inserts as guidelines is necessary. I'm designing these to be simple to put together, but that's based on my own competence/ willingness to pull out a hammer and hit things if they don't fit exactly.

So in summary a redesign of most of the pieces may be in order. Luckily I've only detailed a few pieces so far.

But... that's all assuming that people would want to do those things. I mean would these kits just being single floor buildings be enough? I'd just not want to have to rework these things down the road to include more functionality.

Here's three test pieces; a wall (exterior face, the interior one will be detailed as well) and two floor panels. I'm debating altering the floor design to include more wood and dirt, and use those two pieces as second floor ones (with a bit of modification). Oh and those three pieces work placed on any of their edges (due to them being 3''x3''), allowing for more variety from a single panel.



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And a test fit of the panels to form a shack. That roof piece isn't the final bit, I just stuck some overhanging plasticard to give an idea of what I'll do with them (at the moment I'm considering creating roof panels as a set of corners, middles, edges, etc, as using the same parts for all areas would be needlessly complex).


*The interior wall on the left here hasn't had its tabs finished. Nor are any of the tabs really done. Again, they're just guidelines for where to place the panels, using them alone isn't going to hold the shack together (though uh, yeah, that shack in the pictures isn't glued). Someone with more knowledge on the matter could probably create a snap fit kit, but I'm happy with just glueing together the bits.


Back to work now. And hey, would people be actually interested in these?

Definitely interested, watching closely.

As to doors, make them a separate item. Another words, have door ways, and doors available, That way people can have it open closed or even not there.

I would also not worry too much about some of these things dude, your market are modellers.

I'm wondering whether then that the doors should slot into a hole, or the interior of the door should have a lip about the edge to hold it. The former's easier to do, and means less chance of miscasts I suspect. I suppose I could also make all the doors the same size so they could be interchanged.

Heh, yeah, but I know that people may not be capable of/willing to use a knife to trim bits or green stuff to fill in the occasional gap.

A WIP of the corner roof pieces (for use with larger shacks, ie in an "L" shape, squares, etc). Not sure about these, should they overhang more? I'll see about including bits with tarpaulin, bricks, chain etc. I'd like to chuck in jerry cans, and well just other interesting pieces like air conditioning units, but I'd have to make them myself as the ones I'm currently using on my other shacks are made by other manufacturers (or youknow, people just buy in these pieces themselves and add them to my kits).

* These aren't glued together, nor are all of the pieces complete. The gaps are a result of this.

I'm sure there's a market for stuff like this...For some ideas on how to fit pieces together have you checked out Malika2's 3D printing blog?

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/555272.page

There's some discussion on there about various ways of putting walls/floors etc together...

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Heh, yeah, but I know that people may not be capable of/willing to use a knife to trim bits or green stuff to fill in the occasional gap.

I had the same worry about my castings. I was aiming for perfection, but when it comes to casting, there's always going to be a little customer work needed to make things fit. Look at any model kit from even the largest manufacturers, trimming and filling gaps are always needed.

And the few customers I've had, have always seemed happy with what I've given them, even when there's a little work to do on them.

Where's the fun in modelling when the kits fit together perfectly anyway...

So long as you produce something unique, there will always be a demand for it.

And for those that are not willing or capable to build the models, you could always offer to build them for a small additional fee.

@ monkeytroll

I'm using something similar to what's going on in that blog, though perhaps a little less streamlined (I don't have the tools to hand to cut my plasticard exactly as I'd like).

@Dr H

Methinks that I should make a wee tutorial once this is all done. Copious amounts of greenstuff, hacksaws and a hammer hopefully won't be in the list of requirements (though who am I kidding?).

Its been said elsewhere that the shacks are too high. They're that size because of the arbitrariness of "that's the size my sheets of plasticard are". Would cutting them down to 2.5'' rather than 3'' be better?

Changing from the larger panels to something offers a larger variety in size is also something that's been asked for. Now to this end I'm considering changing the panels to pieces that are a quarter of the size that they are now (see below). A door piece would be made up of two of these panels (with the top bit having the ability to be used as a window perhaps). I could also then make pieces that are half the size of these quarter pieces to make slightly smaller buildings. However making everything from these smaller panels may lead to the shacks looking a bit messy due to the different faces on each of the wall bits (though I'll see about having details that are mirrored on other panels to prevent this).



This change would mean altering how the pieces fit together. I may remove the tabs and inserts altogether if I may onto the smaller bits as they'd just get in the way. I'll need to sit down a while working out how the bits would connect together, as the number of bits required could spiral if I don't plan correctly. But, I have coursework to finish right now, so I'll have to wait till later in the week to pick this back up.

If this gets of the ground at least they'll be plenty of initial miscasts up for grabs probably.


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* Black rectangle represents a model's base. ...Elvis = Elvis.

Ah, shanty time


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Oh to help get a sense of the paranoia of the cold war period which feeds FO, watc Dr. Strangelove

Was this song in Fallout: New Vegas or just one I modded in? Can't remember.




Dr Strangelove is a great movie. The war room scenes could conceivably be what would have been going on in the same scenes in the Fallout universe. ...Apart from the Russians being America's ally and the whole war being over America creating a Master Race (the energy crisis was something bubbling away, that would have ended with the invention of microfusion cells. All the land grabbing leading up to the Great War was also an issue. However, according to the one of the guys who came up with the whole series it was the rest of the world finding out about F.E.V. and the Captain America style supermen that it could feasibly produce - once the kinks were knocked out- that caused the US to be nuked. The Glow, where F.E.V. originated, being the largest crater in the US attests to this*).

*Which makes Vault 87 having F.E.V. even sillier. What the Chinese/whoever was firing those nukes somehow missed a second location experimenting with the thing they were trying to destroy? ...Of course the Vault's true plans were hidden I suppose, and the information about F.E.V. in West Tek may have been deliberately leaked by a whistleblower within it (or a spy, the Enclave however didn't respond to spies within their own organisation quite so well...).

Of course Six String Samurai's a good un if you're wanting more of the silly side. Damnation Alley's there for aesthetic appeal (if you can be rid of that damn filtering). A Boy and His Dog's there too. And this is turning into a list of post apocalyptic movies.... Mad Max, Waterworld, The Postman (the novel of which Fallout 3/4 are in no way based on. ...nope), The Blood ofHeroes, etc, etc....