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I've been modeling for a long time but I've never really tried terrain. I recently built a gaming table with a simple brown felt top, and I would like to add some good terrain but I don't know where to start. Does anyone know of some really great terrain tutorials?

Also, I know foam or foam core (or other variations of those words) is used commonly in terrain for basing and building, but i don't know what that means. Is that something one could get from Wal-Mart or Lowe's, and what exactly is it?

Thanks!

hi

Im not in the USA so things may be called different. But the foam you mean by the sounds of it, is the insulation foam. It comes in pink or blue and in different thicknessess. You can use a hot wire cutter to cut it or a stanly knive/box cutter. There is a youtube collection of a guy who makes a gaming table over like 24-25 steps that i have found really helpful. Hes from America so where he says to get the stuff will help you. His name is : eq2templar.

You can use polystryene, comes in like white form and when you buy a CD player or TV its usually packed with this stuff. Although its super messy and you cant really get it all smooth if thats the look you want.

I find i just surf youtube for random things like : warhammer terrain, making model hills etc and different stuff comes up. I bought a book about how to make terrain from GW, although at 50$ AU its very expensive but it says some things like using the cardboard that corrogated for ork buildings, Using paper towel dipped in PVA glue, and such.

I did find some random blog about using sprues from your models as terrain. It may have even been on here i found it. I dont remember, sorry.

Goodluck and post some hints if you find any for the rest of us!!!

Doing a search for 'terrain' in the Painting & Modeling tutorial forum gets you these results:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/jforum.page?module=search&action=search&forum=68&match_type=all&sort_by=time&search_keywords=terrain


Also, searching for the 'terrain' category in the articles section of Dakka brings up these results:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Category:Terrain



That should give you some stuff to look through.

What type of terrain are you trying to make? Hills, rocks, fantasy buildings, future city, forests?

I was going to try and start with some ruins or buildings and maybe a few hills and forests (with the pre-made trees). Ultimately I wanted to be able to get a bunch of buildings (ruins and not) made so I can do a large cityscape.

Thanks for the links, I have some reading to do.

Hills are easy, and can be used by a variety of scales.
They were some of the first pieces I ever made.

The white foam CAN be smoothed up and made to look decent, but takes some work with a thin plaster coating.
(The same stuff also makes the extruded blue or pink insulation foam more durable, too).

I can suggest to have a look at Terra Genesis :

http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/

The site is quite old but there's loads, especially about scratchbuilding.

+1 for Terraingenesis. Great site.

To the OPs original question foamcore is the foam sandwiched in cardboard. Its lightweight but durable and sticks easily with White/PVA/Elmers glue. Its abour 5-8mm thick (1/4" in old money?) and is ideal for walls.

I'm certain you will be able to pick it up from office supply stores in the US - I get mine from Staples which I think is a US company originally so should be no problem for you to get.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Quick tip for Foamcore, You only really need a very sharp knife and metal ruler to get nice crisp edges but it does blunt knives at an alarming rate. So you might want to pick up spare blades if you are at the shops.

I have found that garage sales are a great place to find buildings. Kids toys can often be converted with very little effort. See my blog in my Sig for an example

Gotta love Dakka's population. Now I have TONS of stuff to look through, and have already started making preparations for building some stuff.

Thanks all!