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G'day all,

I'm away from home for the next little while and was thinking what I can do on the hobby in the mean time. One crazy idea I had today was to use papercraft as an alternative to painting tanks.

Ok, so for those who don't know, papercraft ("paperhammer") is just making vehicles from folding and gluing paper templates, typically the idea being for making proxy models quickly and cheaply (no one want to buy and build 9 leman russes and then decide they're terrible). However, I was thinking, why not make higher quality templates and use it instead of painting. You could still buy your vehicles from GW, that's what I intend to do (as papercraft on it's lonesome has too many flaws and frankly the money for buying the tanks isn't an issue, it's the time).

So what I'm thinking, spend a day or two photoshopping some nice templates, buy the models, undercoat them black, then paste the printed paper templates on and obviously do some touching up here and there.

For example, this took me a couple of hours to whip up in GIMP, now, I'm a complete and utter GIMP/photoshop newb, maybe in my entire life I've spent an hour or so on GIMP and 0 hours on photoshop, and it shows in this image! But none the less, to achieve that same effect at that level of quality actually painting the model itself would take me, I dunno, a day. GIMP has lots of lovely features that can take the place of weathering powders, fading like you might achieve with an airbrush, lots of stuff, making basic highlighting/shading/weathering trivial. It would take me a long time to achieve that same effect by painting.



Obviously that's just proof of concept that I can actually create something in GIMP, the final version will need to actually use templates that will be cut out and folded up to cover the tank. And I'll add lots of nice "freehand" designs as well

I don't expect it to be easy, and I don't expect to be able to cover the entire model, but hopefully the bits I can't cover can be touched up mostly with black/dark brown/dark grey (since a lot of bits I can't easily paper are crevices anyway) and a couple of bits I'll need to colour match and touch up by brush later.

The idea is mostly, well, I want like 3 or 4 Rhinos, a Razorback or two, a couple of Predators. So even if it takes me a week or so to make the templates and a few hours to glue them in place on each model, it's nothing compared to the weeks/months it'd take me to manually paint them to that level. Of course maybe I'm wrong and I'm setting myself up for more work than just painting them the good old fashioned way.

Thoughts? The more I think about it the less I think it would work or it might work but not be practical or just look hideous, but I just wanted to throw the idea out there for some thoughts on it

It could work. You'd need paper that wouldn't let the colour run and to seal it at the end of course. But, some people do it for banners already anyway.

It'd be easier to do full model transfers, instead of paper.

Hmmm, full model transfers sound like they'd be very tricky. They'd be so thin and flimsy at that size, easily torn and such. It's going to be tricky to perfectly match the size as it is, I don't want to remake templates, so I'll probably just colour and modify existing templates that people have made, though I don't know how accurate they are. Large scale transfers seem like they'd complicate most things, and they're typically rather transparent anyway.

One problem i can't get my head around is the bolt heads. I don't want to jsut shave them off, that'd look terrible, but I'm not sure how easy it'll be to get the paper to conform over them, or what I'll have to do there.

Same amount of effort, different skills set used.

Yeah, I guess I'm wondering whether or not it would be the same sort of time/effort. The "painting" is definitely quicker with GIMP, as you can airbrush and blend extremely easily and if you make a mistake, ctrl+Z and it's gone

But then I have no idea how much time it'll add to initially make the templates (I was hoping there was good templates already existing, but I can't find any without glaring flaws online). Then how long it'll take to cut them out and glue them in place.

If it were only 1 tank, I think it'd be a waste of time, but I'm thinking for a handful of tanks (especially Space Marines, since a lot of their tanks are based off the Rhino) it might end up being a decent amount faster/less effort.

I don't think it'll look as good as painting, it's more an idea for "speed painting" tanks.

I am a papercraft enthousiast and I have to say that the premise of the post is a bit off. It is certainly cheaper but definitely not quicker to build a nice paper model (in general but it does apply to 40k).
It's fun though and you don't have to paint them. On the other hand the best looking models are hand painted

 Terrinecold wrote:
I am a papercraft enthousiast and I have to say that the premise of the post is a bit off. It is certainly cheaper but definitely not quicker to build a nice paper model (in general but it does apply to 40k).
It's fun though and you don't have to paint them. On the other hand the best looking models are hand painted

Yeah, that's basically what I was wondering. How long does it take to build a papercraft tank? I'd somewhat be surprised if it's anywhere near how long it takes to build and paint a tank from a kit. The Leman Russ in my gallery would have taken me upwards 15 hours to assemble and paint, and I haven't even finished weathering it and haven't done any highlights/shading to it aside from the water stains. To fully finish it, weathered and all, I'd be guessing upward of 20 or 25 hours or more depending on the tank. I didn't think a papercraft model would take that long, especially with the armature of the actual tank underneath.

It all depends on what you want to do. Based on the description of the time you take to finish your tank you take a lot of time in the painting.
Think about it that way, the assembly of the papercraft tank will probably take at least twice as much time as that of the plastic kit (remember you have to manually cut, fold, form, sometimes add additional support for each single ready made part + where you have one part in a plastic kit you'll often have up to 10 in a papercraft since the details have to be modelled as separate additions). On the other hand if you print a colored version your tank once assembled will be base coated (don't tell me basecoating the tank will take hours). You will still need to do your highlights, shading, stains, weathering and what not exactly the same way as with a plastic tank. Take a look on the internet and you'll see that the range of quality of a finished paper model is exactly the same as for a plastic one, from the assembled unpainted to the basic paint to the magnificent model.
By the way it is really fun to do and since you already have good modelling skills you could try it you'll have fun and more respects for what it takes.

Sounds like fun, give it a go

if you want to know some links to find templates, you can either PM me or look at the Warhammer threads in the zealot.com papercrafting forum

Thanks, I haven't had a lot of time to work on them the past few days, busy at my job. I am finding the most time consuming part is making the blank template, I'll post some images of what I'm working on later in this thread (still haven't gotten to the point of printing anything, just working on the "painting").

Once I have the template the way I need it, it's very quick to paint, far quicker than painting a physical model. The two obstacles have been getting the templates in a format that is easy to work with and the other thing is making a "scratch" filter to make the vehicle look a bit worn, I can't find an easy way to do that in the image editor I'm using (GIMP).

Ok, so here's how it's going so far. I'm still working on the templates, definitely taking longer than I expected (I'll explain why in a minute), though I still think it's significantly easier than actually painting the model itself. I don't have a lot of experience painting tanks (I think the Leman Russ in my gallery was the first tank I fully painted, I started painting a Rhino years ago but stopped because it was ugly and slow ). So if you have any ideas on making it look more realistic, let me know! I still think it looks a bit too clean, not really sure how to dirty it up without it just looking like a rusted out wreck though.

So here's the process I'm taking. I've cropped the images because I know paperhammer itself is against the rules, but you'll get the idea of what I'm trying to achieve. Also, I'm a complete noob with GIMP, so this isn't meant to be a "look at my awesome work!" post, it's more "this is where Im up to, anyone else have good ideas??".

Start off with a template. This is the step that's taking me far longer than I expected. Templates I find online are all black outlined, which is really awkward to photoshop! So I have to convert it into a rainbow image like this one below. This is taking me ages! Its taken me a few hours just to do this step.


Once I've got the template like that, the rest it pretty easy breezy. GIMP works in transparent layers, you build up an image in layers and then compress it back down at the end, this is great for what I'm doing as it allows me to add or remove different effects or change the colour of the model with just a couple of clicks in a few seconds.

Create transparent layers for shading and highlights.


Create another layer for rust/dirt around joints and bolt heads.


Add a couple more layers for dirt and scratches and general grime. Note that when I was shifting the image around to make this post the scratch layer got messed up for some reason and the scratches that should be on the exhaust cover got moved elsewhere, so it might look a bit off because of that


Now go back and duplicate the first layer, recolouring it to what you actually want the tank to look like (keep the original rainbow layer as well, as you can use it for making selections more easily, since GIMP has selection filters based on colour). I love the ability to do this in GIMP. So often I'll get painting a model and half way through decide I don't like the colours or the colours don't work well together and it'll just be frustrating as all hell. With this, in less than 30 seconds you can completely change the scheme without affecting any of your shading/highlights/weathering.


Now, change the opacity of the highlights, shades and scratches so they are softer and not quite so prominent.


Lastly, add a mostly transparent grey noise filter to take away the flat look and give it a bit of texture and feel to it, as well blending the colours together (similar to how you'd do a filter layer with heavily watered down paint if you were painting a real tank miniature)


And here's a side on that shows the weathering a bit better...


I do think it still looks a bit too clean and perfect. The filter I added had a bit of noise in it (if you enlarge the image you can see the noise, it doesn't come out on the shrunken image), that helps take away that "papercraft" look a bit, but not quite as much as I'd like, I'm not really sure how to make it looks a bit more realistic from here though.

Maybe I need to make the noise filter a bit less transparent, or a bit more contrast to the noise, but beyond that I'm not sure.

If you are serious about this, I suggest you look into a digital cutting printer... the name of such devices eludes me, but basically with a little fiddling the device can make cuts in the cardstock for you, saving you a great deal of time in the construction of your model. However, such printers cost around 200 US dollars, so it is definitely not a cost-cutting solution, just a time-management utility.

At the end of the day, applying this with a water/pva solution, then spraying with a matte varnish once dry, may just work, and I'll be interested to see the results.

looking good. In europe the affordable cutting plotter is the SD Cameo. If I remember the name is different in the US.
I think the result is taking shape. What you could do since you intend to build several is to build a first one with the coloring looking like the current best so far.
Also regarding the removing of the black outlines and replacing by colored inside, I would recommend opening the file in inkscape which will be able to manipulate the vector objects in the pdf. This should make it easier to recolor whichever way you want. You could then either export and import in gimp or do the reverse, build your texture in Gimp and import them in inkscape before regenerating the pdf.

I printed out some of the templates on the printer at work. Definitely need better quality printing! My filter was completely pointless because the printer itself adds tons more noise, and not in a good way, lol. I wonder if I break up the images in to 6"x4" images and just get it printed at a photography booth somewhere.

Aside from that, It doesn't actually look terrible. Though I think the scale is off. The rhino template I'm using was just a PNG image, not a PDF, so I have no idea if it's printed the right size or anything.

Also the paint wipes off the paper really easily, so when I fold it, the paint gets scratched up.

All up, I think the idea is "plausible", but I'm going to need to spend a looooot of time on the templates before they'd be worth using on an actual model. Painting the templates is easy enough, but the creation of the templates is kinda time consuming.

The next step is probably to buy a new Rhino or maybe something else and try it out, as my current Rhinos are all back in Australia, lol.

Your printer can probably do it - though you will need to be working at the maximum resolution it can print at for it to be worth the effort. I know when I do signs and posters for use in terrain I do them at 1200 dpi and print them at the same. Much less than that and when I get up close to it I can see the grain of the printing.

Here is the papercutter that is supported by the likes of worldworks games

http://silhouetteamerica.com/silhouetteCameo.aspx

There may be a couple of models cheaper that would work.

Look at something called the ECraft. Itll cut these out perfectly for you.

Heres a link:
http://www.craftwellusa.com/products/ecraft

Sean_OBrien wrote:Your printer can probably do it - though you will need to be working at the maximum resolution it can print at for it to be worth the effort. I know when I do signs and posters for use in terrain I do them at 1200 dpi and print them at the same. Much less than that and when I get up close to it I can see the grain of the printing.

Yeah, I'll have a look. It's not actually "my" printer per say, it's the printer at work, HP3600, according to the specs it's max is 600dpi. It might just be on it's way out or something, it wasn't printing the grey colour consistently, in some areas it was slightly paler in other areas slightly reddish, and the bone colour came out slightly greenish.

I don't actually have a printer in my home itself, so I'll have to look in to that or other alternatives.

I made that image at about 300dpi, I definitely need to go a bit higher, but the template I had initially was only 150dpi, so I doubled that for doing the detail work. I really think the thing that may make me decide this project isn't worth it is the templates, they take sooooo long to create and the existing ones need to be manipulated to be useful and the templates are designed for papercraft, not painting an actual model, so they lack some important details I need.

Actually painting the templates isn't too bad, it's certainly faster than painting a physical model (I wish real painting had an "undo" function and a "delete/duplicate layer" feature

tdwg83 wrote:Here is the papercutter that is supported by the likes of worldworks games

http://silhouetteamerica.com/silhouetteCameo.aspx

There may be a couple of models cheaper that would work.

seanm222 wrote:Look at something called the ECraft. Itll cut these out perfectly for you.

Heres a link:
http://www.craftwellusa.com/products/ecraft

Cool, those look interesting, though I'll want to fully complete a couple of tanks before investing that sort of money in to it. I know I said money wasn't an issue, but nor do I want to throw money away if I can't get a good result with my methods. Also I wonder how hard it is to program those things in the first place, lol.

At this point I'm just looking at using regular paper rather than card anyway, as if I want to glue it to the actual tank, I figure paper will be easier to manipulate and glue than cardstock.

I might actually try a Chimera, since after printing it out, I kind of realise the Rhino template I had probably needs a lot more modification to make it practical. I'll have a play around and see what I can do.

 Terrinecold wrote:
looking good. In europe the affordable cutting plotter is the SD Cameo. If I remember the name is different in the US.
I think the result is taking shape. What you could do since you intend to build several is to build a first one with the coloring looking like the current best so far.
Also regarding the removing of the black outlines and replacing by colored inside, I would recommend opening the file in inkscape which will be able to manipulate the vector objects in the pdf. This should make it easier to recolor whichever way you want. You could then either export and import in gimp or do the reverse, build your texture in Gimp and import them in inkscape before regenerating the pdf.

I downloaded and had a play with inkscape, though I have absolutely no idea how it works so I might just revert back to gimp. One problem I had with the Rhino was that it wasn't actually a pdf to start with, it was a png. GIMP can import PDFs at any DPI you want (I have a Chimera in pdf form and imported it at 1200dpi, which smoothed things out nicely, though my laptop is too slow to deal with such large images).

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Your printer can probably do it - though you will need to be working at the maximum resolution it can print at for it to be worth the effort. I know when I do signs and posters for use in terrain I do them at 1200 dpi and print them at the same. Much less than that and when I get up close to it I can see the grain of the printing.

One thing you DON'T want is a laser printer. You want an inkjet and preferably one that uses pigment ink (such as epson).
The problem with laser is that the color does not stand well to folding, it will crack and the result will be awfull. Also you want to use heavy paper (160g/m2 is good in europe, I don't know the equivalent in the US since your poundage does not correspond to weight by surface)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I downloaded and had a play with inkscape, though I have absolutely no idea how it works so I might just revert back to gimp. One problem I had with the Rhino was that it wasn't actually a pdf to start with, it was a png. GIMP can import PDFs at any DPI you want (I have a Chimera in pdf form and imported it at 1200dpi, which smoothed things out nicely, though my laptop is too slow to deal with such large images).

If you have png template it is probably not a good one, the nice one I know are all pdf.
Your problem with dpi is partially from using a raster editor (like gimp) as opposed to a vector one (like illustrator, corel draw or inkscape) I don't like inkscape but uses it as the alternatives are too expensive

Are you making any progress?

I've been a bit too busy to get much further with it unfortunately!

I played around with inkscape and learnt how to manipulate the pdfs in that then use higher res models in GIMP to do the painting, but beyond that I kinda hit a wall with getting them printed to any worthwhile standard. Once I can get them printed decently I'll buy a Rhino and see how I go with applying them.

Also my laptop is a bit too slow to manipulate high res images, it just slows to a crawl much above 250-300dpi. I'm building a new computer this week (got all the components but the CPU which will hopefully arrive today) which should make editing a bit easier. I also bought a 1920x1080 IPS monitor so hopefully I can see the colours a bit more accurately than my terrible little laptop screen.

But more than anything I just haven't had time :(

If anyone has a request for a specific vehicle I could work on that. Preferrably either Marine or IG