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With any technology revolution just because the capability is there, and the imagination can easily go there, does not mean it will happen.

Fast forward 20 years and certainly this is a real threat to GW. Having said that again just because you produce a good product at a good price there is still a massive distribution challenge. Build it and they will come? I dont think so.

My guess is impact over the next 5 will be very finite.

It's easy to cast up with lead and white metal.
Anyone can do it easily and cheaply with minimal outlay plus it's easy to learn.

Now,

How many people do it?

I don't see 3D printing being any different.

A hardcore few will do it, but the vast majority will buy as normal.

 marv335 wrote:
It's easy to cast up with lead and white metal.
Anyone can do it easily and cheaply with minimal outlay plus it's easy to learn.

Now,

How many people do it?

I don't see 3D printing being any different.

A hardcore few will do it, but the vast majority will buy as normal.

If 3D printers print to the quality that they are alleged to, it would be very, very easy to make some cash on the side selling models to friends. It would spread from there.

As we've seen, it's no where near that good yet, so it's not.

Noone said that 3d printing is at GW's quality standard *yet*. It will be, however, in a few years, given the rapid evolution in quality we see nowadays.

And with all due respect, but the "everything becomes more expensive" argument is to be ignored - it is invalid given the increases GW has and, of course, the HUGE difference between producing cost and actual price.

3d printing will threaten GW in a few years (~5-10) and if they do not react, they go down...no point in buying a box of tactical marines for 90$ when you can produce a bunch of them for the same price. And while I could care less for the greedy bunch of player-hating Kirbies, I worry about smaller companies that will also suffer despite having fair prices.

 Sigvatr wrote:
I worry about smaller companies that will also suffer despite having fair prices.

I think this is the point here.
I don't think this new technology will harm GW, I think what it will do, is put the small bits companies and modification companies (such as Chapterhouse) out of business.

I think we can use the music industry as a precedent. The shift over to software-based music from hardware-based has resulted in music companies selling the music data itself instead of a physical object. Should 3d printers become commonplace, we can expect wargaming companies to follow suit, selling the data used to make their models for a certain fee. GW, as the largest company of it's kind, would likely resist for as long as possible, but eventually would be forced to give in and adapt (or risk failure).

This an excellent example of how good 3D printing is

http://www.moddler.com/portfolio

Browse the gallery, have fun

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
This an excellent example of how good 3D printing is

http://www.moddler.com/portfolio

Browse the gallery, have fun

QFT!
also, that detailed enough for the naysayers?

I genuinely don't think it's going to take ten or twenty years to get there - these days, everything is about the resolution - from Super HD TV's and retina displays, to the megapixel wars that camera manufacturers indulge in. ten years ago, it was a bit of a luxury to have any kind of capable printer in the home - ink was expensive, they were noisy, clattery things. These days, I have a colour laser printer that is pretty much silent, and is about £40 for enough toner to last well over a year. Just as printer tech has improved, I suspect that within the next couple of years, we'll start seeing these things replicating complex and useable products. Hell, looking at the gallery listed in the post above, they already are!

Interesting times, that's for sure.

I noticed that the prints listed as examples of high quality didn't have the bubbles/random imperfections that the Finecast samples had.

It seems a much more consistent way to manufacture small quantities than to rely on resintypes where the skill/patience of the caster/mixer are at hand.

One angle that is being over looked here is the price of talent. Even now with the current ‘Alternative to GW mini/bitz market’, the gulf of quality between GW and the competition is huge.

A 3D printer needs a 3D model to print which needs a 3D artist to sculpt. Any 3D artist with talent will charge for their talent. As a few companies are doing now. The model will be mastered on a 3D printer to be used to make resin copies to be sold. No 3D artist with talent or company that sells miniatures would ever release the 3D model file for people to print at home.

I am sure there will be a flood of crappy substitutes made in sketchup like the red dreadnought we see above but the quality stuff will stay under lock and key. Imagine GW putting their master sculpts up for sale on Ebay or PirateBay. Just doesn’t happen.

Even if a talented person takes the long hours needed to make a great 3D file and uploaded it for everyone to down load for free (Just to give it to the man). That’s just one sculpt. The next one they plan to do, they will start asking themselves “Why am I doing this for free when I could be charging for it”…

Go online right now and try to find 3D models (3dtotal.com or something). You will immediately see a huge quality difference between the ones you have to buy and the free stuff.

I have a feeling the market may stay the same. It will just become bigger.


Having said all that. Add near future home 3D scanner to near future home 3D printer and BAM! Problem…

Cheers Vim

 xcasex wrote:

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
This an excellent example of how good 3D printing is

http://www.moddler.com/portfolio

Browse the gallery, have fun

QFT!
also, that detailed enough for the naysayers?

There is no sense of scale to any of those. I think they're about a foot big.

So, no.

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
This an excellent example of how good 3D printing is

http://www.moddler.com/portfolio

Browse the gallery, have fun

Keep in mind that the quality you presented is made by top tier 3d printers that are far from being affordable for small gaming groups, which means that it would solely be used by bigger companies that would have to fear GW's trigger-happy lawyers.

reaper with no name wrote:
I think we can use the music industry as a precedent. The shift over to software-based music from hardware-based has resulted in music companies selling the music data itself instead of a physical object. Should 3d printers become commonplace, we can expect wargaming companies to follow suit, selling the data used to make their models for a certain fee. GW, as the largest company of it's kind, would likely resist for as long as possible, but eventually would be forced to give in and adapt (or risk failure).

I highly doubt that. GW would have to sell those schemes at outrageous prices in order to make the same or, as they always intend to do, more profit than they do now. Just imagine a small gaming group of 5 people with 1 3d printer. Let's assume everyone plays GK and thus everyone gets 10 paladins. That's 70€ for 2 boxes of terminators and in or group, that'd be about 350€ for all terminators...net profit for GW. Given that you can make infinite terminators from 1 sprue, a realistic price would be at least 500-700€....and no group's going to pay for that. What will happen? Piracy.

Furthermore, selling schemes would not work at all - just imagine another company with the schemes, producing the minis themselves, e.g. a box of terminators for 20€. What now?

I mean, the players would profit either way and I'd *love* to see GW taking a huge step back. They'd have to turn 180° in regard to their customer-policy, they'd have to make people like them again e.g. by having more gaming opportunities at store, fairer prices, etc. etc.

I am extremely curions on what the future might bring.

What would be cool, however, are custom minis and that's something GW could offer: let your customers choose their poses, details, etc. and charge an extra (GODDAMNIT GW NOT 300% EXTRA I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING!). I'd pay an extra e.g. for a squad of Necrons all in the very same static post, standing straight. That'd be awesome.

 Testify wrote:

 xcasex wrote:

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
This an excellent example of how good 3D printing is

http://www.moddler.com/portfolio

Browse the gallery, have fun

QFT!
also, that detailed enough for the naysayers?

There is no sense of scale to any of those. I think they're about a foot big.

So, no.

If you click on the "Click for details" section. They are about 6" high. Taking that into account. You can see they have the equivalent resolution of a current mini.

 vim_the_good wrote:

 Testify wrote:

 xcasex wrote:

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
This an excellent example of how good 3D printing is

http://www.moddler.com/portfolio

Browse the gallery, have fun

QFT!
also, that detailed enough for the naysayers?

There is no sense of scale to any of those. I think they're about a foot big.

So, no.

If you click on the "Click for details" section. They are about 6" high. Taking that into account. You can see they have the equivalent resolution of a current mini.

you realise you're arguing with a person who keeps insisting that reprap is current gen printers and that the makerbot2 prints are not detailed enough at 100 microns.

 vim_the_good wrote:

 Testify wrote:

 xcasex wrote:

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
This an excellent example of how good 3D printing is

http://www.moddler.com/portfolio

Browse the gallery, have fun

QFT!
also, that detailed enough for the naysayers?

There is no sense of scale to any of those. I think they're about a foot big.

So, no.

If you click on the "Click for details" section. They are about 6" high. Taking that into account. You can see they have the equivalent resolution of a current mini.

Keep in mind that you're talking to someone who isn't willing to discuss a matter, but rather wants to say "NAY" to everything except his own opinion.

and that's why they say that opinions are like gakholes, everyone has one. sidenote: thanks to the missus, i have two!

vim_the_good wrote:
If you click on the "Click for details" section. They are about 6" high. Taking that into account. You can see they have the equivalent resolution of a current mini.

Good point. That looks pretty sweet.

xcasex wrote:
you realise you're arguing with a person who keeps insisting that reprap is current gen printers and that the makerbot2 prints are not detailed enough at 100 microns.

You mean I rely on evidence rather than what some random person on the internet tells me? Yeah.

Will 3d printers change the way small casting shops operate? Probably.

Will 3d printers change the way large companies in the industry operate? No.

Its all a matter of scale. If I'm only making a few hundred of something its probably cheaper to us a small machine, in this case a 3d printer. If I'm going to make 100,000 to millions of something then its going to be cheaper for me to setup industrial machinery, in this case injection molding.

Saying that a large company like GW is going to switch from Injection Molding machinery to 3d printers is like saying that 4 Over Inc is going to switch to inkjet printers.

While it may cost you $.10 in materials to print something on your 3d printer, it would cost a company fractions of a cent to make that same item using injection molding equipment.

The cost of most things simply is not tied that closely to raw material costs.

 mayfist wrote:
And that's today, in say five years time, imagine what this tech will do to the our hobby

 Catyrpelius wrote:
Will 3d printers change the way small casting shops operate? Probably.

Will 3d printers change the way large companies in the industry operate? No.

Its all a matter of scale. If I'm only making a few hundred of something its probably cheaper to us a small machine, in this case a 3d printer. If I'm going to make 100,000 to millions of something then its going to be cheaper for me to setup industrial machinery, in this case injection molding.

Saying that a large company like GW is going to switch from Injection Molding machinery to 3d printers is like saying that 4 Over Inc is going to switch to inkjet printers.

While it may cost you $.10 in materials to print something on your 3d printer, it would cost a company fractions of a cent to make that same item using injection molding equipment.

The cost of most things simply is not tied that closely to raw material costs.

I'm pretty clued up on the whole area and have spoken to a lot of people about this in different fields thanks to dakka.

In the next 2-3 years the main patents that the large high-end 3d printing companies hold begin to expire en masse. That means much cheaper home 3D printers (like the form1) become available. The thing that stops resin printers right now is the patent on the best material meaning it costs megabucks per kilo. Note that the resin in question gives of bad fumes and needs ventilation during the printing process though, so still a few things to tweak before it is fully ready for home use. Form 1 is being sued for patent infringement right now so I think they will suffer some delays to their release.

Already, most gaming companies who do digital sculpts will get a 3D print done (30 microns resolution) for about $300 per model. The print is typically soft but perfect, and is then used for resin casting somewhere cheaper.

It costs GW about £0.15-0.20 per sprue to actually produce something in plastic from my very educated guess. Thats the raw plastic cost / running the machine cost, not the tooling and design cost.

The best 3D printers for home use that you can buy and have in your hands today top out around 100 microns. GW's best plastics can go down to 30 microns I believe (from talking to their in house 3D guys). Typical plastics (mantic, etc) peak at 100 microns or so. There are 3D scanners that cost about $3000 which are capable of scanning 28mm models without major errors and the minor errors can be cleaned up in software easily enough.

Already, printing terrain is fantastic at home, and you can download limitless buildings from google sketchup, convert them to STL and print them at 100 microns. All non-organic terrain is easy in 3D now. Vehicles will be next, and then infantry in a few years.

So in answer to the original poster, yes in 5 years things will be very interesting and challenging for those who dont adapt. 3D printers will be mass market as soon as there are some killer apps for general usage, and once it gets to the point where everyone knows someone who has a 3D printer, and those printers are capable of stable 30 micron resolution, there will be big challenges for things that are not priced competitively.

modeling in a computer is faster and allows for easier revisioning. You have far more precise control over volumes and small detail. You can then take your base model and very easily repose for variety. If you were to take the best GW sculptor against the best CG sculptor and they both sculpted the same character. The CG sculpt would win hands down on accuracy of volume and cleanness of detail.

I don't see any reason for a GW or PP to use 3D printing to make merchandise but the technology would certainly take the quality of the master mini to a new level while cutting production time.

Correct me if I am wrong here but. I get the feeling the senior sculptors at GW are old school, GS all the way. Maybe they are too busy or/and set in their ways to retrain to a satisfactory level. There is also the nostalgic element with sticking to actual GS sculpts. This is maybe why they will not/can't change as quickly as a smaller, younger operation.

Cheers Vim

 Sigvatr wrote:
Noone said that 3d printing is at GW's quality standard *yet*. It will be, however, in a few years, given the rapid evolution in quality we see nowadays.

And with all due respect, but the "everything becomes more expensive" argument is to be ignored - it is invalid given the increases GW has and, of course, the HUGE difference between producing cost and actual price.

3d printing will threaten GW in a few years (~5-10) and if they do not react, they go down...no point in buying a box of tactical marines for 90$ when you can produce a bunch of them for the same price. And while I could care less for the greedy bunch of player-hating Kirbies, I worry about smaller companies that will also suffer despite having fair prices.

You have some valid points there, but imo 3d printing has a very long way to go yet. First of all the printed models are very brittle to be handled in a game. Perhaps this will be improved over the years with new materials but I really dont think that we will see this evolution in home devices. At least not before 20+ years. Lets take for example classic printing 20 years ago, the only option for home brewed prints was xerox machines. Now we can print our own stuff to a very acceptable level, but still not good enough to completely match proffesional machines of the 80's. We can get very close, but considering the costs, if you dont want to print few pages, its still best to use a printing service.

Offcourse there is a future with 3d printing in wargames industry. But dont hope that its going to hit GW or any other company. Its going to hit the sculptors. All those talented people that keep alive a very special traditional art, are going to be replaced by computer artists, who are much more affordable and in abundance. The 3d printed prototype will be used to cast resin, or plastic minis. Nothing is going to change for thw public, there will just be a shift in production methods. You are still going to pay for the concept of the mini, for the production and raw materials, but the companies will cut serious expenses and unbalance the sculpting market to their advantage. Its the same story over and over.

You mentioned the DVD example. I have a better one. The CD's. When cds first came out ther was a universal frenzy about how great they sounded, how magical little undestructable media they were. Now its generally admitted that vinyl LP's on a proper sound system sound much better. Anyway the LP's had a much more complicated and expensive production method than CDs. One would assume that music would become cheaper to get. Wrong! It was much more expensive. Especially the first years of circulation, for the price of one CD you could get 2 LPs.
The companies pocketed the money of the cheaper production and a s if this wasnt enough the jacked the prices through clever marketing. Just to add to this commercial madness, LPs had a return from the dead as collectible, hipster tokens, which ironically are reffered as extremely HiFi media for sound connoisseurs.

 vim_the_good wrote:
modeling in a computer is faster and allows for easier revisioning. You have far more precise control over volumes and small detail. You can then take your base model and very easily repose for variety. If you were to take the best GW sculptor against the best CG sculptor and they both sculpted the same character. The CG sculpt would win hands down on accuracy of volume and cleanness of detail.

I don't see any reason for a GW or PP to use 3D printing to make merchandise but the technology would certainly take the quality of the master mini to a new level while cutting production time.

Correct me if I am wrong here but. I get the feeling the senior sculptors at GW are old school, GS all the way. Maybe they are too busy or/and set in their ways to retrain to a satisfactory level. There is also the nostalgic element with sticking to actual GS sculpts. This is maybe why they will not/can't change as quickly as a smaller, younger operation.

Cheers Vim

GW have 12-14 full time 3D people using freeform. I spoke to them about this in depth at games day. 50% of all new work is done entirely in 3D and all new sculpts are scanned and digitized before production. All frame layouts are done digitally instead of by pantographing now as well. GW has one of the largest digital sculpting teams in the world now.

 Testify wrote:

vim_the_good wrote:
If you click on the "Click for details" section. They are about 6" high. Taking that into account. You can see they have the equivalent resolution of a current mini.

Good point. That looks pretty sweet.

xcasex wrote:
you realise you're arguing with a person who keeps insisting that reprap is current gen printers and that the makerbot2 prints are not detailed enough at 100 microns.

You mean I rely on evidence rather than what some random person on the internet tells me? Yeah.

Evidence, like say being told the resolution of a 3d printer and humptydumpting that fact due to whatever reason, or calling anything not aligning with your own confirmation bias wrong? yep. then i understand you.

Question for those who understand this technology, will the 3D printers be able to laser colour on at a similar level of perfection?

As mentioned above the 3D print looks totally different to the GW sculpts, i revise my earlier 20 year guestimate down. The sales and distribution challenge is still the one to crack.

 legoburner wrote:

 vim_the_good wrote:
modeling in a computer is faster and allows for easier revisioning. You have far more precise control over volumes and small detail. You can then take your base model and very easily repose for variety. If you were to take the best GW sculptor against the best CG sculptor and they both sculpted the same character. The CG sculpt would win hands down on accuracy of volume and cleanness of detail.

I don't see any reason for a GW or PP to use 3D printing to make merchandise but the technology would certainly take the quality of the master mini to a new level while cutting production time.

Correct me if I am wrong here but. I get the feeling the senior sculptors at GW are old school, GS all the way. Maybe they are too busy or/and set in their ways to retrain to a satisfactory level. There is also the nostalgic element with sticking to actual GS sculpts. This is maybe why they will not/can't change as quickly as a smaller, younger operation.

Cheers Vim

GW have 12-14 full time 3D people using freeform. I spoke to them about this in depth at games day. 50% of all new work is done entirely in 3D and all new sculpts are scanned and digitized before production. All frame layouts are done digitally instead of by pantographing now as well. GW has one of the largest digital sculpting teams in the world now.

Interesting. I knew they used 3D for the new vehicles. You can clearly see it on some. Why do they 3D scan the traditional sculpts? Is it to do with clean up?

Cheers Vim

 vim_the_good wrote:

 legoburner wrote:

 vim_the_good wrote:
modeling in a computer is faster and allows for easier revisioning. You have far more precise control over volumes and small detail. You can then take your base model and very easily repose for variety. If you were to take the best GW sculptor against the best CG sculptor and they both sculpted the same character. The CG sculpt would win hands down on accuracy of volume and cleanness of detail.

I don't see any reason for a GW or PP to use 3D printing to make merchandise but the technology would certainly take the quality of the master mini to a new level while cutting production time.

Correct me if I am wrong here but. I get the feeling the senior sculptors at GW are old school, GS all the way. Maybe they are too busy or/and set in their ways to retrain to a satisfactory level. There is also the nostalgic element with sticking to actual GS sculpts. This is maybe why they will not/can't change as quickly as a smaller, younger operation.

Cheers Vim

GW have 12-14 full time 3D people using freeform. I spoke to them about this in depth at games day. 50% of all new work is done entirely in 3D and all new sculpts are scanned and digitized before production. All frame layouts are done digitally instead of by pantographing now as well. GW has one of the largest digital sculpting teams in the world now.

Interesting. I knew they used 3D for the new vehicles. You can clearly see it on some. Why do they 3D scan the traditional sculpts? Is it to do with clean up?

Cheers Vim

I think it's more about arranging the layout of sprues and other production technical issues not about the sculpting process

I wonder if, once 3D printers are perfected, if we'll ever see a color 3D printer.
Now that's the day this terrible painter throws down some serious coin.

 Testify wrote:

 xcasex wrote:

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
This an excellent example of how good 3D printing is

http://www.moddler.com/portfolio

Browse the gallery, have fun

QFT!
also, that detailed enough for the naysayers?

There is no sense of scale to any of those. I think they're about a foot big.

So, no.

5x5x5 basically the same or a little bigger than a GW troll or 40mil by 40mil base miniature, the info is there if you cared to look.


Right now its actually really feasible to use in games like say Fantasy and 40k for you rank and file. 3d design is not actually necessary, you can scan objects in 3d with a projector and a web cam, detail of the scan is also not an issue, no matter what resolution the camera and the projector are simply sculpt it bigger to grasp detail easier and digitally scale it down. And no you DO NOT print the entire army, what you print 1 one or 2 masters and then 2 part mold them the old fashion way. This is exactly how most/best bit manufacturers out there operate.