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Buy their base books... and the RRT core box for less than they were selling it at Gencon! And *anyone* can buy Consclusives (shout out to Morgan), not just backers!

Remember when I and others asked politely to be able to buy Consclusives back in August 2013, and were told to feth off by some random asshats? Oh how the times have changed.

Please buy our stuff! Pleeeeease?!

Also note that apparently the upcoming newsletter has taken 'hours' of writing, and there's still more to go? Good, then there shouldn't be an excuses as to why there isn't much to say.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
So a lone fan playing with a home computer and shapeways is closer to making my beloved Jetfire Wearing an Overcoat Made Entirely of Missiles than the people we gave over a million bucks to?

Yeah... Sounds about right.

I think it is more accurate to say that dakka's third party lone fanboys like Rick and especially Mike are more productive with the Robotech minis franchise judging by the effort put forth by Palladium's staff. Their actual end product released over the past year definitely corresponds more to a single person working on it on the side rather than what SHOULD be occuring when you raise $1.4 million which would namely a full time team getting the product out within a time frame that remotely resembles what they promised. But they're working sooooo HardTM to bring us those Robotech branded pencilsTM!


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 Forar wrote:
Buy their base books... and the RRT core box for less than they were selling it at Gencon! And *anyone* can buy Consclusives (shout out to Morgan), not just backers!

Where does it say that?

FYI: I think our next, and probably last, Flash Sale for the season will celebrate Robotech® and will make Robotech® Convention Exclusives (at the full price of $22.00 each) available to ANYONE for those FOUR DAYS ONLY, as well as a number of Robotech® sale items.

Ah, thanks.

Palladium BooksTM Leaving NO promiseTM to backers unbroken since 2013.

think i'll see if i can make me a M.A.C. II on TinkerCad

Which promise did they break, now?

 n815e wrote:
Which promise did they break, now?

I think he is referring to the convention and backer only exclusives now being sold to anyone.

yknow something doesnt add up. The stated reason for the delays was that the 3d models were formatted in the wrong filetype for their chinese partners equipment.

I call bs.

As someone who has pretty extensive CAD & CAM experience, I can tell you while there is no real 'industry standard' file format, there are about a half-dozen to a dozen common filetypes that are commonly used, and just about every major 3D CAD package is able to save/import/export to. Even if Palladium/ND used some proprietary file format for the initial set of models, they should have been able to export into one of those common file types that their people in China could then import. Even if there was no 'direct link' between the two due to using two different sets of proprietary software, I can almost guarantee that there is some intermediate software package that would be capable of importing Palladium/Ninja Divisions Output, and then exporting a file type compatible with Chinas Input.

In my mind, unless I misunderstood the issue, there are only a handful of possible explanations for what has occurred:
- Ninja Division (IIRC they were the ones who handled the modelling)/Palladium are clueless, and got taken advantage of by their manufacturers in China (after they saw how much money they raked in from the kickstarter).
-Palladium is clueless, and got taken advantage of by Ninja Division somehow (perhaps ND wanted more money and claimed they had to reformat stuff?)
-Various parties are clueless, a direct link between the file formats didn't exist, and nobody bothered to research what software package they could purchase to do the Import/Export to make things compatible.
-Various parties are clueless, a direct link between the file formats didn't exist, and Palladium was too cheap to invest in a license for a software package to do the import/export.
-Palladium is flat out lying to us.

I will note that ND/SPM appears to have moved to digital sculpt for production during SDE:FK, and is all digital for NAS and upcoming SDE 2.0 / Legends. Obviously, they are totally fething clueless how to convert digital sculpt to production...

Ninja Division isn't necessarily using the same company as Palladium is for manufacturing though, there is no "standard" for CAM processes, etc. If Palladiums people are using a different setup than Ninja Division/Soda Pops people then they wont necessarily know about it. Knowing how to do something doesn't mean anything if its an entirely different process/package/format or you're being lied to by an associated party (or you yourself are doing the lying).

Also worth noting, if ND has had no issues with the file types/formats that theyve been using for their manufacturers, why didn't Palladium simply switch manufacturers or find another manufacturer who would accept those file types (or an exportable one)? The price that Palladium was given to manufacture the miniatures absolutely could not have been cheaper, after the cost of re-doing the 3d models, than simply going to another manufacturer. Most companies will charge between $20 and $50 /hr for 3d modeling services, depending on what is being done. Some can charge $100s/hr if its a really complex/high precision setup.

chaos0xomega wrote:
yknow something doesnt add up. The stated reason for the delays was that the 3d models were formatted in the wrong filetype for their chinese partners equipment.

I call bs.

As someone who has pretty extensive CAD & CAM experience, I can tell you while there is no real 'industry standard' file format, there are about a half-dozen to a dozen common filetypes that are commonly used, and just about every major 3D CAD package is able to save/import/export to. Even if Palladium/ND used some proprietary file format for the initial set of models, they should have been able to export into one of those common file types that their people in China could then import. Even if there was no 'direct link' between the two due to using two different sets of proprietary software, I can almost guarantee that there is some intermediate software package that would be capable of importing Palladium/Ninja Divisions Output, and then exporting a file type compatible with Chinas Input.

I can't give you an exact URL but sometime over the last year (gencon? the 19 page news-free history lesson update? adepticon podcast interview?) they said Ninja Division supplied them with STL files and the factory couldn't use them. I remember because that is the file type I worked with on my 30 day free trial of 3dsMax (Rick, you may want to try that program, btw) when I made my Krogan minis via Shapeways.

 warboss wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
yknow something doesnt add up. The stated reason for the delays was that the 3d models were formatted in the wrong filetype for their chinese partners equipment.

I call bs.

As someone who has pretty extensive CAD & CAM experience, I can tell you while there is no real 'industry standard' file format, there are about a half-dozen to a dozen common filetypes that are commonly used, and just about every major 3D CAD package is able to save/import/export to. Even if Palladium/ND used some proprietary file format for the initial set of models, they should have been able to export into one of those common file types that their people in China could then import. Even if there was no 'direct link' between the two due to using two different sets of proprietary software, I can almost guarantee that there is some intermediate software package that would be capable of importing Palladium/Ninja Divisions Output, and then exporting a file type compatible with Chinas Input.

I can't give you an exact URL but sometime over the last year (gencon? the 19 page news-free history lesson update? adepticon podcast interview?) they said Ninja Division supplied them with STL files and the factory couldn't use them. I remember because that is the file type I worked with on my 30 day free trial of 3dsMax (Rick, you may want to try that program, btw) when I made my Krogan minis via Shapeways.

I did try it. didn't fancy it much, was able to do up some of my G.I.Joe stuff

.stl happens to be one of the most common (if not the most common) file types out there used for CAM, 3d printing, etc. and just about any CAD package (at least all the major ones I've used) is capable of both importing and exporting it. If not, there is almost always a 3rd software package capable of translating .stl into something else thats usable.

If the manufacturers were unable to import it, and Palladium/ND couldn't export another filetype that they could use, or find a software package capable of importing a .stl or similar format and exporting something that China could use, then I call bs shenanigans. I've had to do a lot of crazy file conversions in the past, some that required me to export my output from software 1 in format 1, so that I could import it into software 2 in order to export format 2, so that I could import into software 3 in order to export format 3 to import to software 4 to export in format 4 etc. that could then be used by the person who I was sending the file to (in one particular case they happened to be using an old/out of date and archaic software package on an old machine that couldn't handle some of the less compressed formats out there which created a lot of headache). In only one instance I can recall was I unable to get something to work, but that wasn't an issue of readibility, in fact the file was fully openable, usable, and insofar as we could tell, accurate when it came out the other end, rather the issue was that the end-output wasn't editable (I believe it was the result of DRM or something similar from one of the packages I used to translate the file types rather than an issue with the geometry). Even then, it was still usable for manufacturing purposes, its just that the geometry couldn't be altered dimensionally.

That may just be beyond their comprehension. We are, after all, talking about Palladium. They haven't figured out how to use a calendar for the past 30 years of business and the Mayans and Ancient Romans did that thousands of years ago.

lol well played


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But no, seriously, I dont want to accuse anyone of lying or theft, and there is always the extremely unlikely corner case situation where all parties concerned here are telling the absolute truth, but everything I know about 3D modeling/CAD/CAM (which is quite a bit, between being an engineer and having used about a dozen different software packages over the past 12 years or so, starting in high school), absolutely none of the claims theyve made regarding file type/formatting issues seem to hold any water.

Ummm... I had a thought about the model conversion stuff.
They could have printed out a "master model" and they could have scanned it in at China if desperate.
It may have been easier to tweak from actual data points than start from scratch.
Just does not make sense.

I think ND did provide master models - that's what was shown a long time ago.

I can't obviously fault ND, which is why PB isn't suing them for non-delivery of work as agreed & contracted.

chaos0xomega wrote:
lol well played


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But no, seriously, I dont want to accuse anyone of lying or theft, and there is always the extremely unlikely corner case situation where all parties concerned here are telling the absolute truth, but everything I know about 3D modeling/CAD/CAM (which is quite a bit, between being an engineer and having used about a dozen different software packages over the past 12 years or so, starting in high school), absolutely none of the claims theyve made regarding file type/formatting issues seem to hold any water.

Zbrush to injection moulded plastic can be a very big pain - zbrush can export some complete junk if you dont know what you are doing, and I've seen a large number of instances where things had to be resculpted because of it. This is amplified when going from zbrush export to CAD import, where if the production company is not familiar with zbrush's STL muck, then they will ask for it to be done again. If they sculpted in rhino, solidworks or some other pure CAD package then there are far fewer complaints to make about files, but if it was zbrush then there is certainly scope for it to be true and lead to notable delays with manufacturers.

 legoburner wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
lol well played


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But no, seriously, I dont want to accuse anyone of lying or theft, and there is always the extremely unlikely corner case situation where all parties concerned here are telling the absolute truth, but everything I know about 3D modeling/CAD/CAM (which is quite a bit, between being an engineer and having used about a dozen different software packages over the past 12 years or so, starting in high school), absolutely none of the claims theyve made regarding file type/formatting issues seem to hold any water.

Zbrush to injection moulded plastic can be a very big pain - zbrush can export some complete junk if you dont know what you are doing, and I've seen a large number of instances where things had to be resculpted because of it. This is amplified when going from zbrush export to CAD import, where if the production company is not familiar with zbrush's STL muck, then they will ask for it to be done again. If they sculpted in rhino, solidworks or some other pure CAD package then there are far fewer complaints to make about files, but if it was zbrush then there is certainly scope for it to be true and lead to notable delays with manufacturers.

I don't think anyone in business for model designing would even look at zBrush let alone use it.

Asterios wrote:

 legoburner wrote:


Zbrush to injection moulded plastic can be a very big pain - zbrush can export some complete junk if you dont know what you are doing, and I've seen a large number of instances where things had to be resculpted because of it. This is amplified when going from zbrush export to CAD import, where if the production company is not familiar with zbrush's STL muck, then they will ask for it to be done again. If they sculpted in rhino, solidworks or some other pure CAD package then there are far fewer complaints to make about files, but if it was zbrush then there is certainly scope for it to be true and lead to notable delays with manufacturers.

I don't think anyone in business for model designing would even look at zBrush let alone use it.

Most wargaming companies use it. Privateer Press use it, Mantic use it, Kingdom Death use it, and pretty much every other company I've spoken to who make organic digital sculpts use it at least for components. Sculptor prices are much cheaper than pure Freeform (or similar) and results are much more flexible compared to pure CAD, though Spartan, Dreamforge and a couple of others do go the pure CAD route.

 Talizvar wrote:
Ummm... I had a thought about the model conversion stuff.
They could have printed out a "master model" and they could have scanned it in at China if desperate.
It may have been easier to tweak from actual data points than start from scratch.
Just does not make sense.

Well, I dont think its that simple. I mean, Im not up to date on how scanning tech works, admittedly, but from what little I know about that side of things it might not have been a viable solution. Also scanners are kind of expensive. Then again, $1.5 million raised. Although I do find it somewhat tenuous that the chinese dudes dont have the means to make molds from physical masters (as in print masters and use I mean its a technology thats existed for over a century at this point, and while ive never dealt with one in person, I cant imagine a pantograph is expensive or difficult to use.

Zbrush to injection moulded plastic can be a very big pain - zbrush can export some complete junk if you dont know what you are doing, and I've seen a large number of instances where things had to be resculpted because of it. This is amplified when going from zbrush export to CAD import, where if the production company is not familiar with zbrush's STL muck, then they will ask for it to be done again. If they sculpted in rhino, solidworks or some other pure CAD package then there are far fewer complaints to make about files, but if it was zbrush then there is certainly scope for it to be true and lead to notable delays with manufacturers.

Having used ZBrush for exactly this purpose, and knowing many others who have as well, if youre even halfway competent and have any idea how ZBrush functions and whats required from a computer model to make a real model, its really not that difficult or complicated.

I don't think anyone in business for model designing would even look at zBrush let alone use it.

You would be (horribly) incorrect. ZBrush is quickly taking over pretty much the entire 3d graphics industry for all sorts of applications (though its often being used in conjunction with another package for certain specific uses), video games, film, art, jewelry, physical sculpture, etc. Corvus Belli is doing all their sculpts in ZBrush now, and I believe Wyrd is as well, just to name a few.

FWIW, DP9 is using Solidworks for their upcoming Heavy Gear plastics.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
Ummm... I had a thought about the model conversion stuff.
They could have printed out a "master model" and they could have scanned it in at China if desperate.
It may have been easier to tweak from actual data points than start from scratch.
Just does not make sense.

Well, I dont think its that simple. I mean, Im not up to date on how scanning tech works, admittedly, but from what little I know about that side of things it might not have been a viable solution. Also scanners are kind of expensive. Then again, $1.5 million raised. Although I do find it somewhat tenuous that the chinese dudes dont have the means to make molds from physical masters (as in print masters and use I mean its a technology thats existed for over a century at this point, and while ive never dealt with one in person, I cant imagine a pantograph is expensive or difficult to use.

FWIW, nobody seems to use pantographing any more except for Renedra, and I've not seen a single place in China offer it at wargaming levels of detail (0.1-0.2mm). Getting someone to buy in the machinery and take the time to ruin a few tools learning how to do it would be a big ask from most companies I'm familiar with.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Zbrush to injection moulded plastic can be a very big pain - zbrush can export some complete junk if you dont know what you are doing, and I've seen a large number of instances where things had to be resculpted because of it. This is amplified when going from zbrush export to CAD import, where if the production company is not familiar with zbrush's STL muck, then they will ask for it to be done again. If they sculpted in rhino, solidworks or some other pure CAD package then there are far fewer complaints to make about files, but if it was zbrush then there is certainly scope for it to be true and lead to notable delays with manufacturers.

Having used ZBrush for exactly this purpose, and knowing many others who have as well, if youre even halfway competent and have any idea how ZBrush functions and whats required from a computer model to make a real model, its really not that difficult or complicated.

Hence the 'if you dont know what you are doing', but most zbrush sculptors sadly do not know how plastic models work and their limitations, and most in the industry have come from videogame or generic backgrounds and take a few years to get up to scratch. I know of four (fairly big) companies with more experience than paladium/ND who have lost months of work and lots of money falling into this zbrush trap, so it is reasonable that it could happen to them too. Maelstrom's Edge is not one of them though, as we dont use zbrush

Fair enough on the pantographing, in any case I think the Zbrush discussion is moot, as the images of the 3d sculpts do not look like zbrush output to me (I can usually tell), and it wouldnt make sense to use zbrush for something like the robotech minis.


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also worth noting, as far back as when the campaign was active, Palladium had 3d prints of the .stl models that they were using as prototypes and demo pieces, to me this says that if they *did* use ZBrush, whoever did it was aware of the "water tightness" requirements, as well as he geometric considerations involved with generating physical product. The models might not have been optimized for the two part molding process, but any mold engineer worth their salt should have been able to take an stl (or similar), cut it and reconfigure it for production tooling.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
They could have printed out a "master model" and they could have scanned it in at China if desperate.

from what little I know about that side of things it might not have been a viable solution. Also scanners are kind of expensive. Then again, $1.5 million raised. Although I do find it somewhat tenuous that the chinese dudes dont have the means to make molds from physical masters

Adam had the Kingdom Death master sculpts scanned and digitized and cleaned by WarGames Factory in China for plastic production. Hence, some KD:M plastics being larger and crisper than their resin counterparts.

Based on what I heard from ND it was my understanding that they did indeed do the original files in zbrush and .STL use for plastics is not widespread atm. The factory was using a solidworks based tooling so they couldn't make use of the zbrush models. STL is usable by almost every 3d printer, but when it comes to milling solidworks tends to dominate and it cannot process the complexity of zbrush models as the huge amount of geometry tends to crash most systems that normally run solidworks without an issue.

You can also tell by the renders and lighting tools that it's done in zbrush, the artist has also done stuff for megaman, and kingdom of death all in zbrush. He has some rather impressive hard surface modelling for zbrush (as does Fausto who sculpts for infinity). While it's usually best for organic work if you know how to use the right tools zbrush can produce some fantastic hard surface models.

Dreamforge uses Rhino, Mark knows how to set things up for plastic and the models still need tons of work to be properly formatted for milling. They are originally created with a combination of zbrush and rhino depending on the part he's going for. Then they are further re-translated at WGF into whatever software they are using. I'm pretty certain they are using Freeform, but not 100%




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chaos0xomega wrote:

You would be (horribly) incorrect. ZBrush is quickly taking over pretty much the entire 3d graphics industry for all sorts of applications (though its often being used in conjunction with another package for certain specific uses), video games, film, art, jewelry, physical sculpture, etc. Corvus Belli is doing all their sculpts in ZBrush now, and I believe Wyrd is as well, just to name a few.

Infinity is not plastic injection, they are using zbursh to makes prints which are used for metal casting which is an entirely different ball of wax compared to milling with 3d files. Wyrd models are done via freeform and sculpted in house with WGF.

 paulson games wrote:
Based on what I heard from ND it was my understanding that they did indeed do the original files in zbrush and .STL use for plastics is not widespread atm. The factory was using a solidworks based tooling so they couldn't make use of the zbrush models. STL is usable by almost every 3d printer, but when it comes to milling solidworks tends to dominate and it cannot process the complexity of zbrush models as the huge amount of geometry tends to crash most systems that normally run solidworks without an issue.

You can also tell by the renders and lighting tools that it's done in zbrush, the artist has also done stuff for megaman, and kingdom of death all in zbrush. He has some rather impressive hard surface modelling for zbrush (as does Fausto who sculpts for infinity). While it's usually best for organic work if you know how to use the right tools zbrush can produce some fantastic hard surface models.

Dreamforge uses Rhino, Mark knows how to set things up for plastic and the models still need tons of work to be properly formatted for milling. They are originally created with a combination of zbrush and rhino depending on the part he's going for. Then they are further re-translated at WGF into whatever software they are using. I'm pretty certain they are using Freeform, but not 100%




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chaos0xomega wrote:

You would be (horribly) incorrect. ZBrush is quickly taking over pretty much the entire 3d graphics industry for all sorts of applications (though its often being used in conjunction with another package for certain specific uses), video games, film, art, jewelry, physical sculpture, etc. Corvus Belli is doing all their sculpts in ZBrush now, and I believe Wyrd is as well, just to name a few.

Infinity is not plastic injection, they are using zbursh to makes prints which are used for metal casting which is an entirely different ball of wax compared to milling with 3d files. Wyrd models are done via freeform and sculpted in house with WGF.

You would think ND would have used SolidWorks since its the most reliable and applicable program out there I know of. but seriously they used zBrush ? seriously? also thought WGF is using Solidworks, but not sure either.

Ah, ZBrush to Solidworks is a hassle, but its not impossible. You would have to export an .stl into a program like Geomagic or Rapidform, use that to convert to NURBS and export a .obj or or .iges parametric solid or whatever it is. Really heavy duty processor-intensive computing, the software itself is, from what I understand, pretty expensive, but... its cheaper and less time consuming than hiring a CAD operator to remake dozens of models from scratch.

The 3d sculpts atill dont look anything at all like zrenders to me, but if you say so.


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You can, in theory (depending on polygon count) use Rhino w/ certain plugins (T-Splines I think) to convert to NURBS, not sure if that was an option for ND of not (depending on the file size/polygon count).

It is, however, entirely possible to use ZBrush .stl output for milling. Ive never done it but a friend whos a jeweler has in the past, Ill have to ask him what CAM package hes using for milling. That would have required Palladium to change manufacturers however (and there might not be one that is set up to do steel tooling via that system).

And yeah, the use of ZBrish instead of solidworks for those sculpts is mystifying to me. When it comes to inorganic/hard surfaces like mechs and jets, zBrush is totally inferior to solidworkz/proE/unigraphics, etc. Really youre just making it harder for yourself.

The key to all these problems is that PB wanted things on the cheap, you can get just about anybody to produce a zbrush sculpt for bottom dollar. But what they didn't understand is that you can get a zbrush file (or any other type of file built for video game/display) just about anywhere but that doesn't mean it's viable for printing much less plastic milling. Like a lot of other companies they only see upfront dollar signs and don't understand the value of what an experienced hand will end up saving save them in the long run. Rather than pay X they end up paying X+Y+Z due to fixing repeated problems caused by working with inexperienced 3d artists. They get stuck bumbling their way though things and having to learn those modelling requirements the hard way on the fly. They had been in contact with somebody who could have walked them through that process much better, but Kevin is all knowing and all seeing so he never makes mistakes and certainly never ignores sound advice grown from hands on experience.

Some artists are incredibly good at hard surface modelling in zbrush, they use zbrush because it suits their workflow much better. It's a giant pain to learn all the various interfaces to work in the 3d field as you need to know how to use about 4-5 programs at a minimum. AT least two programs for for the modelling, 2-3 programs for lighting rendering, and photoshop for layering and editing, that's all without any animation elements. Most of the interfaces for stuff like Maya, Rhino, Blender etc all have some common ground but Zbrush is completely alien so if you spend the majority of your workflow using zbrush it can be easier just to do all of the hard surface stuff in there too, assuming you have the right skills and brush sets. Zbrush also offers a pretty advanced set of tools for making stamps and detailing within the matter of minutes which take significantly more time in other programs. For instance if I want to make a standardized "cog" to be on each joint I can extract the geometry from a vectored drawing in the matter of seconds vs having to build the geometry by hand and taking 15-20 minutes.

Most of the artists that are being contracted out for freelance work on minis are coming from a zbrush background for character and animation design, they have very little background in the technical side of having to make things for printing and even much less for milling which is highly technical and not taught in the typical 3d college courses. I've been attending Gnomon which is pretty top end for 3d design, they on ocassion mention 3d printing and prototyping but it's not a main stream topic or focus of classes as it's usually a footnote at best. Given how much reach it currently has and will grow to be they really should cover it a bit more extensively as it'll be a huge field in the very near future. Most of the classes are focused on 3d as a tool for film, video games and display, there's definitely some cross over due to 3d printing, but 3d milling work tends to draw more on the CAD background which tends to attract more technical minded artists and fewer of of the creative/free form type artists if that makes sense?

But according to WRRD, it's all because ND chose China, surely that's not incorrect?