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Hi all,

Quick question here to you all here, and one which I'm hoping will settle a debate with a friend for me. If you were looking to pick up a print of a 3d model (on etsy or ebay or wherever, idk), which of the below renders would you find the most useful as a buyer?

A is Stationforge's 'Bloke on a base on table background'.
B is Mini Manatee's careful mood lighting.
C is Print Mini's rendered version of a model spray undercoated white.

A or C are clearer images of the models, so would be preferable.

But for me the render is just for illustration, and only marginally better than showing concept art. What I really want to see is a photo of a physical model so I can get an idea of how well it actually prints.

None of the above. Anyone can make a 3d model with amazing detail, I want to see how well that translates to the actual print I'm going to receive and that means clear photos of the finished product. If all someone has is digital images I'm going to be extremely skeptical about buying anything from them.

If you absolutely refuse to post real pictures then C is the best as it gives the clearest representation of the model. A is too dark in places and B is just garbage. I don't care about your ability to make cool pictures, if half the model is covered in shadows that obscure the details you're wasting my time.

I want to see an actual print, photographed in the real world.

But of those examples C is the best, because it's the one that conceals its origins the least. It's immediately apparent that it's a render. A and B seem like they're trying to mimic photos of physical objects. Most people would need to do a quick double-take to ID them as renders, and some inattentive/unperceptive people could be fooled altogether and never realize it.

If you want my $ you're going to have to show me a real model 1st.

A or C,

but as others have said also show an actual print from a named printer so people can see how well it actually turns out

I echo what the others said. A and C are clear displays of the models (company C has had my money a few times, company A keeps tempting me but so far haven't done armies I collect but darn it if I did a mechanicus army I'd be getting some!).

Renders are great, but actual prints with well taken photographs are king. It's exactly the same for cast models too and its a trick I think many firms forget. Renders just lack reality and a sense of scale, size, final printing quality and more are just absent from a render. Plus even things like how shadows and light naturally fall on the model also varies appearances where a render can show everything in perfection.


Plus for an actual print the quality can vary a huge amount. Some people have really good setups others are honestly terrible. Right now there's no industry standards nor approval system and most merchants are a first come first served on patreon limited tiers to get the rights. So you get all sorts of quality variation. Actual photos of prints well taken shows a level of skill, quality and professionalism that lets a store stand out above other choices.

It's an interesting conundrum I think, because most vendors that you see on Etsy and the like don't have physical piccies - they're throwing up dozens of models each month and don't have the print time or photography setups to make their resin look good to punters - regardless of the actual quality of the print which is often near 1:1 to renders with 8k printers)

I'm in the position of owning a printer, so I don't purchase these things (or even talk to many hobbyists outside the print community these days tbh). So I really have no answer for my friend on what's the better type of render, or what people buy. People clearly do, or merchant licenses wouldn't be a thing. But what those people actually are looking for when scrolling the million listings, I haven't the foggiest. So my guessed opinion was that it would be whatever showed the detail best, but my mate reckoned it would be whatever looked most realistic (and gave an impression of what it looked like on the tabletop). So it's interesting to hear other takes on it, as well as the seemingly general vitriol for renders altogether.

I would expect that in the process of designing models, they would have printed them for the sake of quality assurance. Imo real model pic or it's a no-buy from me.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I would expect that in the process of designing models, they would have printed them for the sake of quality assurance. Imo real model pic or it's a no-buy from me.

So creators sculpting for Patreon are often up against a wall. Even larger groups (teams) have workload pressure because you've only got 1 month for each release. Many sculptors don't even own 3D printers of their own and have come over from 3D art and game design lines of experience and work. It's a bit of wild west, but you can see it improving in a market that's perhaps only 2-3 years oldish for the SLA (resin) printers and many of the patreons.


Even merchants are often only printing on demand not producing volumes of stock so, even those that do take photos, often have a lag time as the model has to sell (or be anticipated to sell) for them to print and photograph it. Again some are good with this and some are not.

I'm voting with the crowd here. A render is a concept only.

Show me what I'm actually getting, or (despite what others have said about turnaround times) I'm not interested.

 Overread wrote:
So creators sculpting for Patreon are often up against a wall. Even larger groups (teams) have workload pressure because you've only got 1 month for each release. Many sculptors don't even own 3D printers of their own and have come over from 3D art and game design lines of experience and work. It's a bit of wild west, but you can see it improving in a market that's perhaps only 2-3 years oldish for the SLA (resin) printers and many of the patreons.


Even merchants are often only printing on demand not producing volumes of stock so, even those that do take photos, often have a lag time as the model has to sell (or be anticipated to sell) for them to print and photograph it. Again some are good with this and some are not.

That should be a giant red flag not to buy any of this stuff, or at least to buy it with the expectation that you're throwing away your money and most of what you get will not be functional models. Rush jobs that are never tested for printability or final quality are not real products.

Speaking with my printer hobbyist hat on, I'd have said that the above suspicion was justified up until about a year ago. Even the 4k Mono printers simply often didn't come up to scratch and needed someone to have a lot of experience dialling in their settings before they'd deliver something through Etsy that matched the render in quality.

The new 8K printers and modern anti-aliasing have removed most of that as a concern. It's much easier to get a top quality model. The risk now is more in the material (i.e. resin) selected in terms of brittleness or flexibility. But printing at 22um with an established resin profile from Lychee means that even amateurs can turn out cracking models nowadays.

The problem, I suppose, is that few vendors actually advertise what equipment they're using. They just say something like 'top class resin and printer' without being specific. And your average buyer very explicitly knows nothing about printing (if they did, they'd be making their own).

 Ketara wrote:

The problem, I suppose, is that few vendors actually advertise what equipment they're using. They just say something like 'top class resin and printer' without being specific. And your average buyer very explicitly knows nothing about printing (if they did, they'd be making their own).

Even then there are people who have no clue. I've heard horror stories of people getting wet/tacky models delivered (yes that's uncured resin - ergo a health hazard); of models delivered cured with the supports still attached*. Heck I spoke to one merchant who attended an event where another merchant was running a printer in the event area (hazardous gases) and working without gloves with wet resin on their hands (super big health hazard).


Granted some of those are concerns for in person and posted stuff might be fine, but it highlights how some people really have no clue and many printers do not come with good documentation to get them up and running safely, let alone well.



* For those unaware this isn't like when you get a cast model with a sprue; 3D print supports are far more dense and scatter all over the underside of the model. So the result is that if they are cured on that is a LOT of work to remove them and to clean up the model. Meanwhile removing good supports after printing (and before final curing) takes about 2 seconds and leaves minimal marking

Simply must be printed and preferably painted models. Simple as.

 Ketara wrote:
Speaking with my printer hobbyist hat on, I'd have said that the above suspicion was justified up until about a year ago.

It's still a problem. Even with a better printer you still have minimum feature size issues, things that don't look quite the same because a digital image over-emphasizes certain shadows/edges, parts that are too thin or brittle to survive removing the supports, etc. If I don't have a photo of the finished product that will be delivered to me I'm going to assume a 99% chance that I'm buying useless garbage and the seller isn't showing that photo because they know the real thing doesn't match the digital images.

The problem, I suppose, is that few vendors actually advertise what equipment they're using. They just say something like 'top class resin and printer' without being specific. And your average buyer very explicitly knows nothing about printing (if they did, they'd be making their own).

And this is also a problem. Show me the finished product exactly as it will be delivered to me, don't give me vague nonsense about "high quality" or expect me to imagine what a certain printer can produce.

 Ketara wrote:
Speaking with my printer hobbyist hat on, I'd have said that the above suspicion was justified up until about a year ago. Even the 4k Mono printers simply often didn't come up to scratch and needed someone to have a lot of experience dialling in their settings before they'd deliver something through Etsy that matched the render in quality.

The new 8K printers and modern anti-aliasing have removed most of that as a concern. It's much easier to get a top quality model. The risk now is more in the material (i.e. resin) selected in terms of brittleness or flexibility. But printing at 22um with an established resin profile from Lychee means that even amateurs can turn out cracking models nowadays.

The problem, I suppose, is that few vendors actually advertise what equipment they're using. They just say something like 'top class resin and printer' without being specific. And your average buyer very explicitly knows nothing about printing (if they did, they'd be making their own).

So, to recap:
Your plan is to assure people who're already skeptical of quality & explicitly know nothing about printing that this system, that they also know nothing about, will produce the fantastical quality of the renders they see....

Prove it. Show us a real mini if you want our $.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

It's still a problem. Even with a better printer you still have minimum feature size issues, things that don't look quite the same because a digital image over-emphasizes certain shadows/edges, parts that are too thin or brittle to survive removing the supports, etc. If I don't have a photo of the finished product that will be delivered to me I'm going to assume a 99% chance that I'm buying useless garbage and the seller isn't showing that photo because they know the real thing doesn't match the digital images.

The problem there, I suppose, is what Overread said earlier - vendors aren't usually makers, and the makers usually spam out so many models each month that they haven't the time or equipment to test print it all.

ccs wrote:

So, to recap:
Your plan is to assure people who're already skeptical of quality & explicitly know nothing about printing that this system, that they also know nothing about, will produce the fantastical quality of the renders they see....

Prove it. Show us a real mini if you want our $.

I don't have a plan for anything. Just discussing it as a new and rapidly evolving feature of our hobby marketplace.

Just a point but 3D printing hasn't made renders new.


Heck quite a few firms now only show renders on their webstore instead of actual cast models photographed. Dystopian Wars is a good recent example where every ship is shown as a render or artwork on the store and official boxes and the like; but actual painted up physicals are only shown on the social media pages (for the most part).

Now granted social media and the internet means that its a LOT easier to find and connect with real fans making, painting and playing with models. However fan created content is highly variable in quality and a great model can look like trash with a bad paint job badly photographed.


I think many firms overlook the importance of having some good quality solid stock photographs.
Of course alongside that rendering methods are getting better and better - Ikea apparently uses almost all 3D rendering instead of sets and photos for many of their product displays now.

1st or 3rd.

As someone printing stuff commercially as a side job, Overread is 100% right.

Time is always tight, Patreons produce so many files each month, I only print when someone orders it. I take photos of actual printed models when a) I want to have it or b) it has been ordered and isn't more than 3-5 parts that I can quickly blutack together, make a photo, disassemble again and ship it.
90% of sellers on Etsy and Ebay are in the same boat is my guess, nearly no one is doing this as their main job and as such, time is the most pressing issue. You need to work your main job, support models, print models, clean models, ship models, have time with your family, have time to relax.

If someone is wary buying something that's only displayed as a render, okay fair. Either don't buy it, or buy something small first and see what the quality actually is.

There are vendors that actually take their time, test-print, make photos and only THEN offer something for sale. But they are very specialised, e.g. only offer a single line of models and are mostly priced accordingly (e.g. 10+$ for a single human-sized model).

Edit: additional point: most resins make for horrible photos. I'm using Elegoo ABS Grey and without using a wash/ink on it first, small details are often completely lost in a photo. So, either additonal time preparing the model for a photo (making it unsellable) or having a mediocre photo that is often depicting the model worse than it actually is IRL.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
None of the above. Anyone can make a 3d model with amazing detail, I want to see how well that translates to the actual print

This is generally my preference as well. That's part of why Etsy serves me so well is that even if the vender doesn't post them, there are usually customer pictures of a given actual model or at least pictures of a similar model in that series.

However, that's mostly for character and centerpiece models. If I'm building a unit of line troops, I'm not going to be that fussed about the specifics of the picture. More likely, I'm going to be purchasing based on getting a good basic troop at the best price.

Lastly, trust in a known dealer goes a long way. I recently bought figures from someone with a good reputation who is a very small shop with only stock render pics. Prices were great and I trusted his service and was not disappointed. Also, the figures were not of particularly intricate subject matter, so it wasn't really a risk.

 Ketara wrote:
The problem there, I suppose, is what Overread said earlier - vendors aren't usually makers, and the makers usually spam out so many models each month that they haven't the time or equipment to test print it all.

Still doesn't justify their failures. "We make so much stuff we don't have time to test it all" is a giant red flag for a scammer who is not willing or able to deliver a quality product.


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 Hanskrampf wrote:
Time is always tight,

Then make less stuff and take the time to do it right.

Don't forget that the Patreon model is fast but also cheap. Per customer you make very very little money. In fact per customer the value for money is utterly bonkers from some patreons for what you get. Some you can get 100 models per month for £8-15.

So on the one hand the Patreon model is brutal; on the other a designer who regularly has major problems with their sculpts will find it hard to grow their name; grow their market share and grow their patreon into something that earns them good money. They might get a decent number, but if you never retain customers you will always be burning bridges and fighting an uphill struggle. Especially at any point where the number of people entering 3D printing goes down. OVer the last 2 years or so it grew at a phenomenal rate, but there are signs of a bit of slowdown right now.

If I don't see a photo of a physical model, I assume the artist is a video game CGbro who's branched out into selling unprintable files.

 Hanskrampf wrote:

Edit: additional point: most resins make for horrible photos. I'm using Elegoo ABS Grey and without using a wash/ink on it first, small details are often completely lost in a photo. So, either additonal time preparing the model for a photo (making it unsellable) or having a mediocre photo that is often depicting the model worse than it actually is IRL.

That's an excellent point. There's a reason that the images of models in the back of old White Dwarf magazines or the collected catalogue pages all had a black wash on them. - Not the painted glamour shots, but the bare models - which are much better for seeing what you actually get than painted examples. I hate those "coloured renders" that some STL makers use.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hanskrampf wrote:
Time is always tight,

Then make less stuff and take the time to do it right.

No, thanks. The stuff I personally find super cool sometimes doesn't sell at all, while models I have no use for in any game are bestsellers for months and then drop dead. Spaceship models for a "dead" game that I love but didn't put much hope into in terms of sold models is selling like hot cakes. So seemingly I don't know the market at all.
If I cut back, offer less models but make cool promo shoots and end up selling double less (less products + hopes in the wrong model lines), is just not worth the risk.

I can't complain about a lack of customers though, so maybe Dakka is overly critical of renders/3D prints again.

Either that, or a couple of people on Dakka who aren't really the target audience (by their own choice) are overly critical/skeptical.

 Hanskrampf wrote:
If I cut back, offer less models but make cool promo shoots and end up selling double less (less products + hopes in the wrong model lines), is just not worth the risk.

But what about the risk that you make a design that doesn't translate to the real object and the customers who bought it decide you're at best incompetent (and at worst a scammer) and refuse to ever buy from you again? Do you not think that's a problem you should be concerned about?


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 Azazelx wrote:
Either that, or a couple of people on Dakka who aren't really the target audience (by their own choice) are overly critical/skeptical.

I don't think it's being overly skeptical to want to see proof of the physical object when we're talking about a design process that is notorious for having problems with people making cool digital sculpts that either can't be made in reality or don't look right outside of the particular rendering software the artist is using. Why would any sensible customer want to pay money for something without any proof that the thing exists?

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Hanskrampf wrote:
If I cut back, offer less models but make cool promo shoots and end up selling double less (less products + hopes in the wrong model lines), is just not worth the risk.

But what about the risk that you make a design that doesn't translate to the real object and the customers who bought it decide you're at best incompetent (and at worst a scammer) and refuse to ever buy from you again? Do you not think that's a problem you should be concerned about?

Just makes me think that 90% of STLs sold just get hoarded and never printed. If they got printed, you would see more people throwing up a stink about gakky topology, internal voids, etc.