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Hey everyone,

I've been working together with a group of friends (we're planning to start a company but we're not in that point yet) for the last year to create a new type of miniature game (hybrid gameplay with a companion tablet app including AI, MMO aspects etc.). While the game itself is not quite yet ready for release we just got our first miniatures done! We've been had at work to create 3D printed miniatures with high enough quality to satisfy us as gamers and modellers. I think we managed to reach the goal. While the detail in resin prints still isn't fully on par with the best resin casts out there I think we're very close to that.

We'd be very keen to hear what you guys think about them! We wrote a blog post to our site about the process including photos of the complete models. Please check it out at:
http://landsofruin.com/the-first-lan...-for-printing/
(the site is currently a bit slow.. sorry about that)

We're also sending out free promo miniatures to interested bloggers and YouTubers for them to see the miniatures and see how they're to paint. I think that 3D printing will be an awesome way to create miniatures that cannot be created with casting. If you're interested please send me an email at juhani@landsofruin.com or just reply to this thread.

Please let us know what you think!

Cheers,
juhani

Wow, those are excellent. I especially like the one with the concrete saw and the funny head.
If your producing this quality of minature then you should have no problems getting sales.

I'm afraid to say that I think you are not quite there yet. The miniatures do not look good. It's hard to know whether this is just bad sculpting or bad rendering of the sculpt through the printing process. But my guess would be that it is the sculpting. they just look a bit... blobby.

There are A LOT of companies selling miniatures. The small independents that do well seem to generally have something better and/or more unique than the bigger companies.

You need to up your game.

The details on the minis are better in some places than I would think, but you're missing important details, like eyes on the third dude, that make these minis a no go for me.

Based on the pics, the figs look pretty good, not great, but good. However, to really tell. We really need to see some pictures of the unpainted, strait-from-the-printer, miniatures.
On the website I see painted figures and renders, but nothing in between, and the paintjobs aren't sharp enough to really tell what the figures look like sans-paint.
Good luck with the project, and I do like that you've gone for more realistic proportions for the most part. (german helmet head guy's head seems too small though).

Also I wanted to say that I'm impressed with your embrace of other companies miniatures, including Hyacith Games "Wrech Age", the creator of which is a friend of ours. There are so many great post-apoc miniature lines out there that working together can only be a good thing.

Juhani wrote:
We'd be very keen to hear what you guys think about them! We wrote a blog post to our site about the process including photos of the complete models. Please check it out at:
http://landsofruin.com/the-first-lan...-for-printing/
(the site is currently a bit slow.. sorry about that)

I tried to check it out but your link doesn't work.
http://landsofruin.com/the-first-lands-of-ruin-miniatures-are-now-available-for-printing/

If you're going to copy/paste a post, use the preview function to make sure everything (especially links) copied correctly.

I would love to see some unpainted models too. Also, I can't help but put this out there, couldn't it be easier to make multiple part models and cast them instead?

As with most 3D printed miniatures, these have the coarse speckled tecture on the surface for when the resolution of the printer isn't good enough to accommodate this scale. It's grainy and it's clear it's not just the camera.

Compare the left guy's head and especially his weapons to the smooth plastic perfection of the base. The miniature is noticeably grainier.

It works well with very smooth portions that can be easily sanded down such as the right guy's head. However, with intricate details such as human faces, hair, and fur, this is not an option. It's probably no coincidence that you avoided faces and hair on these figures.

All the terrain shots on your site look fine, but all the mini shoots look to be either with a poor resolution camera or there are just no real details on the minis.

You need to have great high res shots of your minis to show them off, and be able to show off comparable detail to other minis out there on the market

I kinda like the miniatures.

They have a very "John Blanche" aesthetic to them. He's one of my favorite artists so I like that look.

disdamn wrote:
All the terrain shots on your site look fine, but all the mini shoots look to be either with a poor resolution camera or there are just no real details on the minis.

The camera quality is fine. Look at the bases. You can even see the really small bumps of stuff that got under the paint. Camera quality is good.

It's the miniature quality that is grainy.

I think 3d printing miniatures will work better with ones that can be sanded to get rid of the texture. Some organics might work for this, but I think maybe models with hard edges will lend themselves well to sanding... I'm still trying to figure out what works best with this kind of printing resolution, too.

Ah I came across your site a month or so ago, looked as it did then as it does now, a really interesting game system, the minis look good ( though some proportions seem just a tad off, but I am very happy to see more people beginning to go into the modern age and leave that "heroic" art style for more realistic minis !, though I do agree they seem to have a fair amount of grain too them. Not as bad as many others I have seen however.

I am fairly surprised however you guys want to produce the line through only 3D prints, I have not seen any 3D printer that can produce miniatures in a fairly quick time length alone, let alone with high end smooth detail like I have had from Moddler and their prints. I feel and see to the far future that casting miniatures is still going to be much more economical and achievable over printing right out to play minis, I would be interested in how durable your miniatures are also?.

I do wish you guys the best of luck, we defiantly need more diversity in the 28mm wargaming market and I think you guys will do very well once everything is up and running!.

with best regards - Shawn.

 mechanicalhorizon wrote:
I kinda like the miniatures.

They have a very "John Blanche" aesthetic to them. He's one of my favorite artists so I like that look.

And speaking of miniatures, where are yours? I'm waiting!

<poke>

<poke poke>

These figures belong in this game.

http://wreck-age.net/

You should get in touch with these guys and get your heads together.

I like the figures, but I don't see a reason to reinvent the wheel when there is already plenty of game systems out there that need love like this one.


I got in with this game with the KS project, have to admit for a back door outfit, there are some good stuff in there. So good that I'd point other people with similar astetic in thier direction.
So similar that your figures fit right in with the factions already in place.


Reason being, they have a lot of enthusiasm, but little money or variety.

Do you have some pictures of the figures without paint jobs/ comparison shots to other figures in scale?

 Grot 6 wrote:
These figures belong in this game.

http://wreck-age.net/

You should get in touch with these guys and get your heads together.

I like the figures, but I don't see a reason to reinvent the wheel when there is already plenty of game systems out there that need love like this one.

They've already contacted Wreck Age. On their website it recommends wreck-age and other companies as good sources of figures that will work with their game.

Seems like both systems are trying to do different things. Wreck-age is a traditional paper-rules system, whereas Lands of Ruin seems to be tablet/electronically based.

Thank you all for the replies. We very much appreciate every comment.

As mentioned in the post we're very much in the beginning of this project and expecting to improve. That is why I love 3D printing as the manufacturing process. We are able to tweak the models without having to do new molds etc. We will be looking into improved posing and possibly also tweaking the proportions of the models to make the fit in with the other miniature ranges. I believe that this kind of feedback loop & iterative process can yield very good results.

It's also worth noting that there's a lot of different types of 3D printers out there. The cheaper end extruder type printers create surface patterns to the prints and are most likely not going to reach good enough quality any time soon. However, the second type which we're using does not. The laser resin printers are capable of producing extremely high resolution prints without any surface patterns. While the resin printers are currently a bit too expensive for home use the price will drop (the extruder printers were more than 2.000e just over a year ago and now you can buy them with 300e range).

While we understand that you won't be able to win any painting competitions with the printed miniatures yet the quality of the printers is improving so fast that it might change within the next two years. For 3D models we (and you) will be able to use the very same models and print them with new printers and the results are going to be better. That's why we believe that investing time to create these models is not going to be in vain.

I'd also like to talk a little bit about our approach to making these models from business point of view. We really want to give more power to gamers and allow gamers to influence the models they use. We're currently planning to release the models under Creative Commons license allowing anyone to take them and change and improve them. This kind of approach is possible with 3D printing. We want people to be able to create their own miniatures and even sell their own and derivate work. While the exact plan how we'll do this is still open the CC way is where we're heading.

Thanks again for all your replies!!

As quality improves I'm sure these will get to a level where people will buy them. Right now I personally wouldn't, the detail simply isn't there.