Update on Life

Wow I'm tired.  I haven't updated my blog in almost a month and for that I'm sorry.  I promised to show you a painted example of the heavy armor.  Trouble with that is I actually have to paint them.  I honestly haven't found the time.  I have them assembled and primed but I have gotten no farther.  It's the story of my entire miniatures collection.  It grows but I can never seem to complete an army.

So what has taken my time?

Well a gaming table actually.

My gaming group got together shortly after my last blog post and while drinking a lot we decided it would be quite nice to build a gaming table. 

I can’t stress how much alcohol was involved in this decision because it has proven quite the undertaking.  We aren’t the most graceful or skilled carpenters on the planet. In fact I’d have to say our skill level with “Craft (furniture)” is roughly -4 ranks averaged between us. 

However with several pints of Guinness anything is possible.

So I was tasked, possibly as a cruel joke, with coming up with a perfect gaming table design.

So that I did.

After our RPG session we drank and discussed options and the materials we could use.  We hashed out our basic needs and what level of complexity we were talking about.  Some of my gamer colleagues and I even field tripped to local home supply stores to see potential materials for the build.

Afterwards, armed with all this critical intelligence I sat down with another beer and google sketchup to plan.   I put the design together in google sketchup so that people can take a look at it in 3d. 

At its core the table design we came up with is modular so we can reformat it to fit our needs.  Made up of 3 separate segments, the two outside segments are self-supporting and hold up the central segment.

The first section is a relatively small table sized at 32”x48” followed by a center projection section also at 32”x48”, and the last section with a size of 48”x48”.  When combined, this will make a single table 4’ by 9’4” table suitable to fit our large 10 person gaming group.  In the center of this large table is an LCD projector rear mounted to display dynamic content on the tabletop itself.  The entire surface of the table is covered in plexiglass mounted on piano hinges so maps and gaming aids can be put under them and wet or dry erase markers used directly on the table top.  In all, great for RPG gaming. 

Or we can remove the projection section to make a 4’ by 6’8” table.  This size is perfectly sized for table top wargaming, having a standard 4’ b6 6’ surface with 4 inches on either side for models in reserve or removed from game. 

Or we can separate the 4’ by 4’ table giving us a single square table.  This is perfect for traditional 4 player board games or smaller skirmished based table top games.

The 2’8” by 4’ table also works for smaller board and card games with 2 to 4 players.  Or it can be tucked out of the way for entertaining.

The frame of the table is sturdy design using 2x2 and 2x4 lumber to distribute the weight.

Along the outer edge of the table are mounted K-Rails, a snap fit rail system traditionally used in garages. Here we use it for mounting shelving to expand the surface as needed. The K-Rail system acts as both the lip of the table top and lets us mount temporary table space around the outside of the table as well as mount cup holders, dice towers, and other amenities wherever we sit.

Kobalt makes K-rail shelves, baskets, and so on that, with minor modification, can serve the needs of any gaming group without trouble.  Our basic design mounts a 12” by 18” piece of 3/4^th inch particle board onto two flat K-rail brackets with a piano hinge at the back to mount plexiglass.  This simple structure adds a single seating place with enough room for the player to roll dice and store their character sheet under plexiglass and use markers to track health and so on.  Other designs can be made and the player or group could customize these shelves to whatever they need or simply go without them entirely.

The structure is supported by its two end sections.  Each one is mounted on a set of 4” by 4” legs mounted on locking casters.  The legs are 30” long with 2” casters, once flush mounted with the top the table stands roughly 32” high.  This is a tiny bit higher than a normal table for sitting but slightly low for a standing counter top. We found this was a good medium for both standing and seated gaming.  The casters make the table easy to move around.  The large size and sturdy nature of the legs allow the table to support the center section of the table for the projector.  This insert is pinned on with aluminum pipe.  Though it may support a side seat it is mostly intended to simply mount the projector.  Minor modifications could make this table free standing or mount other equipment like an LCD TV or monitor.

So that’s the design.  Lets see some pictures.

Needed Supplies

1/2" Masonite                         x1  32"x48" + x1   48"x48"  +  x2 2" strips 48" and x2 2" strips 28" long

1/8" Plexi                                x2  32"x48" +  x2 24"x48"                                    Note: the largest plexi we found was 32” x 48” if you can find bigger it might be a cheaper build.  This is the most expensive part, doesn’t count any plexi for K-rail place settings.  Roughly 250 bucks here, literally costs as much as the entire table (minus projector).

2 part epoxy                                        1 tube                          Used to glue plexi to hinges.

2” Flush Seat Wooden Screws   x100                                    Used to mount the K-rails

2x2                                    53'6"                            ~7 boards Cuts are below.

2x4                                    39'2"                            ~5 boards Cuts are below.

3/4" Aluminum pipe               3'                                 holds table sections together

3/4" U-bracket                                    x16                  holds up the pipe that holds table sections together

3” Flush Seat Wooden Deck Screws   x100                                    Used to build the frame.

4x4                                          20’                       ~2 boards Note: alternatively you can use folding table leg kits but each section will need to be self supporting.

Casters –locking                     x8                                    screw on casters best.

Cotter pins                              x8                                    Ace has them individually, need to get ones that will fit the pipe bought to hold tables together.

 Glass Mounting Kit                x1                                    not sure on this, you need to mount a mirror at a 45 degree angle for the projector to get a focal length of 5 feet not sure on the fittings needed for that, I assume, duct-tape

K-Rail Track                                    26'7”                                    ~8 six foot rails

L-brackets                               x32                                    used to mount the legs. Note: not needed if you use folding leg kits

LCD projector                        x1                                    standard long throw projector that has rear mounting settings.

Mirror                                     x1                                      Minimum 12"x12" preferably larger                                    16” or 18” square would be best

Piano Hinge                            x6  12"                          Sold individually   

White Craft Paper                                    32"x48"                                    this is the projection surface, you can use craft paper, tracing paper, or any other semitransparent surface with an opacity of around 70%.  You can buy drafting paper that has this opacity and ½” grid lines.

Wire Cart +casters no top      x1                    used to mount the projector, could be a board with casters honestly, just needs to be flat and can mount a projector and mirror.

Wood Cuts

2x2 - x6 48" - x6 29" - x4 45"

2x4 - x4 32" - x6 41" - x2 48"

4x4 - x8 30”

masonite - x1 32"x48" - x1 48"x48" - x2 32"x2"  - x2 44"x2"

K-rail - x4 48" - x4 32"

Shelves

K-rail flat mount brackets - 2 per seat/expansion shelf

MDF - 18" x 12" per seat/expansion shelf     x1 8'by4' MDF board cut down into segments

Star Marine Heavy Armor Assembly and Review Part 1...

Well as I said I was really waiting to do a blog about my Star Marines.  Now I'm going to do this as a review of sorts.  Yes I know it seems stupid to be reviewing my own work but it’s necessary.  I’ve had a lot of questions about print quality with shapeway’s miniatures so I thought this was a good time to address that issue.  Also I felt it was a good time to address some of the ways we have to handle Shapeways products that is different than traditional miniatures.  So hopefully you’ll be getting an honest critique along with some lessons learned to fulfill your plastic addiction.

OK so first off, packaging and shipping.  I ordered these miniatures on March 31st at around 8 pm and they arrived Tuesday April 9th at 2:02 pm according to the packaging slip.  That's a Sunday and there is a weekend in between so that's roughly 7 business days to print these models and ship them to me from Shapeway's New York facility.  Realistically they probably shipped out the Wednesday or Thursday after I placed the order.  I'd call that pretty good turn around considering GW ran out of Dark Vengeance boxes day one on release and it took almost 3 weeks to get more stock to my local game store.  Ironically Shapeways sent a little apology note to me because they think 7 business days is to slow.  I really applaud Shapeways for their standards of service here.

The box is a sturdy cardboard box and the product is completely wrapped in large bubble wrap.  No bubble mailers or flimsy card stock packaging.  Inside the bubble wrap everything is in its own thick zip-lock polybag.  Nice little resealable bits containers for those who want them.  I use them for partitioning out models my wife sells on ebay. 

I will say I'm not sure how larger items ship.  Plastic miniatures in a baggie seems fine to me but two pieces of metal jewelry sliding across each doesn't make me feel good about the finishing.  I'd hope they bag metal items individuality and wrap larger items directly in bubble wrap before bagging. No idea though because all these are small scale parts and I'd say good packaging for what I ordered.

Here we have the gravity hammers and torso's in bag.  Sorry for the glare, the polybag is about 4 or 5 mil thick and glossy so its hard to get a great picture.  Shapeways actually sorted all these bits themselves, my model simply put them in the smallest amount of space possible so clearly their people are good at their jobs.

They packed the legs, shields, and backpacks together.  Torsos, legs, and backpacks were all hollowed to lower the price a bit. Even though they are hollow they are still quite sturdy and all survived the printing process without problems.

Everyone's favorite, shoulder pads.  These are just generic shoulders, no iconography.  But they turned out well enough.

Here are the arms sprues. I chose to make sprues for the arms rather than loose bits because the hands are extremely small and I thought they might get lost.  this is also the only place we see any breakage.  A couple of hands and arms came off sprue.  Because the parts were in the bag i'm guessing this happened in shipping.  Specifically the break point was the sprue where it joins the base of the part.  This was a 1mm diameter wire that was supporting the weight of the pieces and no damage was done to the bits themselves.

Ok so here we are getting into the interesting shots.  I've removed the bits from their bags and washed them (not shown).  I've ordered these miniatures in Frosted Detail.  Frosted Detail and Frosted Ultra Detail are essentially the same material.  FUD has a lower possible thickness and a slightly lower minimum detail than FD but thicknesses below .8mm are extremely weak in both materials making them very brittle.  As a result the price for FUD can’t be offset any farther by thinning and still have a model that won’t break during game play.  Ultimately it comes down to the minimum detail, 0.2mm vs 0.1mm doesn't sound like a lot and I’ll argue isn't enough to justify the cost of FUD over FD.  I have more opinions on print materials I’ll cover later on but basically keep in mind the cost difference is more for the printing time that it takes to print in FUD than for the actual material costs.

Photographing Frosted Detail is like trying to photograph an ice sculpture.  It main body is transparent and it’s outer surface has a white “frost” to it making it hard to make out detail.  In these photograph’s I’ve increased the contrast so you can see a bit more detail than the original unedited photo.  

Here we see the Shield and Backpack design.  You’ll note the raised plates on the shield’s face have flattened out a bit during printing.  Each step of the plates is approximately .25mm because the minimum detail is .2mm for FD its hard to discern exactly where the levels change, they are still noticeably different levels just a little flatter than originally designed.  This detail loss is minor but worth noting, I’ll be pointing it out as I go along.

The backpacks are much more detailed because their surface changes are much larger than the subtle rounding of the shield.  The only real loss of detail is in the vents along the sides of the pack which have filled in during printing. this is because I didn't make the vent's surface deep enough to really pop out. If you are using FD for making masters for casting your surface detail will be very important to you and sadly this lose, while minor to me, might be deal breaker.

Here we see two parts, the Torsos and the Hammer. The torso’s are hollowed out so they have a more transparent quality than the other bits.  The inside of the torso is a hollow bubble that I’ve put holes in the bottom and sides (shoulder mounts) on headed torso’s I also do a neck hole.  You’d think this would make the model fragile but it’s actually quite sturdy.  Think of it like an egg, structurally the force applied when squeezing the torso is spread across the entire surface making its crush strength much higher.

The detail on the torso turned out quite well.  You can clearly see the joins along the ab armor as well as the ribbing on the power cables.  Some detail is lost along the top of the capsule.  It's hard to make out in the photo but the square visor plate that is in the center of the capsule's face is almost totally gone.  this is caused by two things. First if I go back to my 3d model I can see the square's raised rim is extremely shallow, I can't get a clear measurement but it is probably below that 0.2 mm detail level.  Secondly you can just make out slight lines going left to right along the surface, this is the print grain of the model.  The printer head orientation gives all 3d printed models a grain and sadly that grain has caused some loss of detail.  It happens and can mostly be avoided if I had made the detail deeper to begin with.

Frosted Detail’s plasticity is lower than the ABS plastics used by most miniatures companies that do plastics but it’s still higher than most resin products.   That means it will flex rather than break most of the time but it’s still brittle enough that if you step on it, it doesn't so much smoosh down as it does shatter like glass.  I was particularly worried about this issue with the Hammer’s handle.  The thinnest part of the handle is 1mm exactly so it’s right on the line of minimum wire detail.  However the hammer, both head and handle, turned out quite well.  The lines on the head are pretty crisp, the detail on the hand grip of the handle filled in slightly but over all this is a symptom of me again designing to close to the 0.2mm minimum detail thickness.

Ah the legs.  I won’t deny I’m a bit of a leg man and I’m quite proud of the quality of the legs on this design.  Here we see the photo’s of the design’s legs so you can get an idea of their quality.  The hollow in the legs here is not uniform and has trapped raw material inside the leg design. The result is these bits look a lot whiter than the other bits.  The surface texture of 3d printed materials isn’t smooth.  In the case of FD and FUD it leaves a white frosted glass sort of texture but this is slight enough that very little detail is lost in printing (provided we mind the minimum detail levels).  The legs surface have nice subtle curves as I intended.  You can clearly make out details like the thick cabling and the hydraulics on the caves.  I’ll count these as the best printed bits so far.

The arms, these are the only parts I put on sprue and the only parts that “broke” during printing.  As you can see several hands fell off the sprue, I have them I just didn’t bother photographing them here.  One piece of advice, don’t sneeze around these bits.  FD and FUD are much lighter plastics than traditional ABS and ABS is already pretty light.  A slight breeze sent the hands flying and a strong blow made the legs hit the wall of my living room.  Luckily I lost nothing but bare that in mind when working on these.

Anyway, all the sprues are 1 mm and they warped a lot.  The hands are the smallest pieces of the actual figure, each knuckle is 0.7 mm, they are quite well defined and you can see the definition in the fingers. Sadly the photos of the hands are blurry because my camera hated photographing tiny white objects.  I believe because of the backdrop it was confused.  You can roughly see the shape of the fingers in the photos thanks to some contrast manipulation but they are there.

The whole lot of figures and weapons waiting to be assembled.  No real detail in the pictures but it gives you an idea of how big this lot of plastic is.

Once I had cleaned and photographed everything I went to work assembling.  I've modeled my designs so they assemble in much the same way as GW’s miniatures do.  Waist ball joint, neck ball joint (if a neck is present this doesn't have one), and a flat arm joint on the torso. My arms have a round joint so you can sand them flat at various levels to make different arm positions.  I've assembled my first Star Marine in a fairly generic pose and mounted him/her on a 40mm base.

This photo has no contrast manipulation or anything like that going on, it’s simply under the work lamp on my bench.  Thanks to the lighting you can make out some of the detail on the miniature but just barely.  You can see the gritting on the hammer head, the segmented plates of ab armor, the raised rim on the shoulder pads, etc.  Everything goes together smoothly and apart from pinning the hammer and sanding the shoulder joint on the arm to make a flat surface I’ve not manipulated the figure.  

A side by side picture.  Though really dark, the figure on the left is a plastic space marine terminator from games workshop, shown for scale only (painted as an art lesson by a friend).  The Star Marine in contrast is much taller than its counterpart.  About 8mm at the top of head, 3 at the top of the back icon.  That’s a pretty big difference and one that is a systemic design flaw on my part.  I know from my measurements that the torso’s and arms are completely correct scale wise with other figures.  The Star Marine is just to leggy.

I had this trouble with my original Female Marines as well. Basically I’m human accurate on my anatomy which means the legs aren’t foreshortened like most 28mm figures. The result is they are just to tall compared to the rest of the body on the table top.  I need to revise the legs to make them shorter.  That alone should bring the model into line with other 28mm figures, though an entire rescaling might be in order.  Not sure, tweaking is always a battle.

One thing, the figures aren’t bad for 28mm but they would be closer to being a “true scale” soldier than I intended.  I’m not sure but I might make two separate lines, one “true scale” one “heroic scale” depends on demand and how much work it is to maintain both.

Side by side the GW Termi is much chunkier than my Heavy Star Marine.  The position of my figure's head would be above the Termi's which makes it a bit awkward like standing next to a pro basketball player and trying to reach the top shelf.

I also had another concern with the figure which will likely prompt a design change.  The Hammer's main handle survived printing without issue but then was to small for me to drill and pin. Maybe i'm not coordinated enough but it proved to be a bad idea to drill a 0.75mm hole in a 1mm plastic rod.  I opted instead to remove the 1mm handle body and instead drill into the 1.5mm grip and pin directly to the hand.  I'm considering the idea of redesigning the hand and hammer, and probably a lot of weapons, to eliminate this wasted handle all together.  Possibly going to hollowing the handles entirely so they fit over 1mm or 0.75mm brass rod.  This would make the weapons a bit cheaper and make the models easier to assemble. Its also something that casters can't do easily that makes sense for 3d printing.

I've done a light drybrushing of flat white paint onto the figure.  It allows you to see some of the detail that was obscured by the frosted surface.  A trick of the light means that the white turns gray here so the gray spots are the highest spots, raised edges and such. Most of the figure has nice clean edges but you can see that the face has a sort of horizontal grain that just shows up in the wrong spot this time.  There is also a light pebbling everywhere that's about as noticeable as the soft pebbling found on metal models. After painting it generally disappears.

Wide shot of the figure under better lighting.  You can see the white on the surface of the translucent white figure.  A bit more detail is visible here but more detail will be visible once the figure is fully painted.  I really can't stress enough how hard it is to photograph translucent white models with a 10 year old digital camera.

My Thoughts

Well quite obviously I must admit that I have some kinks to work out with my modeling.  Its must easier to scale a weapon than a human figure.  The inconsistencies of the figure jump out a lot more on printing than a slightly over sized sword does.  Weapons and other bits like that are much more subjective and can be less accurately scaled than a body part.  I also need to make detail elements larger to insure they show up correctly. This is an extension of the same problem I had with WSF but its much more manageable at this detail level.

I also have to say that FD and FUD aren't perfect materials.  I'd like to see materials with a lower minimum detail and a more crisp surface texture than the fuzzy frosting on these materials. I've also seen a lot of home projects that appear to turn out better detail on materials and some projects like wax and photo resins can print at much smaller details.  FD is the best price point though which makes it at least passingly acceptable.  If shapeways is listening do a kickstarter for a higher resolution 3d print material for a lower cost. In fact, start several kickstarters one for high res material, another for 3d wax printing for molding capabilities, and another for actual 3d printing of RTV mold products, and maybe one for adding automated spruing for models uploaded.  Anyway point is FD is the best we can get right now balancing price and material availability so I will have to live with it.

Ok so that's it for now, don't worry I'm not done yet. I'm going to assemble these guys and paint them up so you can see the quality. As I paint the models I hope the detail will pop out better. Till next time, enjoy...

Wargaming's Future (3/19/2013)

I haven’t spent a huge amount of time on my blog over the past several months.  Mostly my time has been dedicated to completing some commissions.  But I’ve been slipping into designing some cool bits now and then when the inspiration strikes.  On the one hand I’m proud of the commission work I’m doing but I feel I’m doing a bit of disservice to my readers and all those who order my items.  I know I’ve got a small stack of requests in my in box and a couple of errors on printed items that I need to get to.  I promise you that I’ll get around to them ASAP now that my free time is becoming mine again.

I semi-officially finished my largest commission last Tuesday.  I only await the final approval on the models to know that I’m definitively done.  I’d love to share with you the fruits of those projects but due to confidentiality agreements I can’t. Suffice it to say it was a huge challenge and I’m quite proud to have done it.  Now that I can get back to my own projects I’ve jumped on my star marines again.

When I started making my female space marines I jokingly referred to them as “Star Marines”.  This was as much a tongue in cheek reference to GW’s product as it was an example of my insecurity over the idea of barrowing on the Games Workshop mythos.  I am a huge fan of Warhammer 40k and the models of Games Workshop but the older their world gets the less I feel at home in it.

I could chalk this up to my age but I don’t really believe that’s the case. I still watch power rangers and read comic books so age isn’t the issue. The issue is Games Workshop is reinventing itself.  It’s been doing it for years and on the one hand being the Madonna of its industry is what makes it great.    On the other hand reinvention always leaves someone out in the cold. And that someone in this case is me.

I’m willing to bet that it’s a lot of other people too.  I’m not afraid of change but change, reinvention, can’t be for its own sake.  To often we take for granted that change will be good or bad and generally fail to acknowledge that the scary part of change isn’t its good or bad points but the lack of control we have over it. Games Workshop has changed Warhammer 40k a lot over the years and while we can say over and over that it’s changes aren’t all bad we must admit that some of them are.

Which brings me to 6^th edition 40k.  I started playing 40k back in 2^nd edition and back then the land scape or “meta” if you want to believe in that, was a lot like it is now.  There were a lot of people spoiling to play cool new things that could be done with the game books.  But back then Games Workshop accomplished the same thing with a lot less money and a lot less man power.  People were inspired less by Games Workshop’s fluff background and more by their own imaginations.  And people took absurd ideas and ran with them for hours upon hours of conversion and gameplay fun.

Today with the freshness of 6^th edition, the newly revised whitedwarf, and the quicker pace of releasing Games Workshop has captured that anything can happen vibe of Rogue Trader.  But in doing so what have they spent.  In terms of money? In terms of manpower? In terms of long term viability of the products they produce?  I’m not really qualified to speak on the time, effort, and money Games Workshop has spent to revitalize 40k.  What I can say is I’m not sure its sustainable.

Games Workshop has started trying new things and that’s good in the long run.  But they haven’t been terribly good at what they have tried.  6^th edition 40k is still a terribly hard to explain game for very little reason.  Contrary the to popular belief the rules for playing toy soldiers are very easy to articulate.  Any 8 year old can explain them, I shoot you, you die.  We all love rolling dice, we all love watching enemy and even allied soldiers get removed as casualties.  Games Workshop keep’s making that complicated.  Arguably this is done to making teams balanced but everyone can attest that, while the most balanced it’s been in years, 40k is not balanced so all that extra writing and layers of rules technicalities is a waste.  Beyond that every rule in the big book pretty much has an exception in one or more army books anyway making it less a rules guide than a bunch of things you have to remember to ignore but only when X is on the field anyway.

I have a 7 year old nephew.  A 7 year old nephew that is part of my table top roleplaying group.  We play a lot of different games but his favorite is Star War D6.  A game played with fists full of D6s and lots of brash fun gunslingers shooting at each other.  I tried teaching him Warhammer 40k. a game that is arguably very similar to the WEG Star Wars experience.  He lost interest after 15 minutes.

Perhaps 7 years old is the wrong age to learn mass combat games.  Maybe I’m not a good gaming instructor.  Or maybe there are just too many rules and to many exceptions for a child to track. I don’t really know.  The trouble is that most of the gamers I know are table top gamers because they started young.  I started at around 7 or 8 myself with RPGs and moved to wargames at 10 or 11.  My Nephew actually totally grasps the concept of characters, line of sight, hit points, armor saves, and all of that.  He just doesn’t care about look out sirs, overwatch, snap fire, anything that is a USR, or why some models get feels no pain and others don’t.

At the end of the day Games Workshop’s new more engaging business model just doesn’t make for a healthy game.  As a current gamer it’s nice that things are more balanced. It’s great that we are getting new kits faster.  It’s nice that unasked questions are being faq’d sooner.  It’s even nice that I can spend my money on a poorly designed digital product instead of an over designed print product.  But when it comes down to it balance, speed of releases, faqs, and even digital or print products aren’t the barriers to entry on the game.

At a time when the entire world has seen economic distress the biggest issue is now and always will be price and service.  Games Workshop’s constantly up sloping prices coupled with relatively poor customer service and the constant feeling that whatever I buy will be devalued in the game by 6 to 10 weeks out make it hard for a current gamer to justify the price tag.  At the same time while other games have maintained a reasonably price tag for their core products and an extremely low price tag for their starter sets, Games Workshop continues the trend of uniform prices across the board. This means new gamers can’t buy into the game to get hooked without a friend that’s already in the hobby and spent the money.

As a gamer I’m an advocate for gaming. I love gaming and believe everyone who plays is in some way better for playing.  But I can buy a DnD starter set for 20 bucks, all the core books for 60, and a bunch of plastic DnD miniatures for a buck a piece. For Warhammer 40k I spend 65 bucks for the core book, another 60 for my army book and then 100 plus for a bare bones starter army that isn’t even always complete to play and is rarely what you actually want.  I’m not sure I can advocate that as easily as I can other aspects of the hobby.

Maybe that’s the point though, Games Workshop is trying to change the dynamic of the hobby.  It seems clear they don’t want it accessible to just anyone.  Constant price rises, pushes to remove services from 3^rd party retailers, and even the semi-mainstream effort put into forge world are attempts at elitism within the hobby.  Games Workshop’s goal is to push people towards their in house distribution.  As an example, they just contractually killed bits service through 3^rd party retailers which means they will likely start unveiling a bunch of shitty fine cast bit kits that are direct order only.  Every kit will be priced at 19.99 or similar and have just enough kinda useful and kinda useless bits on the kit to make you feel like it might be a good price but the quality and service will still be lacking and spending 20 bucks for the one power fist will still leave someone feeling a bit let down.

See Games Workshop is ok with someone leaving the hobby so long as you aren’t ordering from them directly.  Their greatest profit margin is in house where their supply chain takes care of everything rather than paying an outsider.  Their highest degree of control is in house where they do all the training and control all the advertising. No risk of their employees telling you about a competing product or their magazine advertising WarmaHordes.  In the end their goal is pretty transparent.  If they can’t get you into one of their stores and keep you, they don’t want you as a customer.

If you want to understand their elitism look no farther than their “digital products”.  Their “digital products” are nothing more than the iBooks News Stand products.  I get game informer the exact same way, only for 14 bucks a year. Same basic content. Useful index, searchable functionality, fancy revolving 3d images (game characters are cool that way), occasional videos, forced landscape viewing (even though portrait is traditional print lay out and easier to bloody read), and of course outrageously large 300mb downloads.  Only difference is that Games Workshop feels their product is worth more because they made it.  Same goes with their print game books.  We can talk about all the fancy color print pages and stuff we want but I have personally felt for years that the army book prices are trending towards the point they aren’t in my price range. I can pick up a hard cover 200 page DnD supplement for 39.95 but I have to pay 60 for a warhammer one? And then by the models? And the core book? Oh and you’ve made stupid objective markers and psychic power cards too, great. 

I’ve come to realize that I’m not Games Workshop’s market for 40k anymore.  Neither is my Nephew.  It’s not about age.  I don’t feel entitled to anything because I’ve played for so long.  No its more about the very real truth that they don’t care if I patronize them or not.  They aren’t worried about losing me as a customer because they haven’t had me invested in their business model for a couple of years now.

Why is this all important? Well I’ve just realized something very clearly. For a long time side companies like Chapterhouse have been combating Games Workshop’s elitist mentality by keeping bits and specialized models cheap.  But they don’t have to. Games Workshop isn’t killing itself by getting rid of bits or raising prices or driving off customers. It’s giving life to its competition.  I’m not going to start a kickstarter.  But I will predict that someone soon will. Within a few months of Chapterhouse and Games Workshop settling Chapterhouse will start its own game.  Mantic has already started its Warpath game and will kickstart that.  Beyond the Gates of Antares was pulled from kickstarter and arguably was going to be a shitty game, but it will be back.  Within a year Anvil industries will at least talk about making a game as will Wargames Factory within 18 months.  The point is, I can’t look at Games Workshop’s business tactics as “bad for the hobby” anymore. They are good for it, just not good for Games Workshop’s place in it.

That's my deep thought for the day.  Later this week i'll be talking about Star Marines and what that means for my future projects, and hopefully a little about the design of my Heavy Armor troopers.

How to Make Shoulder Pads

So I promised some time ago I’d show you how to make shoulder pads.  I’ve totally given up on the bell of lost souls contest so I’m just tossing this to my loyal followers on the blog.  I don’t have finished product pictures of my icons which just makes people a bit leery.  Couple that with the fact 3d design is a bit out of reach for the less tech savvy and you get a lot of people skimmed my tutorial but very few commented.  Doesn’t matter I don’t do this stuff to get money I do it because I enjoy it.

So shoulder pads

Now one quick disclaimer.  According to the depositions of the Chapterhouse Studios vs Games Workshop legal battle, Games Workshop claims copyright over the shape of shoulder pads. The judge has ruled in summary judgment that it is possible that GW can own the copyright.  Now this means two things, one that GW might own the shape of shoulder pads, IE a quarter ovoid with a raised rim, and two that CH must yet present evidence that implies otherwise.  Basically the shape of the shoulder pad is currently in contention.  As such if a person makes their own shoulder pads it may or may not be copyright infringement at this time.

Anyway let’s start with a sphere.  I’ve installed a free plugin called SCF Draw Tools.  It allows me to make shapes without the trouble of using the extrude or follow me functions that are normally needed to make a 2d shape a 3d object. Here I’ve started from a center point to make the sphere.

  

I’ve made the sphere approximately 8500 millimeters in diameter when scaled that will be 8.5mm. 

Of course a shoulder pad isn’t a sphere. Its an ovoid, its taller than it is wide. So we stretch it using the scale tool.  By grabbing the center handle and holding shift we can scale evenly along the axis.  Scaling up my 1.5 times should be about right.

Now obviously we need to break this down.  A shoulder pad is not a full ovoid, its one quarter of an ovoid. So we need to make this a quarter.  Now we are going to do this the hard way.  The Pro Version of Sketchup has these nice Boolean tools that let you intersect or union solid objects.  But I want to show you the freeway to do this. Let’s hope one day Trimble puts the boolean tools into the free version.  Till then we do things the hard way.

So join the ovoid into a group so it doesn’t interfere with the new geometry we are about to make.  And just to be safe lets hide it.  Now with the rectangle tool, starting at the center point of the axis, drag out a rectangle larger than the ovoid. Then use the extrude tool to make it a 3d rectangle. I like to do things in mirror so my shape rectangle only covers 1/8^th the ovoid. This lets me modify one side of it and then mirror it down the center. It’s just lazier but it works.

Ok so now we have our two shapes but we need to intersect them.  We can do so by selecting the two objects and explode the two groups. Once they are no longer grouped select them then right click and choose “intersect faces with selection”  Now if we look at it transparent you’ll see the all the geometry is still present. But now where the two shapes overlap there are seems that we want to keep. We just need to delete the excess geometry we don’t want.

We go in with the eraser tool and remove the parts we don’t want.  This process isn’t necessary with the boolean tools in the Pro version but its not really worth the extra cost. There are some free plugins that offer versions of the boolean tools but I’ve never had good luck with them and since I have the Pro version I’ve never needed them.

Now we have the segment of the shoulder pad we need.  But we still need two things, the back needs hollowed to fit the arm, and the front needs a rim around the edge. So lets start with the hollow in the back.  Group the item again and then copy it.  Now use the “paste in place” function to put it back where it was.  Then switch to the scale function.  Using the corner handle scale it down so its slightly smaller.  You may have to play with it to size it correctly.  Once you have it how you want once more explode the shapes and intersect faces again.

Now we have the hollow shape so we can make the rim.  Start by copying the hollowed shape again. Then use the “paste in place” function.  Once you’ve done that use the scale tool just like before but scale it up so its larger than the original shape.

So now we need to take the center of the shape out to make it a rim.  We’ll use the same method we used before to do so.  Make a rectangular 3d object that is again larger than the original shape.  Now select the bottom and vertical edges use the “offset” tool on the side.  Then use the push pull tool to remove the main part and make an “L” shape.  Now we can combine the enlarged pad shape and the L to make the rim.  Once more using the explode and Intersect faces commands we can get the desired result.

At this point we have half a shoulder pad shape.  If we first select the geometry and tap the “control” key while using the move tool we can duplicate the design easily.  Then with the new geometry selected right click and choose “Flip Along” and select the appropriate axis.  Now just drag the geometry together so it is seemless.  At this juncture you can combine the two halves of the main body and the two halves of the rim together.  It’s important to keep the body of the pad and the rim of the pad separate for now.

Now we need to start on the icon for the shoulder pad.  To do so we need a plate that we will cut the icon out of.  We get this from copying the body of the shoulder pad, pasting it in place, and then enlarging it.  Here I’ve scaled the plate using the scale tool so its just slightly smaller than the rim I made. Don’t worry about the overhang at the back and bottom of the pad we’ll deal with that after we make our icon.

Now we need the icon itself.  Remember last time how I said keeping the different layers of the icon separate would be helpful.  This is where it will be helpful.  In this case we have 3 layers.  We are going to use each of these 3 layers as a cookie cutter to stamp out a layer for our icon.

To start put the 3 icons together like you’d want them to display.  Then using the move tool move them so they are centered around the same axis we are using to build our shoulder pad.  Once in place use the scale tool to stretch them so they are tall enough to pass through the shoulder pad.  Now we go back to the move tool.  When you select a single part with the move tool, you’ll see 4 “x” shaped points appear on each face. If we then select one it will allow us to rotate around the center of the object.  Rotate each layer of the icon so it goes through the face of the shoulder pad as shown below.

At this juncture we need to follow the same process we used before. First copy the plate.  Now select one of the icon layers and explode it and the plate. Now intersect with selection and remove the excess geometry. 

Once we have all the junk out of the way make the new shape a group and then paste the plate back in place so you can do the same thing to the other two icon parts.  Her we can see all 3 layers of the icon as their own rounded plate, while working I’ve hidden my shoulder pad body and rim so it’s not in the way.

We can now use the move tool to offset the layers giving them some relief to the design.  Select the layers you want to move, then select the move tool. Now hold the shift key to move the layers along an axis.  Here I’ve move it slightly along the green axis and blue axis to have this result.

Now we have a complete shoulder pad.  At this point if we have followed these steps our pad is complete. This multi-part file should print OK, but for the best results you should join all the faces and remove the internal geometry so its all one piece.  But if we want we can copy it to make multiples pads in a single file. We can rotate it to change orientation and so on.  Here I’ve duplicated the shoulder so it has 10 copies in a single file. Now I can scale it down by 1000% and use the STL export plugin to output it for shapeways.

Here are a couple pieces of advice to help new 3d modelers along. When I was first starting out the biggest problem I had was leaving geometry inside a model.  See when you make an STL and upload it for printing on Shapeways the process will combine each separate group into a “Shell” the shell has to be “watertight” in order for it to print.  That’s a fancy way of saying it has to be a solid 3d object.  Orphaned geometry hanging around either inside or outside a solid object will become its own shell because it’s not connected to anything.  But it’s a shell that can’t be printed because it’s not solid, it has a front but no back.  This means your print attempt will fail.  So it’s always a good idea to double check by going into each group and unhiding everything and removing the orphaned edges you might have missed.   The other problem I consistently had was what many at Shapeways call the “Wall thickness Lottery”.  Each material has specific rules regarding minimum thicknesses it can print in.  Unfortunately it’s very easy to have these thicknesses rejected if they are really close to the limitations.  Be mindful of your target material’s requirements and if necessary ask advise on the forums for guidance on how to resolve the issues you are having.  The shapeways community is quite friendly and willing to help.

3d Modeling and Printing Icons for 28mm Games

I had been writing this post for here but Bell of Lost Souls has a hobby article shopping spree contest going on so I'm posting it both places. If you want to support my plastic crack addition please vote over on the Bell of Lost Souls lounge for this hobby thread.  It will be broken into a couple seperate posts there with all the same images (linked from here) and dialog.

Well I was going to do this for my personal blog but figured I might as well do this on Bell of Lost Souls as well if there is a chance to win some free miniatures.  Ah the power of free.

I’m a big believer in free, or at the very least cheap, so I’m going to show you guys a pretty easy and relatively cost effective way to make some miniatures icons for your armies.

We are going to be using a single piece of software for this, Sketchup.  Sketchup has a free and a paid version, anything the paid version can do can also be done with the free version and a community created plugin. This makes sketchup very versatile even with out paying the 500 bucks for the “professional verson”.   In the past I’ve covered plugins on my blog to help people track down what they need to maximize their efficiency in sketchup.  You can find the blog post here, http://dynath.blogspot.com/2012/03/building-miniatures-in-sketchup.html.

We will also be using an 3d printing service called shapeways found here, http://www.shapeways.com. Shapeways is a community and sales site centered around customer created 3d printable objects. The price of shapeways products is set by the person that makes the object but ordering your own products for yourself will only cost you the actual production costs. While 3d printing can become quite expensive for large objects, small items like miniature bits are easy to make and cheap to order.

In this I’m going to show you how to make the master model for an icon plate.  This works very well for space marine armies but could also be used for any force icon.

First of course download and install Sketchup. I’ve also installed all of the plugins found in the blog post I’ve linked above.

Step 1: the background

Icons are easiest to mount if you put them on a background.  In this case I’m going to build a basic base that I can reuse.  I start by making a square.  Using the rectangle tool I drag out a square, when dragging the dashed line across the center tells you when you are making a square or a golden section. 

If you look at the bottom right corner in the info box you’ll see the size of the item I’m working with.  The square I started with is about 1000 millimeters.  This is too small.  Sketchup is designed to work with architecture so it can have some trouble when you make really small items.  So we need to work at a larger scale and then shrink the model down before we export it.  I like to work at 1000 times the final size. It’s is large enough I rarely have problems with geometry and the math for scaling is easy to figure out.

Here I’ve put some measuring lines on the square so we can see the size.  Then, with the square selected, I’ve selected the “Scale Tool”.  This puts little green handles around the sides of the object.  Then by dragging I can resize the square.  In this case I wanted to make a square that when output will be 15mm on each side.  So I drug the scale handle until the square has a size of about 15,000mm on each side.  Precision is not totally necessary but it helps. 

Well we have a nice two dimensional square but we need to have some depth to make a 3d model.  So we are going to choose yet another tool, the “Push/Pull tool”.   If we choose that tool, and then left click on a flat surface it can push or pull the surface out giving it thickness.  Watch the bottom left corner of the screen to determine how far you are pulling it.  I want the plate to be about 1mm thick so I’m making the larger model 1000mm tall approximately. 

Now we have a nice square background for our model.  We can select it and make it a group so it doen’t get lost.  Of course GW put some of their icons (on the drop pod sprues) on squares and circles and they are pretty boring so let’s fancy this up a bit.  Double click on our group to open it up.  Then select the “offset tool” this lets us click on a surface to offset a line inside that surface.  In this case I want to drop a line about 1000mm from the outside edge of our square. 

Now I’m going to use the “Push/pull tool” to push the surface in about 200mm.  this will make the total thickness in the middle of the plate about 0.8mm when done.  Shapeway has different materials with different minimum thicknesses so be aware of what your limits are for the material you want to print in.  I usually use Frosted Detail. It has lots of detail for miniatures and a 0.5mm minimum thickness so the thickness I just set it at is about perfect for a sturdy plastic plate.  Now lets add some rivits along the outside edge.  If you hover over the center of a line or shape a white dot will appear marking the center.  You can click on it with a tool to use it as an anchor.  You can do the same for existing points where a green dot will appear.  So using the “Line tool” find the center and corners of the outside edge and drag lines in so you have reference points.  Then switch to the “Circle tool”  find the center point of your lines and you can use it as the center of a circle.  Then using the “Eraser tool” you can remove the reference line.  Lastly go back to your “Push/Pull tool” to pull the circles out making 200mm tall rivets around the rim of your plate.

Step 2: The icon
So now we have our base plate, it’s scaled correctly, and it looks fancy.  So now we need an icon to put on the plate.  Sketchup has a bunch of basic drawing tools you can use to draw shapes.  Here I’ve drawn a new square and I’ve pulled out the drawing tools so you can see the pallet. 

Aside:  I will warn sketchup’s drawing tools are very limited so you might be inclined to use a separate program to design your icon.  Your best option for making geometry from an external file is to use a vector art software that can export DXF or DWF files. These are specific 2d vector formats Sketchup can process.  Doing an image in MS paint won’t be any help.  I own Adobe Illustrator which works for this but is very pricy. There are a number of free alternatives out there, check out Wikipedia or ask for recommendations from graphic artists if you can. An added advantage of separate programs like Illustrator is that they can often convert a raster image to a vector allowing you to use your own sketches or found images as the basis for your icon. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_vector_graphics_editors

We now need to make our icon. I’m a huge fan of the custom space marine chapter “the angry marines” so let’s make an angry marine icon.  Angry faces aren’t hard to make, they start with a circle.  So find the center of your square by drawing an X from corner to corner then draw out a large circle.  Using the X as a reference point draw in eyes. Then add horizontal reference bars to draw out a wide V on the forehead as a brow, and then a wide curve on the lower half as a frown.  I’ve added teeth hanging down below the frown to make it look meaner.  Below you’ll find images with my reference lines and after I’ve removed them. 

The angry marines icon isn’t really clever or detailed just a very angry, sort of goofy looking face.  Making your own custom icon might require a lot more detail.  When working on an icon remember to think in 3 dimensions.  All your lines have to have thickness and form a picture that can be made in relief.  So if you look at, say the lines separating the teeth I drew, you will notice they won’t come out in 3d.  You might have to work on that a bit to get things to come out how you want.  In this case I’ll go to the offset tool and shrink the teeth a bit to make them work as intended.

Now we can use the “Push/Pull tool” to give the icon depth.  I work from the deepest part down so I’ll pull the brow and frown out first. Then the eyes and teeth. And lastly the face itself.  The 3d model is now a relief all that’s left is to cap the bottom of the relief which is currently open and then remove any excess geometry.  Adding a line at the bottom of the relief will seal the model and you can erase excess lines around the outside of the model.

On a more complex icon you might want to make each of these parts a separate piece so you can move them around and scale them separately.  This can be necessary when working in specific circumstances such as when making icons on rounded surfaces.  In those instances you’d draw each level of the relief separately. Like show below, then pull each one out to give them depth.  Once layered on top of each other it’s no different than building them as one piece.

Step 3: put it all together

To complete our icon plate just put our relief icon on top of our base plate.  This gives us the 3d model we want of an icon plate suitable for slapping on a vehicle or building.

At this point we have a fantastic relief of the icon on a base plate but it’s 1000 times the size we need it at.  So again we use the “scale tool” this time selecting the entire completed icon and then the “scale tool”

Now we need to export it. Most 3d printing sites need a specific format of output file, usually Stereolithography files or STLs.  Shapeways is no exception.  For that we need to use an STL export plugin provided by the Sketchup community. You can find it linked from my earlier blog post.  Select your completed model and go to “Plugins”.  Now choose “Export STL file”. It will launch a dialog box to choose the size of your stl, select “millimeters” and it will then ask you where to save the file.

Step 4: Shapeways order

If you’ve done everything the file you exported will be print ready. You can start a shapeways account and upload the file there to order for yourself.   If you get an error when you try to purchase shapeways will give you feedback on what to fix. I’ve done some advise articles on this process on my blog and the shapeways community is fantastic for helping people sort out issues.

If you are interested later this week on my blog “dynath.blogspot.com” I will be demonstrating how this same process can be used to make other items such as shoulder pads.

Thank you and I shamelessly say “Vote for me”

Disclaimer: Warning reproduction of copyrighted designs constitutes intellectual property rights infringement. I neither condone nor suggest that you use these methods for such purposes.  I am not a representative of Trimble Inc. owners of Sketchup and all associated marks nor a representative of Shapeways.com owner of their associated marks.  Nor, and I can’t stress this enough, am I a representative of Games Workshop or representing their interests.