3D Printing – My journey so far

So it’s just about 9 months since I bought my resin printer – a anycubic photon – so I thought I’d give my run down of my experiences so far with it, the good, the bad and how I’ve incorporated it into my hobby. I also own an FDM printer in the form of an Anycubic I3 Mega.

My photon

Intro to printing

I won’t bog the post down with basics that other sites will do a much better job of explaining; suffice to say I have a resin printer and a FDM (plastic) printer and the resin is far more accurate with a much smaller build volume, its messier than the fdm but quieter.

If you asked me which to get first or at all, I’d say fdm for terrain and resin for minis, the price doesnt vary much and I’d recommend they live in either a hobby room or utility (noise/smell/mess).

The only other consideration is ongoing costs: the resin is usually around £30 per litre with the plastic filament lurking around £18 per kilo and so far the photon has sucked up more cash with a number of parts being replaced. However, I use my photon far more often and really it’s a bit of an apples to oranges comparison when what matters is what you’ll print on it.

What have I printed?

So, so far I have printed a militia force and some bits and pieces for terrain, as well as numerous conversion pieces for my Blood Angels force. (I’m always printing new things so worth checking the old instagram @liberalchimp to see if I ever got any better)

My first test print
My first squad
Sentinels

Statues for my terrain

Where can I get files? How do I make my own?

So there are a number of free file sites, sadly the 3d printing community for 30k/40k seems centred around copying gw or fw sculpts (with incredible skill I must admit) so it’s easy enough to just google search ‘rhino 3d print’ and something will pop up.

Alternatively there are sites with files for purchase: my militia come from a patreon/webstore for Maker’s Cult, a brilliant bunch who have files for feudal guard, dark mech and thunder warriors. The higher quality gw/fw rips are also generally found behind a paywall.

In terms of making your own you have 2 routes: the modification or blending of existing files; or creating a piece from scratch. Let’s break down those further:

Generally all 3d model files will come in the .stl format which makes it nice and easy to move them from program to program and there are plenty of great free programs for you to use. Meshmixer, blender and sketchup are my choices, though sketchup is probably not worth learning and is mostly just a throwback to my architecture days. Of these programs, I use meshmixer to well, mix meshes like I’ve done with a helmet from Maker’s cult and a free face mask file.

Honestly, ‘meshmixing’ is the best place to start, and unless you are super determined, for wargaming its probably quite a good place to stay. Far more skillful people than I are happy to produce the base model: by that I mean the dubiously legal ‘freehanded’ representations of marines, dreadnoughts and larger. (I started writing this article a while ago and since then I’ve picked up speed with the variety of things I’ve poached)

These 6 really show the range of what I’d call ‘meshmixing’: the warhound is simply assembled and cut in CAD then printed, whilst the dreads come from a base model but have been modified to a far greater degree, incorporating original parts and extra meshes from places like ‘scan the world’.

Although I said I’d speak on designing things from scratch I’m an extreme novice at it. Most of the time unless you’re looking to sell commercially, or want something extremely specific, I would reiterate what I said above: It’s not necessary to do everything from scratch.

Think of it like this: If you had a specific ‘look’ for your marine legion, you wouldn’t sculpt and cast every marine from scratch; you would buy a selection of bits to kitbash something, and maybe you sculpt to join stuff together, or add iconography etc. To beat the dead horse some more, you would ‘kitbash’ using a selection of your own and others stuff.

With the above out of the way, the most ‘original’ things that I have created are my Grav Tanks, and my Terrain. I did these in Sketchup Pro (a program that’s rubbish for meshmixing) and whilst I love them dearly, its clear an amateur did them. If I had my time again, I would’ve taken the time to learn blender so I could incorporate common items like heavy bolters from more skilled practitioners.

(a late edit) I have tried my hand at designing my own militia to replace the makers cult stuff, off to an ok start but still way to much effort and time to go before I can declare a success.

Don’t let my incompetency stop you though! Having something ‘unique’ is an amazing and armed with a printer it’s tantalizingly close.

Conclusion, and final thoughts.

I guess the question I feel I should answer is the following:

Would I recommend getting a 3D printer?

Yes and No, the more I use my printer the more it makes me think of my airbrush: it’s a tool that can form a vital part of a ‘workflow’, let me elaborate: I have restarted my blood angels infantry, and can now give them custom pads with company markings, and my assault marines have custom combat shields; but I would not print the whole model. In the same way I wouldn’t use an airbrush exclusively to paint a whole army. This obviously changes in some cases, but even in those like with the makers cult, I personally would recommend getting stuff like vehicles from GW/FW. A trap I’ve now found myself in with my militia is the necessity to design everything, rather than be able to use some of the gorgeous existing models.

If you feel like you can fit a printer in to your flow, even if its just to add half buried warhound heads to bases, or print the occasional piece of terrain, and with minimal effort you can put together some basic things like pads or shields or rhino doors. I’d say go for it. Personally, I would not buy one as a cost saving exercise (just not my jam), but rather another tool in your army customization arsenal (plus if you play games like D&D you’ll be off to the races)

I hope this brief overlook of 3D printing from a relative amateur and wargamers perspective has helped clarify some things. I’ll put some links to sites I’ve used, as well as the machines and materials I have. Happy Hobbying!

https://www.thingiverse.com/

https://www.myminifactory.com/scantheworld/

https://www.cgtrader.com/themakerscult

https://www.patreon.com/themakerscult

https://www.patreon.com/titanforgeminis/posts

Anycubic Photon using elegoo grey currently

Anycubic I3 Mega using generic black filament

Blender 2.8

Sketchup Pro 2018

Meshmixer

https://service.netfabb.com/login.php(for fixing files for printing)

Blood Angels Scheme Tutorial

The finished paladin

The goal of the tutorial is to take you step by step through the painting of this single paladin. I think the majority of the techniques that I use in my BA are represented here (except freehand but that’ll get its own post)

So I always start from black, but any dark colour would work, we will be preshading twice over this basecoat so the most important thing is that recesses are caught with this layer.

So the two preshades I apply are a heavy coat of Vallejo Model Colour Blue Violet (leaving only the darkest recesses black) followed by Tamiya Flat white. Generally I work quite mono directional with my lighting, meaning that there’s always a clear singular source of light that’s illuminating the miniature.

The tamiya white is best applied at a lower PSI so you can build up the intensity to a singular point but do not fret if your preshade doesn’t quite work out, we will be going back in with a brush later to push the contrast.

After the preshade we apply a couple (usually just two as long as the preshade is good enough) coats of a 50:50 mix of Vallejo Game Air Bloody Red and a red ink, at the moment I use Scale 75 Inktense Red but have used old gw red ink in the past. The trick here is to keep the transition established by the preshade but also apply enough that the red doesn’t end up dirtied by the black recesses.

At this point we trade airbrush for traditional brush and starting with Vallejo Model Colour Scarlet we start to pick out the brightest points (this is not an edge highlight, though if that’s your jam it’ll work)

Once the first highlight is complete we go back and highlight again adding Vallejo Model Colour Ice Yellow to our Scarlet, repeating this highlight until some final dots and lines of pure Ice Yellow. At this point it’ll look extreme but the next step helps with that.

A couple of coats of GW Bloodletter glaze through the airbrush and some GW Carroburg Crimson in the recesses help to both smooth those extreme highlights and deepen and enrich the shadows. At this point the scheme can come across a bit ‘pinky’ but the matt varnish at the end sorts that all out as does the Carroburg wash.

Next we move on to my simple gold recipe: A basecoat of either Retributor Gold or Scale 75 Dwarven Gold; We then wash with thinned GW Rhinox Hide focusing on replicating the light direction of the red; finally we highlight with our gold mixing in a bright silver (I use Vallejo Metal Colour Silver) until we get to pure silver. At this point you can chose to wash with sepia or not depending on how bright you like your golds.

The final details I will combine into one series of paragraphs: any cloth is basecoated black, the power weapon has a basecoat of GW Temple Guard blue, with alternating bands of Baharroth Blue and Stegadon Scale Blue (generally I keep it simple going Baharroth->Temple Guard->Stegadon->Temple Guard->Baharroth), the white wings get a coat of Valljo Game Air Wolf Grey, the Gems Vallejo Model Colour Burnt Red and the leather whichever mid brown I have lying around at the time.

The face is based with Cadian Fleshtone then washed with thinned Rhinox Hide

The cloth has a velvet style effect applied to it, so a very rough stipple of dark grey is applied to fold lines, at this point you’re just mapping out tones so don’t worry too much about clear dots. The gems get highlighted using evil suns scarlet and screamer pink with a final highlight of screamer pink and white. The Wings get a highlight of pure white, whilst the leather is washed with brown ink (I use the old GW flesh wash here) and highlighted with Skrag brown (though in this case just a lighter brown to whatever you used to base it) The power weapon has edge highlights of Baharroth blue and a final highlight of Baharroth blue mixed with white and the brightest points.

The Face is highlighted with Cadian fleshtone, followed by a secondary highlight of Fleshtone mixed with Ivory.

At this point the velvet is stippled repeatedly with a succession of lighter greys, here I mix white with black on a wet palette and work upwards 3/4 times finishing with a super fine pure white stipple just catching the edge of the folds. The Blue gems are painted using the sword recipe and the face is given some final point highlights of pure ivory.

For the weapon haft, I decided on gold veined granite, so a black basecoat was applied.

The veins on the marble and granite were painted very carefully with a thin brush, take your time with thinned paints. I used black on the marble and Vallejo Metal Colour Gold on the granite (varying the opacity of lines here helps the effect, spread some out thin and have super defined thin ones). A thin wash of nuln oil can help define the marble, with some purple ink applied at vein junctions to add interest.

Any soft armour or tubing was black highlighted with Stegadon Scale Blue mixed with Wolf Grey.

The basing is simply grey and cream drybrushing, with white, dark brown and warm brown powders and some tufts.

Hopefully I’ve explained the processes enough that you can understand, but if I’ve missed anything feel free to message me here or on insta.