Future Worlds Landscape - Modular Wargames Terrain

As I slowly get back into my model making and wargaming hobby I have been looking for new and interesting projects to sink my teeth into. I was contacted by Nick Fatchen and asked if I would like to review his Kickstarter Project called Future Worlds Landscape, and this seemed like a perfect little project to get me moving again.

I have always enjoyed the terrain making side of wargaming, probably more so than painting the figures. So when this came along I jumped at it. I wasn't sure about the idea of 3D printing a large number of tiles to make the terrain, but I soon realised that I can slowly add to the set as and when I need to.

Before I go any further, here is the link to the Kickstarter:-

Future Worlds Landscape

Now I must state at this point that when Nick asked me to review these kits I had planned to print off the whole set straight away, however, both my sons and my 3D printers have been playing up and I have not been able to print any at home. I have had a couple of tiles and some of the connecting clips printed on the machines at my work, but they are too busy for me to do any more at the moment. I hope, from what I have printed, that you will be able to get an idea of the system.

The idea is that you can build up a collection of tiles that clip together to build different hills and obstacles for different games. There are a series of different tiles that have internal and external corners, straights and pieces that change height from one side to the other. There are also edging pieces which give a smooth transition from the table to the hill (unfortunately, I have not yet been able to print any of these).

The tiles clip together with a firm push and grip tightly, but also come apart easily, when you need them to.

The clips push into slots in the sides of each tile and these line up perfectly, with each different configuration.

Obviously, you do need to make sure that the edges of the tiles match.

Depending on the tile, there are between 2 and 4 slots on each side. I have found that 2 should be fine to hold the tiles together, but it is handy that you don't need to use the same two every time...

Underneath the hills, there are extra supports that hold them up. These also hold the tiles together for added rigidity. I have only printed the 1" pieces, but there are also larger ones for the higher hills.

 I had hoped to have a few more printed and have them painted for this review. As that hasn't happened we will have to make do with the painted examples from the Kickstarter page (which can be seen at the top of this article and also below).

 Personally, I am not to keen on the paint job on these examples as I think it highlights the edges of the tiles, however, as this is promoting the tile system, that is probably the intention.

The detail on the tiles is fantastic, and really captures the different textures of the scenery. I was really impressed by this once I had the actual tiles in my hands.

The process of 3D printing this system is not a fast one, and there is a certain amount of clean-up involved. Although the clean-up should be minimal as the files are designed to be printed without any support material. Mine were done with support material as the guy that runs our printers felt they needed it. I will be doing the next lot without, both for speed and to save filament.

I must admit, I think this isanm excellent system and I am looking forward to getting more printed to build some nice big and versatile layouts...

3D Printing Wargames Scenery with PrintableScenery.com

I have been very busy recently and haven't had much time to build any new scratch-built Frostgrave terrain. However, I did back printablescenery.com with their Winterdale Kickstarter campaign to produce a range of wargaming scenery that people can 3D print themselves.

With the campaign I have got enough files to produce just about anything that a I would need for a fantasy wargames table, including a fully expandable castle, village buildings including a blacksmiths forge and an inn, and plenty of other scatter scenery, such as walls, a bridge, stockades and gnarly trees.

We have had two 3D printers in the workshop for 3 or 4 years now and they have run very well, although the driver software for them is not the most versatile. I am building a new 3D printer, but that will not be finished for a while yet, so I used the workshop machines to do some test builds on the printablescenery.com models.

I thought I would start simple and do some of their dry stone walls but unfortunately our 3D printers (2 x Up Plus One) can be a bit a picky with the files they will run and although the walls looked OK, we couldn't get them to print. I have had a look at the wall sections in the driver for my new printer and they look fine, so it would appear that I am just going to have to wait for those...

Next up I decided that I would again keep things fairly small and use the files for the Bridge Cottage. To keep things even simpler I didn't build the lower stone section and just used it as a simple one storey building.

The first parts that I printed were the two halves of the roof. The files that printablescenery.com supply are laid out in the best orientation to allow 3D printing without printing supports. However, the Up Plus One cannot be set to print without supports, so we have printed them in a different orientation. The roof sections were printed the way they are seen in the photos, as this gave the minimal level of necessary support.

The roof sections went very well and gave a very substantial build.

I must say, I think that the wall thickness on the roof sections is possibly a little excessive. They do want to be strong enough for repeated handling, but these pieces are literally strong enough to stand on!

As you can see from these photos there are a few "stringy bits" on the roof tiles. These were not too bad, and would not take long to clean up with a craft knife. 

 

I spent 10 or 15 minutes cleaning up the two sides of the roof and the painted on a quick coat of solvent (dichloromethane, or liquid plastic cement), which finished off the roof nicely.

Next up was the ground floor walls. Once again, not being able to turn off the support meant that the model was left covered in a layer of support all around, both inside and out. \This did take me a while to clean up, but once removed the build was very nice. The part is designed with a grill in the place of the door, so that it does not need support material (...), I cut this out once printed.

Finally I printed the floor and the front door.

Once the parts had been cleaned up I put the thing together, just to see how it looked, I think you will agree, the it looks pretty good!

Although the 3D printed floor gave a reasonable wooden effect, I decided to laser cut a piece of thin plywood with a wood grain.

As you can see by these two pictures, it doesn't make a lot of difference, but I was happier with the laser cut floor.

The floor that I 3D printed  didn't go to waste. I glued it to the base of the roof section and it worked really well for locating the roof on to the top of the walls below. For future reference, I plan to magnetize the roof so that it sits nicely on top of the walls.

The two parts of the roof fitted really well and only left a small seem. I filled this with knifing putty. This is very similar to modelling putty, but is a lot cheaper.

Once dry and sanded the seem was virtually invisible.

Now, as this was theoretically the first floor, and there should have been a stone section below it, I had to add a door step, which I did with a piece balsa wood. Finally i spent a bit of time over the weekend painting it.

I am extremely pleased with the results and will be moving on to printing some more of the range over the next few months.

I didn't spend too much time painting the internal detail, after all, it will rarely be seen. However it is nice to know that it is there, if I do need to use it!

PrintableScenery.com are running a follow up Indiegogo campaign, to expand the range with some extra pieces, and also give people who missed the Kickstarter a chance to pick it up. Check out the new campaign HERE.

Return of the Retro Rocket!

When I initially posted the photos of my first Retro Rocket I promised the imminent arrival of it’s sequel, well it took rather longer than I originally planned!

Anyway, I think the wait has been worthwhile as i have two rockets to show you over the space of the next week or two.

First up we have a model that I produced on the 3D printer. I can’t take credit for the design, it is one I found on Thingyverse again, but the paint job is all mine.

Design wise I think this fits in nicely with my first retro rocket, very “Flash Gordon”!

The next Retro Rocket post will feature a slightly more advanced machine with a more Post-War 1950’s feel.

What can I do with a 3D Printer?

The two Up! Plus 3D printers arrived in the workshop last week and now that I have had a chance to play around with them I am reasonably pleased and I think they will be very useful (once I get the hang of designing 3D stuff on the computer).

As with the 5 Axis Milling Machine, I have initially started by finding files only to practice with. A great resource for 3D files can be found at Thingiverse.com. I have printed several files from there over the last week, and generally they have given very good results.

The 3D printers we have bought are not high end machines, they are called the “Model T” of the 3D printing world, by their manufacturuer. However, compared to the 3D printer that I used around 10 years ago, they come out very favourably (at least, the print quality is very similar, and that was a much more expensive machine). These machines are certainly not of a high enough quality to produce 28mm miniatures, with anything like the level of detail that would be expected of production figures. However, I can see a use for building larger creatures (or figures), and using them as a starting point ready for detailing and finishing. Also they will be ideal for producing equipment, vehicles and possibly architectural pieces (which is after-all what we actually bought them for).

In this photo the tree frog is about a quarter built. This was the first model I ran, and it was interesting to see that it could cope with quite a good overhand where the legs ran up to join the body, without adding any support material.

As we are got these machines for architectural model making it seems appropriate to try out a building. The ground floor turned out exceptionally well, as did the roof.

However the first floor warped a little (a common problem with ABS 3D printers apparently). I hadn’t fully read the manual, and I don’t think I had pre-heated the bed of the machine enough, so hopefully I can avoid too much of this happening in future!

The building is quite small, the doorway on the photo is about 15mm high. So suitable for 10mm gaming, or it may be be possible to get away with 15mm…

Finally I have produced this mobile phone stand.

Not elegant, but a nice little test of the mechanical properties of the ABS and the 3D printed form.

Oh and as for the tree frog, my sons painted a couple of them up over the weekend!