Design your own miniatures!
If you do 3d print for miniatures, eventually, you will probably want the chance to design and print your own miniatures.
Well, there are two basic ways to go about this. You can learn to do 3d sculpting and work at creating miniatures or modifying existing miniatures that way. There are several apps to do that with, but two free options are Meshmixer and Blender. Blender is an incredibly powerful 3d tool, but has a pretty steep learning curve. Meshmixer has a lot less options, but is somewhat easier to learn. I have used that a lot to modify existing 3d models.
There are also commercial ones available that can get expensive quick.
Whichever you use, it can be a time consuming process. I regularly use Meshmixer to change weapons, or add attachments, or preassemble miniatures for printing. Sculpting on the other hand becomes a lot more tedious. In Blender you can modify and shape not just by sculpting, but you can go to the individual points or pixels and move them around. Much more fine control, but even more time consuming and a lot of learning.
Option #2
There are a few 3d modeling applications that are available online. They have everything that you need to rapidly create characters, though you are somewhat limited to the items that they have available to create those characters.
Hero Forge
The most established software is probably Hero Forge.
This lets you make the character of your dreams, and it isn't just for fantasy, they have modern and sci fi gear available also.
The downside of this is that you have to pay for each miniature, and it is often more expensive than buying a pre created miniature from the store or online. There are options to buy bulk credits which help drop that cost a lot.
You are also somewhat limited by the gear, and features that they have, which is pretty impressive, but still might not have exactly what you are looking for.
Some people also find the figures to be a bit cartoonish at times.
Titan Craft
Titancraft is another great option, and I actually like this one even more than Hero Forge. With Titancraft, you can create individual figures and buy them like you can with Hero Forge. However, Titancraft also allows you to buy "Digital Packs". You buy a pack of items or assets and then you can use them to make as many figures as you want within that area. For instance, they have a Fantasy Pack, that has over 180 items such as clothing or armor, and weapons. That currently costs about $31, and with that you can create and download as many figures as you want!
I currently have a small army of soldiers that I have made as well as many characters.
The greatest thing about Titancraft is that you have the greatest possibility of poses that I have seen. You can manipulate almost every little detail down to the fingers.
One of the problems that I have with Hero Forge is that you can't move the feet or legs, but here there is no limit to what you can do. You can even combine multiple characters. (you can do this and make some naughty poses. 😉
Now, the downside of Titancraft... They don't have the same volume of assets that Hero Forge does, so you are somewhat limited. For instance, for bows, they only have 3 different variants.
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| TitanCraft Bows |
(I don't have a picture of Hero Forge's offerings because it won't fit on one screen!)
However, Titancraft is constantly expanding what they offer and you can make suggestions, so hopefully they will be adding more items.
Which is better?
It doesn't matter what you can create if the print quality isn't good. I have downloaded the free figures from Hero Forge, and have created some of my own figures from Titancraft. I print on a Anycubic Photon Mono X. The figures that I printed from Titancraft look quite good. The ones from Hero Forge are also quite good. In fact, I would put the quality of the prints up with figures that I have from a few different creators. I have some from Medburry Miniatures and from The Printing Goes Ever On.
https://www.myminifactory.com/users/Medbury%20Miniatures
https://www.theprintinggoeseveron.com/shop/
I would say that the quality of print/design is just as good, however, since you are using pre done assets, you won't be able to get the same level of originality as you can with someone who crafts their own miniatures, but you will be quite happy with using them together on the game table.
Printed Results
Sorry, my painting skills aren't great, and my photography doesn't do these justice, but here are some examples.
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| Hero Forge Titan Craft |
The figures below are primed but not painted. I didn't want my somewhat poor painting skills to influence the image. A bad painter can make a good miniature look bad while a good painter can make a poor miniature look fairly good.
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| Titan Craft dwarf to show detail of chain mail |
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| Heroforge Paladin |
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| Hero Forge Titancraft Heroforge |
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| You can see the detail on the Heroforge |
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| One of the reasons I like Titan Craft is the ability to pose figures together! |
