New Star Wars Figs

 I haven't posted in a while, so here is a new post.  I have been doing some 3d printing and painting.  I am making figs for a WEG Star Wars RPG that we are starting.

Here are some of the figs that we have.  These are from a few different sources.  Skullforge Studios, Dark Fire Designs, Anvil Rage, War Bear, and Black Remnant.

One of my favorite things about Black Remnant is that they are doing a lot of more generic figures that are great for RPGs.  Most of the others have great troops and characters, but mostly from the movies and TV shows.

Here is an old WEG Rebel Trooper to see the scale.

The guy on the right is one of the characters in our campaign

Of course you need Stormtroopers.  I will need to redo this photo because the light really messed this up!

These thugs cause problems in our first adventure!

Heroforge vs Titan Craft

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.

https://meshmixer.com/

https://www.blender.org/

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.

https://www.heroforge.com/

Hero Forge has a very easy interface to use and a lot of great features.  As you can see, you can even color your miniatures and order it printed if you would like.  You can do a lot with posing of the figure and changing outfits, weapons and a lot of other things.

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

https://titancraft.com 

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.  

TitanCraft Bows

Hero Forge on the other hand has about 15 available.  If you want a more "Historical"  looking bow, you are currently out of luck with Titancraft.

(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.

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.

They have an ink wash to bring out their detail.  

Titan Craft dwarf to show detail of chain mail

Heroforge Paladin

Hero Forge Titancraft Heroforge

You can see the detail on the Heroforge

One of the reasons I like Titan Craft is the ability to pose figures together!

 Star Wars 3d Print figs

I mainly game in 15mm because of space.  I have seen a lot of good looking Star Wars STL files, but I have been worried about how they would scale down to 15/18mm.  I did a couple of test prints and they came out good, but somewhat brittle.  I have found that there is better, somewhat flexible resin and now I have been getting better results.

I have a mix of figures from some different manufacturers.  

Skullforge Miniatures - Link

Warbear Miniatures - Link

Dark Fire Designs - Link

Anvil Rage Studios - Link

These miniatures are designed for Star Wars Legion scale, but they scale down rather well.  I scale down to 47% which prints them at about 18mm.  

Some Misc. Characters.

Corporate Security Troops

Imperial Army Biker

Imperial Army Troopers

Some Rebel Troopers

More Rebel Troopers

Rebel Army So Far

Imperial Stormtroopers with leaders.

Imperial Stormtroopers with a tank!

The joy of 3d printing!

 At Christmas my wife gave me a Creality 3 Pro filament printer.  I loved it so much that I purchased an Anycubic Photon a couple of months ago.  I have been fiddling a lot with them this summer and have been very pleased with what I am getting.

I printed my first few sci-fi buildings because I needed an alleyway for a Star Wars RPG battle.  I printed some sci-fi dumpsters, and some crates for cover.  

Here is a selection of buildings.  The first one is from 

The following buildings are from Corvus Games Terrain Link to Corvus Games(I think they actually made the prior building also, but not sure about that)

This is from their MidRim City range.  They are fairly inexpensive.  You can buy a small set of STLs for about the price of an individual building from many makers.  I have scaled them down to 15mm.  

They are created in stories, but they don't have floors on them, so you either have to make some kind of floor, or glue the stories together as I have done.

From my resin printer I have done some micro armor.  I have micro armor Star Wars and historicals.  Here is a GHQ Abrams tank next to a printed one for comparison.  The printed one is on the left.  The quality is amazing!  The sculpting from GHQ is a tad bit more detailed, but for micro armor, both look amazing!

More 15mm Star Wars

In some of my previous posts, I have shown some 6mm Star Wars stuff.  Well, the Stormtroopers looked so good that I thought they might look good even at a larger scale, so I asked Wakes Emporium if they would scale some up to 15mm, and sure enough, he did that for me.  The end result is quite good!

Here are a few painted up.  My painting skill isn't perfect, but I think these came out pretty well.

I have been using Ground Zero Games 15mm Stargrunt figs for my rebels.  They have some that make good proxies for Rebel Fleet Troops. 
https://shop.groundzerogames.co.uk/15mm-stargrunt/infantry/islamic-federation-if.html

The Stormtroopers are found here...
Wakes Emporium on Shapeways

The Good...
There are a ton of varieties of the Stormtroopers.  The details are quite good, and the weapons as well as uniforms are easy to make out.  There are standard troopers as well as officers and heavy weapons.  One that I would like to see, but isn't there yet is a tripod mounted heavy blaster.

The figs run at about 17mm in height.  The Ground Zero figs are about 1mm taller, and are just a tad beefier.  Up close you can see that, but when they are at a slight distance (as in a firefight!), it is hard to notice the difference.

The Bad...
The price!  Shapeways is somewhat expensive to buy from.  I use these for Star Wars Miniatures Battles, so you need 3-10 squads of them, and it starts to add up after a bit.

I would also like to see other figs added in.  It would be great to have some Imperial Officers as well as scout troopers.  As far as the sculpting goes, I can't find any negatives about them!

3D Printed Star Wars Ships

I got a new 3D printer for Christmas and am having a lot of fun with it.  The one I have is the Ender3 Pro, and it was just under $200.00 new.  You have to assemble it and then do some calibration.  The first few prints I did were ok, but not great.  I am still working on figuring it out, but slowly getting better!

Here are some of my prints that I have gotten done.  I am working on a Rebel Fleet at approximately 1/10,000 scale.  I am using a slightly sliding scale.  The smallest ships will come in at 1/5,000 scale in order to print and be seen ok.

This is a group shot of the ones I have printed up now.  You can see the banding on the Mon Cal ships, but I am starting to print at a lower line height which seems to be making a major impact on the lines at the cost of a lot more time!

Below are closeups of the ships.  I have one Separatist ship which I think the Rebellion would have found and used early in the war.  Probably as some of their first capitol ships.

15mm Troop Transport

My latest 15mm Star Wars Item.  I printed a troop transport, and am very happy with the results. 

I had a slight issue with the print at the end and it left a gap in one of the upper layers, but it is hard to see.  It is near the front of the vehicle.

Still, I like it and love being able to do some of my own items.