Painted 3D Printed Sci-fi Miniatures (Small)

I've finally painted some of my smaller 3D printed miniatures that I had previously shown. They mostly turned out quite well.

The above are all printed on a Creality CR-6SE FDM (i.e. filament) printer, treated with a couple of coats of varnish before priming to reduce the visible print lines. The dog, the cyberpunk character, and the robot are all from the creator "Papsikels" on MyMiniFactory. The Ewok is a free file from Thingiverse.

I really like the cyberpunk character, since he has a lot of detail that showed up very well even on an FDM printer. Here he is compared with a GW Genestealer cultist and a Reaper Bones pulp miniature. This is definitely a tall 32mm scaled figure, although I can scale him down a bit to fit 28mm miniatures.

The back still has decent detail, even with supports making the surface more "melted" than the front.

The Ewok is a free miniature, but is actually very well-designed. However, due to the small size, there are some print lines visible if you look close enough. Good enough for a crew member in Stargrave though.

The battle droid miniature has some very thin parts. Because of that, I had a hard time printing it until I upscaled it by 120%. Now it's a fairly imposing thing. A robotic member for a Stargrave crew?

I have even more miniatures being painted right now. Here is an example of how I prepare and prime them.

I usually give them two coats of varnish, which will cover up most of the print lines. Then I prime them with black gesso, my preferred primer. The gesso dries very tight and smooth, and will reveal any details, including print lines, mercilessly. I've found that horizontal surfaces with the varnish treatment end up very smooth, but vertical surfaces still often have print lines showing. Maybe the varnish flows off too easily when it's not dry? Here you can see the effect, this heavy weapons robot has very smooth horizontal surfaces but some of the vertical surfaces, like the sides of the gun barrels and the legs, still show print lines.

Here it is compared to the cyberpunk character. I don't know if there are rules for larger crew members with heavy weapons in Stargrave?

Inspired by another hobbyist at our gaming group, I also quickly painted up some terminators from the Warlord Games Terminator Genisys game. The game was pretty forgettable, but the injection molded hard plastic miniatures are a joy to paint and are very easy to deal with.

I have quite a few of these. Maybe they can be used in Stargrave as "pirate" troops?

Stay tuned for more 3D printed items.