More Work On The Solar Panel

Continuing on from my work in the last post, I learned more about working in Blender. It turns out that for simple geometric shapes that I was working with, Blender is actually fairly easy to deal with. I was able to complete the base for my solar panel fairly quickly.

I managed to model the base for the solar panel with a minimum of pain. It's a simple structure with four feet and a "swivel" neck to mate with the underside of the panels from last post.

Here is what it looks like when printed.

Both the tri panel and the quad panel have a rectangular recess on the back, and they both fit the head of the base even without gluing. However, I will be fixing them with superglue after I do my typical post-processing for 3D printed objects, before painting them.

Next to a 28mm miniature, it's a fair-sized structure.

Remember, this is all available on Thingiverse, free for download and use by everyone.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4976446

In The Grim Darkness Of The Future, There Is... Green Energy?

I've been doing some miniature preparation and painting in the last bit, but I got distracted by terrain making. After seeing a number of hex style solar panels online, I decided to make some myself via 3D printing. A terrain piece like a solar array can be an interesting addition to games like Stargrave.

Since I'm most familiar with the 3D program Sketchup, I did most of my work for the panels there.

It was fairly quick to make, since most of the shapes are quite regular, and I made a tri panel and a quad panel. Each of the hex faces has a set of smaller hex panel lines inside.

Using my FDM printer, both of these printed out fairly well, although I had some adhesion issues causing some of the corners to curl up slightly. I might have to use a bigger brim to prevent that.

Close up, the surface is a bit rough, since I don't think I made the tops thick enough. However, with a coat of paint, I don't think this matters.

These are only the solar panels themselves, and I still need a base to hold them up. For all that I like Sketchup, it's a bit of a toy in terms of functionality, so I finally transitioned to using Blender for the base. This is a much more powerful tool, but it has quite a steep learning curve. I'm just starting to get the hang of it.

I'm currently just trying to make a fairly standard base with four feet, maybe eventually with some detail bits like control panels. This part of the model is still a work in progress, and I will update as I finish it.

What I have so far, the hex panels, are up on Thingiverse. Anyone is welcome to download and print them for use from the link here:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4976446

A Few More Stargrave Crew

I've completed a few more miniatures for my Stargrave crew, this time a combination of resin-printed and FDM-printed minis again.

This is another resin miniature from Papsikels' line-up. I digitally swapped the head on an existing miniature to make this into another "Witcher" style figure.

Again, I like the amount of detail that's available from a resin print.

The thinness of the design makes it impossible to print on an FDM printer.

This is one of my FDM prints with a head from a plastic kit (Wargames Factory Orcs) physically transplanted onto it. FDM prints have a tough time with facial detail, so I tend to just use plastic heads. This mini can be some sort of lightly armed alien.

This is the Cyberforge "wild child" figure I've shown here as an unpainted FDM print, finally painted now. I was surprised by the amount of detail kept by the printer, but it's still nothing compared to a resin mini.

All three miniatures shown together as a size comparison. With these done, I have more than enough miniatures to build a first Stargrave crew. I'll be doing some more creatures and pirates next.

 

Codebreaker and Casecracker

I've completed another couple of miniatures for my Stargrave crew. As I said last time, I bought a resin 3D printer (Elegoo Mars Pro), and I've been printing some miniatures out of that.

This is the first miniature from the new printer that I've painted. Again, this is from the excellent Papsikels store, and is the Cyberpunk version of a character from the Witcher series. This resin miniature was much easier to prepare and paint than FDM miniatures, as expected. The face area, especially, retains far more detail.

This particular mini is quite slim compared to others from the same line. I plan on using her as a hacker or codebreaker in Stargrave.

This is an FDM miniature I prepared and primed a while ago, and is one of the many excellent miniatures from the Ignis Quadrant Kickstarter. Since this is a space dwarf mechanic, I'll be using him as a chiseler or casecracker.

An interesting contrast of proportions here, but it's science fiction, so you can get all body types.

I've been printing quite a few items from the new printer, and I'll be showcasing them as I get through my paint queue.

More Stargrave Crew Minis

I've painted a few more miniatures for Stargrave, with all of them 3D printed using my FDM printer. After the terrain and creatures from last time, I went back to crew members, and finished up the captain and first mate for my first crew.

This miniature is again from Papsikels' excellent line-up, and it's a much more dynamic version of the "witcher" miniature I had shown here previously. However, my FDM printer simply couldn't do it justice, and pieces were not printed properly. I fixed up the miniature by attaching some Warhammer Fantasy bits, which many reading this will probably recognize. 

This is a nice sized miniature, and represents a pretty imposing tall man. I'll be using him as my captain.

For an FDM printer, this print was very successful and preserved a lot of the detail. This close-up really shows it.

This is also from Papsikels, and is supposed to be a "cyber sorceress". I think she is inspired by another character from the Witcher series. The mechanical bird drone is supposed to be a "cyber crow", but I painted it in a much brighter colour to make it stand out.

There is also a stand-alone version of the bird drone, and I'll be using it as a drone in Stargrave, which looks quite useful according to the rules, with the sorceress as my first mate.

I also painted a few Aliens-style "face-huggers" that I found on Thingiverse. These creatures can represent mind grippers, a type of dangerous random enemy from the Stargrave bestiary.

Since my old resin 3D printer died, and I was never satisfied with my FDM printer's ability to produce miniatures, I ended up buying another resin 3D printer. However, it's kept at someone else's house due to my wife having allergy issues with resin. I'll be showing painted results from that machine here soon too.

Stargrave Bestiary and Terrain

Sorry that I haven't posted in a while, but I 3D printed a lot of stuff recently and couldn't keep up with preparing and painting them.

Most of what I've done is for Stargrave, primarily concentrating on the bestiary for random encounters, and for terrain.

One of the creatures from potential random encounters is the horat, which is described as a wooly rhino type of creature. I printed and painted up one of the creatures from the Ignis Quadrant Kickstarter, which is sort of an alien rhino. I think my varnish treatment worked perfectly in this case, with no visible print lines at all.

This is a fair-sized beasty.

Also from the same source are these factory bots, which will look quite good as repair bots, as described per the Stargrave bestiary.

I also painted some terrain items, which will be useful in certain scenarios, and as general scatter terrain. The ventilation fans are also from the Ignis Quadrant Kickstarter, and are specifically required in one of the Stargrave scenarios. The medium cargo containers are from Novus Landing, the sequel campaign to Ignis Quadrant. I have quite a few more pieces of terrain to go.

For non-3D printed items, I have this Dungeons and Dragons umber hulk. The Stargrave bestiary has a creature called the "porigota", which sounds a lot like an umber hulk (or ambull if in GW-speak). I painted up this one fairly quickly, and it's a decent model with nice detail.

Again, a fairly large creature compared to a human.

I have quite the backlog of printed items to paint through, so there will be a lot more updates soon.

More Painted 3D Printed Miniatures

I've completed a few more 3D printed miniatures. All of these have been shown here before as unpainted prints.

Here are all of them next to my standard cyberpunk size comparison figure, the one with a pistol and orange pants.

This is a figure from Cyber Forge, and it's slimmer than the others, which are from Papsikels. I painted it in an "anime" colour scheme which I though suits the theme. The helmet unfortunately didn't end up with a lot of detail, due to this being an FDM printer. It can be good as a "faceless" bounty hunter though.

The "Detective Wayne" figure from Papsikels comes with a cybernetic arm, which I painted in a metallic colour. Unfortunately, the angle of the head made it really hard to capture the face with a phone camera, but the lit cigarette tip actually shows up pretty well.

This is the "Airhacker Cyberkid" miniature, which I'll be using as a hacker in Stargrave. I think the surfboard-like object on his back is supposed to be an antenna. For this miniature, I used a head from a plastic kit (the old Wargames Factory zombie survivors sprue) to create more variety.

The hacker kid is quite small, as I think he is supposed to be a young teenager.

This is the "Cyberpunk Space Bear" figure from Papsikels. I replaced the original weapon which looked strange with an assault cannon from my Warhammer 40k bits. He can be a rapid fire heavy weapon trooper in Stargrave.

The miniature is pretty big though, compared to a normal human. I don't know how well larger figures will survive in an actual game. We'll see.

I still have a few other miniatures to do, including the captain and first mate, which I'm trying to spend more time on. Then I'll have a complete first crew for Stargrave. I have a few other crews planned, and they will follow once I get the hang of painting these 3D printed minis.

A Few More Painted 3D Prints

To follow up on my previous post, I painted up some more items from my first batch of 3D printed small sci-fi miniatures.

These are the power armour troops from Titan Forge that I showed in a previous post. Because of the bulkiness of the miniatures, they painted up well while still retaining a decent amount of detail. The interesting thing is that the middle miniature with two pistols was primed without my varnish treatment! If you look very closely, it has more print lines visible than the other two, but not by much.

Here is a close-up of the right side of that miniature.

One problem I did have was with supports. Because of the amount of supports, the back of the miniature with two pistols had a "melted" look, as you can see on the left. For the other miniatures, I oriented them enough to minimize supports, and the details look quite a bit sharper, on the right.

Here is a size comparison with my previous cyberpunk character in regular clothes. The power armour is suitably imposing.

I also painted up a couple of spherical sentry drones, which are from the Novus Landing Kickstarter and came as a free addition. They are nice and quick to paint, and Stargrave apparently has rules and scenarios for drones.

Here is a size comparison with all of these side by side.

I still have quite a few more miniatures in the queue, including figures from the Novus Landing system that are designed to be support-free. I'll put them up as soon as I can manage.

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.