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Beginning Terrain-Making Blog, Part 3: Sculpting

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

See Part 1 of this series.
See Part 2 of this series.

At PaizoCon this year I ran a seminar/workshop introducing all sorts of things about making terrain for RPGs and wargaming. In between various demonstrations of hot wire foam cutting, casting bricks in dental plaster, mixing epoxy putty, and using polymer clay, I rattled off a bunch of websites with more information and/or product links. Here's a rundown on the information and links for sculpting, just in case you missed the seminar.

Epoxy Clays

Hirst Arts bricks and Apoxie Sculpt floor.

Standard plumbing pieces smoothed with Apoxie Sculpt.

You probably played with clay as a kid, so you know how it works. It's malleable, and you can shape it however you want, but if you want it to keep its shape, you have to fire it in a kiln. You probably don't have access to a kiln, so clay isn't a good material for terrain-building—pushing too hard with a mini or a knocked-over book would dent or crush a clay castle or statue. Fortunately, two-part epoxy clays like Apoxie Sculpt take care of that problem. Mix the two parts and it's soft like clay for about an hour, then becomes as stiff as hard plastic. It's available in many colors, and you can paint it if they don't have a color to your liking. A tip for using Apoxie Sculpt is to mix it, then let it sit for about 15 minutes because it's tacky when first mixed. Work with small amounts at a time so you don't mix too much and waste it. Apoxie Sculpt is good for small projects, but not really intended for larger items (such as hills), both in terms of cost and weight.

In the first photo, I've used gray Apoxie Sculpt to create a flat area near some Hirst Arts floor tiles, with cut dowels inserted to create a wooden barricade (once I paint the dowels with diluted brown paint, they'll look like old logs). In the second photo, I used it to smooth out the interior screw-threads on some small plumbing pieces I'm using for a steampunk gnome city I'm building).

If you're looking for a cheaper alternative to Apoxie Sculpt, you can buy a package of Mighty Putty online, at hardware stores, department stores (usually in the home improvement section) and other locations for about $10; it's grainier, and smells like sulfur, but has similar uses, and once it's painted you can't smell the sulfur anymore.

Epoxy Putty

Anyone who's worked with miniatures is probably familiar with kneadadite epoxy putty, commonly known as "greenstuff." It's packaged as a strip or tube of yellow and blue; when mixed it's green, and remains pliable for 1–2 hours. Greenstuff is good for fine details (like creating a glyph on a stone), and remains slightly flexible even after it hardens, but it gets expensive if you use it for large-scale pieces, and its flexibility is a drawback if you're creating something that has to support weight (such as an arched bridge). You can buy kneadatite from the Paizo store, hobby shops, or other online retailers such as The Warstore.com.

Polymer Clay

Wavy floor made from Sculpey “casts” of a Hirst Arts floor tile mold.

If you want the advantages of clay but don't want to mix stuff or a time limit on it remaining pliable, polymer clays such as Sculpey are workable like clay, but harden when baked in a conventional oven (I hear you can harden it by dipping it in boiling water, though you'd probably want to put the piece in a sieve so you can easily dip and retrieve it). Sculpey is available in many colors, including several stonelike clays. You can purchase it from art stores, hobby stores, and department stores. If you have silicone molds (see Beginning Terrain-Making Blog, Part 2: Using Silicone Molds ), you can press Sculpey into the mold, carefully bend the mold to pop out the soft "casting" of the brick, bend and twist the Sculpey into a different shape, then bake the clay until it's hard (I used this technique with a floor tile mold to create a corridor with floors that rose and fell in waves).

Sean K Reynolds
Designer

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I wish one of my fellow gamers would get into this kind of thing. Sculpting terrain, and environment features, would be great for my game table.

Sean,

I really like this series, and I hope you're able to do a lot more posts allong these lines.

Are you going to walk us through the building of some actual models or set pieces in this series?
Contributor

Answer unclear at this time, but there is certainly more to talk about!

Great Stuff, Sean! As a wargamer as well as a roleplayer, I do make my own terrain. I've done foam terrain, Hirst Arts studd, glay stuff. I hope you will continue this series with a post on cardstock terrain.
Sovereign Court

Re: Kneadatite. You can buy this stuff far more economically from a plumbing supply store. It's just plumbing epoxy. I used to stock boxes of it when I worked for a wholesaler. Just ask for Kneadatite Blue/Yellow, the manufacturer is Polymeric Systems.

It should cost like 10 bucks for a 36 inch roll of two part tape. Less if you go to a good store, I know ours gave a 20-30% discount off MSRP to non-contractors and 50% off to anyone with a plumbing ticket.
Contributor

Hmm, I'll have to investigate that. Normally the tape isn't as good as the tubes because where the two halves connect (down the center line of the tape), it hardens, which means you have an unusable chunk down the middle--I'd say about 20% or so.
Sovereign Court
Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Hmm, I'll have to investigate that. Normally the tape isn't as good as the tubes because where the two halves connect (down the center line of the tape), it hardens, which means you have an unusable chunk down the middle--I'd say about 20% or so.

You should be able to buy the tubes (they call them bars) as well, same supplier just a different package. Both are 100 grams if I recall correctly.

The warstore has a decent price, especially compared to the highway robbery that Games Workshop is trying to pull selling 20 grams for a little more than what a 100g tube or strip will cost. (GW charges 12 dollars CAD for 20 grams).

http://www.polymericsystems.com/images/faq/Epoxies/SculptorInfo%284109-EM07 %29.pdf

I'll check out the link Robert. I went to Home Depot, Lowes and local hardware stores on advice exactly the same as yours. They all carry a product called "plumbers putty" that is not epoxy, and they have two part gray epoxy under another name, but it hardens in like ten minutes. I asked and the Home Depot said they stopped carrying the "old kind" a few years ago. So the online link might be the best way to go. At least if your hardware stores have made the same stocking decisions mine have.
Sovereign Court
brassbaboon wrote:
I'll check out the link Robert. I went to Home Depot, Lowes and local hardware stores on advice exactly the same as yours. They all carry a product called "plumbers putty" that is not epoxy, and they have two part gray epoxy under another name, but it hardens in like ten minutes. I asked and the Home Depot said they stopped carrying the "old kind" a few years ago. So the online link might be the best way to go. At least if your hardware stores have made the same stocking decisions mine have.

If your home depot won't order it in for you try one of the stores on this page, but be sure to price check:

http://polymericsystems.com/epoxies-adhesives/epoxy-putty-tapes/where-to-ge t-kneadatite-blue-yellow.htm

Or here:

http://www.jdindustrialsupply.com/knblepta.html

I'd normally not link away from paizo, but a x3 mark up when you buy from the hobby trade is too big a price mismatch, given that its an identical product and there aren't any amazon.com long tail shenanigans going on.

Great stuff so far Sean! I'm really looking forward to this series continuing.

Sean, these are definitely fantastic resources that should be bookmarked. I have used a lot of sculpey for terrain, particularly for walls. You can make a really realistic looking stone wall just by rolling little balls of sculpey clay and pressing them together just enough to stick to each other as if you were building a wall out of stones. In just a few minutes, plus some baking time, you can have a beautiful stone wall, or even a stone cottage. Ruins are especially easy to make. After you bake it you can paint it and sprinkle some florist lichen/moss on it and presto, an ivy covered stone wall.

I made a little cemetary with sculpey gravestones and stone walls by glueing them down to a piece of foam core poster board. I saw somewhere else where someone recommends using old promotional CDs as portable terrain bases. That's pretty useful too.

You know what I'd love to see? Something about making furniture and internal decorations to populate those houses, cottages and palaces that we make.

Not to complain -- I love war terrain modeling as much as the next Warhammer 40k aficionado -- but wasn't design Tuesdays supposed to be about game design and theory with a special emphasis on pathfinder rules?

I like this new series... but it simply doesn't apply for me -- I'm not going to model terrain for each of my encounters and if I want to model terrain I'm much more likely to do it for Warhammer 40k or Warhammer than pathfinder -- and therefore find more advice for it with those companies.

Now again I don't want to say this is bad stuff -- it isn't -- but there is a wealth of material on this subject readily available all over the internet (again especially on the Warhammer 40k sites). What there is a distinct lack of is insight on the ends and outs of game theory, balance and development.

That's what I really look forward to on Tuesdays -- the insight from designers on the mechanics and how to mess with them both as a GM and a player without through the whole machine out of kilter.

Now I wouldn't mind seeing more of this on say Wednesdays or some other day and appreciate the level of thought and dedication that is required for it (both in the making of the models and in writing about how to do it) -- but it wasn't what I'm expecting on Design Tuesdays from Paizo.

Just my two cents.
Contributor
Abraham spalding wrote:

Not to complain...

...
Just my two cents.

From the first entry in this series:

At PaizoCon this year I did a seminar/workshop introducing all sorts of things about making terrain for RPGs and wargaming. In between various demonstrations of hot wire foam cutting, casting bricks in dental plaster, mixing epoxy putty, and using polymer clay, I rattled off a bunch of websites with more information and/or product links. Here's a rundown on the terrain-building information and links for making foam terrain, just in case you missed the seminar.

A question-reply to the second entry in this series:

vagrant-poet wrote:

Have these temporarily or permanently replaced design tuesdays?

These are cool, but I really liked design tuesdays.
Jason Bulmahn wrote:


They are just a temporary thing while we sort a few things out.

The week after PaizoCon, a bunch of people (including me) took days off and we needed some "filler" for the blogs. I had this material ready, so we used it.

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Sean K Reynolds wrote:
we needed some "filler" for the blogs. I had this material ready, so we used it.

I like your filler. Keep posting filler. :)

Yup that's what I get for missing the earlier entries in the series. Again I don't mean to complain too much -- it is great information (and honestly the posts afterward are great help too pointing out how to find cheaper materials) just putting it out there.

After all while it's filler for now it might become something more regular later as it was well received. I certainly don't mind that -- but I enjoy being spoiled with Design Tuesdays much more. :D
Contributor

I believe we'll get back to regular Design Tuesdays next week. Hmm, though we have Monday off for July 4....

lol that's fine I'll be out of town and possibly inebriated at the time so whatever works for next week!
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