Paizo minis, and minis in general


Miniatures

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Well I guess sooner or later the mini business will change to CAD file sellers instead of selling real pewter or plastic minis. 3D printers will take it over. They will be cheaper in some years and everybody can print their favorite minis out by themselves. (not prepainted of course...)

Eg recently in Austria there has been introduced a 3D printer for only 1200 Euro and the size of a coffee-machine.

http://diepresse.com/home/techscience/hightech/662754/TU-Wien-entwickelt-kl einsten-3DDrucker-der-Welt


Enpeze wrote:

Well I guess sooner or later the mini business will change to CAD file sellers instead of selling real pewter or plastic minis. 3D printers will take it over. They will be cheaper in some years and everybody can print their favorite minis out by themselves. (not prepainted of course...)

Eg recently in Austria there has been introduced a 3D printer for only 1200 Euro and the size of a coffee-machine.

http://diepresse.com/home/techscience/hightech/662754/TU-Wien-entwickelt-kl einsten-3DDrucker-der-Welt

Someday, those 3D printers will even produce decent enough quality output to produce minis, too.

I am far from impressed with any samples that I've seen or have been exhibited from these deals.


Dragnmoon wrote:
Reaperbryan since you are paying attention here, I will tell you there is one thing stoping me from buying your Pre Painted Minis, The Bases, they Drive me crazy, they are way to small and the minis constantly fall, and are not really sized for 3.5 size rules very well.

This! I actually have bought a few from the Paizo website, but dislike the bases. DDM is the standard now, IMHO. Either black circles or black squares that fill the standard map square, please!

Owner - House of Books and Games LLC

Enpeze wrote:
Well I guess sooner or later the mini business will change to CAD file sellers instead of selling real pewter or plastic minis. 3D printers will take it over. They will be cheaper in some years and everybody can print their favorite minis out by themselves. (not prepainted of course...)

Well, until they're prepainted, many of us won't really care - learning to paint minis and spending that amount of time just isn't on my radar.


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Brian E. Harris wrote:
Enpeze wrote:

Well I guess sooner or later the mini business will change to CAD file sellers instead of selling real pewter or plastic minis. 3D printers will take it over. They will be cheaper in some years and everybody can print their favorite minis out by themselves. (not prepainted of course...)

Eg recently in Austria there has been introduced a 3D printer for only 1200 Euro and the size of a coffee-machine.

http://diepresse.com/home/techscience/hightech/662754/TU-Wien-entwickelt-kl einsten-3DDrucker-der-Welt

Someday, those 3D printers will even produce decent enough quality output to produce minis, too.

I am far from impressed with any samples that I've seen or have been exhibited from these deals.

We spend a lot more time than most people* researching all the variant ways a mini can be made. To that end, we buy CAD minis from different 3-d rapid-printers and such every few months. We are very intrigued by the technology, and really do hope that some day, we can harness it as we now harness fire and lightning.

Right now, the figures that we get don't quite have the quality of a hand-sculpt.

That's not to say there aren't some computer generated models that work- there are plenty. But the desktop 3-d printer technology is not there yet.

*I have to guess this is true, really. It is possible that you spend more time than I do worrying about the future of the miniatures biz. If that is so, we may need counseling, and perhaps could consider a group rate....


Thinking about it. I'd not like to see groups of humanoids unless they were groups of female humanoids. A squad of female orcs/dwarves/goblins/gnomes/hobgoblins would be interesting. We don't really need a lot more human or elf females.

The Exchange

Enpeze wrote:
Well I guess sooner or later the mini business will change to CAD file sellers instead of selling real pewter or plastic minis. 3D printers will take it over. They will be cheaper in some years and everybody can print their favorite minis out by themselves. (not prepainted of course...)

This will be the start of it, but I can foresee a move from CAD files of a static mini to a posable mini, a mannequin, that you can reposition before printing. Probably swap out the weapon for something else, maybe even swap clothing and have some physics rules drape it realistically over the mannequin.

How many times have folks said "If that mini had a shield and was waving a mace over her head rather than stabbing with a short-sword, that would be the perfect mini for my character."


There is a company that uses a 3D printer to print out accurate miniatures of your WoW characters. It's not cheap, but the results I've seen on their sample page look pretty dang good. I almost bought one.

Based on their ability to take the 3D model parameters from WoW and print out a resulting mini, I would say the technology to do what brock suggested already exists, but it's not all in one place yet. I suppose within five years or so it will be in one place. Then you'll be able to print out a mini as customized as you could possibly want. Choose race, armor, weapon, pose, distinguishing features (tattoos, scars, hairstyle, etc.) and print out a mini that is as custom as you can get without sculpting the mini yourself.

And for those who want to do that, you will almost certainly be able to upload a CAD file and print out your own vision of a character.

How much impact that will have on the current sculpt, cast and paint market remains to be seen.

I think we are still a ways off from having the 3D printed models also painted by the printer, but I'm sure there are people working on that as I type this.


brassbaboon wrote:

There is a company that uses a 3D printer to print out accurate miniatures of your WoW characters. It's not cheap, but the results I've seen on their sample page look pretty dang good. I almost bought one.

Based on their ability to take the 3D model parameters from WoW and print out a resulting mini, I would say the technology to do what brock suggested already exists, but it's not all in one place yet. I suppose within five years or so it will be in one place. Then you'll be able to print out a mini as customized as you could possibly want. Choose race, armor, weapon, pose, distinguishing features (tattoos, scars, hairstyle, etc.) and print out a mini that is as custom as you can get without sculpting the mini yourself.

And for those who want to do that, you will almost certainly be able to upload a CAD file and print out your own vision of a character.

How much impact that will have on the current sculpt, cast and paint market remains to be seen.

I think we are still a ways off from having the 3D printed models also painted by the printer, but I'm sure there are people working on that as I type this.

The problem with those particular "minis" is that they are extremely expensive, and From what I've heard of them (I did research cause I wanted one ><) they don't stand up to any kind of abuse (like a mini would take) and come apart kind of easy. I'm not saying this is always the case, just what little I have heard of them.

Contributor

And they're about 7" tall, so not so "mini." :)

shapeways.com does some 3DPOD stuff that's pretty sturdy even at miniatures scale.

RPG Superstar 2011 Top 4

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

And they're about 7" tall, so not so "mini." :)

shapeways.com does some 3DPOD stuff that's pretty sturdy even at miniatures scale.

Even miniatures made out of gold for that extra heft.


Sean K Reynolds wrote:

And they're about 7" tall, so not so "mini." :)

shapeways.com does some 3DPOD stuff that's pretty sturdy even at miniatures scale.

So it's a maturing technology.

Which is my point.

Give it five years. As I said.


Wolf Munroe wrote:
If you're not concerned about painted plastic, as you've mentioned several times, then why worry about painted metal either? You can buy armies of skeletons, goblins, or orcs in metal and it will probably run you several dollars a miniature. There used to be a set sold here on Paizo that I wanted to buy (guess I missed it, didn't realize it was sold out until just now) that was 1 human female and 12 skeletons. Was listed at $37. That's under $3 per miniature. WARMACHINE: Alexia Ciannor & the Risen would have satisfied my itch for skeletons and I wouldn't have needed to buy anymore. (Unfortunately I couldn't justify the purchase because I really don't need any more skeletons already.)

Just as an update to my previous post, WARMACHINE: Alexia Ciannor & the Risen is for sale again. I guess Paizo was just out of stock when I posted last time? 1 human female and 12 skeletons. Metal miniatures though, but still 12 skeletons. Yep, I didn't need more skeletons but I bought them anyway.

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