Best self-print historical Japanese minis?

[Occasional Sage]

Hi all!

I haven't been a mini person in lots of years, and 3d printers have hit the market in the intervening years. I've got lots of spare time coming up while traveling for work, and want to print and paint new pieces for my old copy of Shogun (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/221/ikusa). Where would you go to find files to print high-quality minis of non-fantastic Japanese troops?

If it matters, the troop types are:

Generals
Bannermen
Samurai swordsmen
Samurai archers
Peasant spearmen
Peasant gunners
Mercenary swordsmen
one ninja


In an ideal world multiple poses of these would be available too. Not that I want the earth or anything. :wink:

[Aotrs Commander]

Speaking as someone whose day-job is CAD modelling for wargames figues (albiet not at that period), I think the answer is going to be "nowhere for free." Given the amount of time it takes to create a CAD model (144th scale modern armour that I do is a good twenty hours work, and people in detail is well beyond my skills), you are about as likely to find someone doing that for nowt as you are to find a genius computer game programmer who does it just for the love of it and puts it out for free; i.e., not very.

You might try Thingverse, or commericial print-houses like Shapeways (where I have my own web store) - though that latter means buying the miniatures from them, of course.

At the moment, I don't know of anywhere that is particularly set-up to sell the model files you can buy to print on your own except TurboSquid. (Whose clientel is REALLY way above the wargames/RPG level - I very briefly looked at it and realised that my models would look stupidly crude and I didn't even now how to do the type of renders they required; Turbosquid is not set up for 3D print models, but for "hundreds of quid CGI stuff.")

The only place that is even close that I know of is HeroForge, which does RPG figures at 28mm scale, where you can build a custom character and buy the .stl file to proint yourself for about $10 or something (ot have them print it at Shapeways, which is about three times that). Might be worth a look to see if you could cobble together something that looks right (provided you want to spend the pennies).

(I mean, if you really want to spend some money, you could probably take a commission, but that would be very expensive - it's certainly beyond my skills and I'm cutting-my-own-throat-level with my commission prices.)

But if you are hoping to find someone doing that for free or next-to-nothing, I don't think you'll have much luck, I'm afraid; anyone body good enough to do a decent job - given the hours it takes - is going to want to be making something off it.



(I note this because, as part of my aforementioned job, I run into a lot of people who think have no idea what sort of time CAD modelling takes and thus the costs involved and expect to be able to get stuff at the sort of prices that you don't even tend to see on mass-market injection moduling. If most of that is teaching you to suck eggs, I apologise!)

[snowblizz]

AOTRS is making a lot of good points.

3D printers aren't magic Star Trek replicators, no matter how long you've been away.

I'll add I've been Richarding around with a 3D printer now for couple weeks, a cheap knock-off of a knock-off that someone (literally) took a hacksaw to to fit a new component and it's been nothing but trouble. I've learned a fair bit though.



In an ideal world multiple poses of these would be available too. Not that I want the earth or anything.
No in an ideal world you want to be able to actually download a design file and print anything, anything at all, without hours of careful adjusting, constant worrying and oversight when printing for problems.

Basically, even your step 1, download and print isn't working easily today in the vast majorty of cases. Let alone to do something with a complex design.


It's probably 15 years since I first heard about the technology and thought "gee printing my own Warhammer guys?, GW can suck eggs now!". Suffice to say, maybe in another 15 years...

[Aotrs Commander]

It's probably 15 years since I first heard about the technology and thought "gee printing my own Warhammer guys?, GW can suck eggs now!". Suffice to say, maybe in another 15 years...

https://photos.smugmug.com/Primary-Gallery/i-PWBjmSR/0/6b00e7b1/X3/Throllgar%20V3%2001-X3.jpg

No, the technology is there right now - this is one of the aforementioned HeroForge models I printed for my mate. So, you can do it now, with HeroForge, I expect, or at least damn close. (And $10 for As Many As You Like isn't too bad, especially when you consider the price of 28mm these days. Sure, 3D printing is more expensive than injection molded plastic in a lot of cases (especially larger stuff), but the captial investment for the latter means it's only practical for things you're gonna print thousands of. (Dad reckons the break-point is about 5000 units.))

(By the by, to get the best out of a printer, you need to use good software. We spent the money to buy Simplify3D earlier this year and the difference was like it was a new printer.)

You're never going to be in a situation where you can just go print high-quality stuff for no effort/money, though - simply because just like scuplting physical figures, CAD modelling takes a lot of time - unless you learn to do it yourself.

[snowblizz]

(By the by, to get the best out of a printer, you need to use good software. We spent the money to buy Simplify3D earlier this year and the difference was like it was a new printer.)


One of the things I have learned painfully and at length. All the mechanical components turn out to be really really simple. Running them is the trick.

The other being while a cheaper printer made from the same parts (essentialy) as a brand should in theory be the same it's not gonna. Not as far as software is concerned and therein lies the rub. It's not funny at all when the good software doesn't recognize the printer and you only get to play around with the bad one.