I am a professional 3d artist. I had been keeping my eye on 3d printing when the reprap project came about a few years ago. Reprap is an open source project for the construction and operation of 3d printers. I purchased a 3d printer kit this fall.

This is the 3D printed Chaplain lower part. Done on Ultimaker 2, more than happy with the result. 3D files were not. Oct 29, 2014 - ImageMy 3D Printed Warhammer 40K Blood Angels army so far. In price, and board gamers inevitably start 3D printing lots of miniatures, what. Month or so will have no problem with me or himself fielding 3d print models.

I assembled it and had been toying around with modeling things and printing them out. It dawned on me that I could incorporate another hobby of mine from my childhood.

I played tabletop wargames through my teens. I enjoyed the model making and painting mostly.

I have a younger brother that plays IG. I figured I'd try modeling and printing some minis. I started with the Sentinel, and when that turned out so well, I started working on the Leman Russ. Months went by, and another brother of mine suggested I post them to thingiverse.

GW caught wind and sent thingiverse a DMCA. Its not as big of a deal as some are making it out to be.

I am in no way affected. I still plan to develop 28mm scaled vehicles. The single unit models won't print as well as the larger units/vehicles. I don't feel like rocking any boats, so I won't be openly distributing my 3d files. My current print area is about 10cm cubed. I will be building a second mendel style printer that will have a build volume of about 20cm cubed.

I own a Makerbot Thing-o-Matic. I model in 3ds max. I am fluent in the Adobe suite, and other graphics applications. Apocalypse40K is a registered trademark of Dice of War, Inc. All rights reserved. Warhammer 40,000 This web site is completely unofficial and in no way endorsed by Games Workshop Limited.

You might think that in the age of video games and iPads, miniature gaming would be on the way out. The hobby (or, loosely-connected web of hobbies, I should say) is about as analog as it gets—with thick rulebooks, brick and mortar stores, and real, physical miniatures. And yet, you probably have a hobby shop somewhere in your town where people are pushing around tiny, pewter armies at this very second. They could be at home playing Starcraft right now—what gives?

I think miniature gaming survives specifically because it’s so analog. It’s a hobby that celebrates the physicality of things, where a practitioner might spend $50 on a single, intricately detailed model, and a dozen hours of his life painting it with painstaking precision. Program de cantat la tastatura orga. They like the social scene and the physical space of the game shop. They might not be earning new converts like they did 30 years ago, but their games and the industries they support have been insulated from the disruption that’s wiped out other hobbies. However, with the rising accessibility of 3D printing--especially for the home--the line between the digital and the physical is getting blurred. Is the delicate economy that keeps the hobby alive ready to collapse?

I don’t think so, but I do think the hobby is on the brink of enormous change. I’ll explain how things got to this point, and where I think they’re going in the future. From Pb to Polymers: A Brief History of Miniature Gaming Wargaming as we know it now began in 1904—the year that well-known science fiction author H.G. Wells published a book called Small Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys’ games and books. The book described a formal set of rules for simulating a battle using hollow-cast lead toy soldiers and artillery. The book was the first of its type, but didn’t create the modern hobby of miniature gaming whole-cloth—it wasn’t until 1955 that Jack Scruby would start casting the first wargaming-specific miniatures out of type metal, creating the wargaming hobby industry.