Grid city sci-fi ruins I had gotten as sampler from Saucermen studios. Printed in black PLA, and painted in grey tones with metallic details and added rust effects.
I mixed and matched to create different builds but I failed to also Mirror the clones, and break the uniformity even more.
Something else that I needed for my games, and especially bug hunt is linear terrain in order to create funnels of routes, so in addition to the prior geonosis terrain, I went with the sandbag and modular trench barricades from Sablebadger. Also printed the trench barricade tower, so that I can make an outpost quickly a la starship troopers style. The sandbags were printed in beige PLA and painted in a similar way to the geonosis terrain. The trench barricades were printed in black PLA and painted in gray tones, but because they ended up too monochrome I added rust effects, which ended up contrasting a lot with the monochrome look.
I needed some rocky terrain, and especially for sci-fi look (can also work for desert fantasy) I found the Geonosis style terrain from Sablebadger. I got them from his patreon at the 2nd level which includes access to his back catalogue. Printed at 60% scale, in Beige PLA. Washed in a red-brown wash (Burnt Umber + Yellow Ochre + PVA + Floor Polish) and drybrushed Tan. The idea is if they get knocked around too much and chip, the lighter beige color will show throw and it will be like a highlight. Though with the softness of PLA, floor polish seal, and lack of knocking around (I am a solo player after all) I doubt this extra precaution is necessary.
I have not taken single pictures of every single item, rather, filled a table with them and took pictures. When combined with different terrain I think they will look even better, but there’s enough of them to fill a 2×2 in 60% scale, or 3×3 in full scale.
There are tons of sci-fi stl buildings in the internet, so many that I got overwhelmed. I finally settled on some samplers from Corvus Game Terrain (Tycho Starport, Magna Fortuna, Compound) and a retro Bunker from Doctor Spork. I can’t recall where I got the alien monolith from. Again, spray primer, airbrush zenithal, airbrush basecoat, washes and drybrushing. I decided to give different colours to the Corvus Game Terrain buildings from Magna Fortuna series, but perhaps I overdid it, and I don’t think they look good if all of them are placed together on the table. On the other hand 1-2 of them are good to break the monotony of the uniform color I painted the Tycho starport line.
With Orktober underway, I could not leave my space Orks unpainted. These are all 3d sculpts from thatwhatgrows patreon back catalogue. Bear in mind that their patreon is no longer active, but they also have some support-less sculpts in their itch.io store, from which I got the space goblins but haven’t gotten around to printing and painting them yet. Also while support-less they’re more oriented to resin printing, as I noticed some overhangs while printing in FDM. Could also have to do with the fact that I scaled them down 60% for 15mm scale.
Anyway enough talk, here are gathered: 1 armored ork boss, 2 ork bosses, an ork shaman, an orc with sword and pistol, and 6 orks with rifles.
Printed in Elegoo PLA Pro, at 0.06mm layer height on a Bambu Labs A1 mini with a 0.2mm nozzle. Painted with layering techniques (which I admit was hard to do on the FDM print) and I also used oil washes. Perhaps the contrast is too stark, and I could have gotten a similar result with less effort, but I like evolving my skills as a miniature painter.
I also changed my desk lamp with one with a led light and magnifying lens to assist with painting, but this had an impact to the photography, and for the particular figures I had to switch to a black background, and try to find the optimal exposure settings.
A new category! after Miniatures and Terrain, I have printed, assembled and painted my first Vehicle. Since vehicles (and cavalry/flying mounts) tend to move fast, they don’t play a major role in smaller tabletop boards like mine. Vehicles can be something movable, like a tank, mech walker, to a prop/objective marker like a dropship or shuttle, up to a whole terrain board for a large starship.
I currently haven’t focused much on them, because I didn’t find many use cases, but I felt like I was always missing a space ship for my Five Parsecs from Home games. So a while ago I spent time and printed and assembled a shuttle, but it still sits in my closet in the pile of printed shame – I’m not going to share what it is until I have this painted and finished.
But lately I pledged on the MTV Kickstarter by games-art-by-Philipp on a small shuttle that would work perfect as a Five Parsecs from Home: Bug Hunt dropship. The files were delivered on Monday, and I got to printing them immediately. I realized it was smaller and more manageable than the shuttle I printed. Also I loved the assembly, as it uses Gridforge lock system which makes changing the floors very easy.
It would probably sit in my closet as well for a long time, but on my last trip to the dollar store, I found a pack of 100 acrylic paint markers for about a dozen bucks, and thought they’d be perfect for painting terrain and vehicles. So I decided to give it a shot and see if it makes my job easier or faster.
Printing was done in White Elegoo PLA, at 0.08mm layer height with a 0.4mm nozzle. The model was scaled down to 60% for a 15mm scale. First I assembled the ship and glued some parts that I knew that wouldn’t need removing in the future, and that wouldn’t interfere with spray priming. Also I printed the screen in transparent PLA – this is not the final screen I used.
Then I spray primed the entire thing in dark gray using the Army Painter Gamemaster Ruins&Cliffs Spray Primer. Once dry, I decided to start giving my acrylic markers a test. First I tested the coverage on a spare screen part I had spray primed, and then I tested overall painting techniques and behaviour on the under-the-gridforge floor (it’s not going to be visible when playing even when the top of the craft is open, so I could “fail” without needing to repaint.
Overall I discovered that the acrylic markers behaved well. Coverage isn’t perfect (they’re dollar store after all) but this could give some nice blending and artistic line effects. I used two different grays for the tiles and a deeper gray, closer to the primer color to repaint the grooves. What I absolutely loved was how I could stay within lines – the grip and control is much tighter than when using a brush – and how fast I could paint everything. With that done I decided to go ahead with basecoating (most of) the entire thing.
I decided to go with a Unity (from the Unified Space of Nordic Weasel Games) colour scheme, some red panels, different grays for the outside. Added some metallics with a brush, and gave some light yellows for the headlights. Despite having printed and primed several different interior choices (crates, passenger seats and console terminals) I decided to focus on the core set which only has the pilot seat and console and some different empty floor tiles.
Doing the basecoating with the acrylic markers was a blast! Felt like a kid again playing with markers. Lines were tight and controlled; yes I needed to go back again and do a second and third coat, but I was building up from dark gray, and I hadn’t done a zenithal priming job. The alternatives would be to either do extensive masking and airbrushing or stipple drybrushing, or try to do everything with a brush, none of which would be easy at all.
Something to note here that I first tested on the under-floor was how the marker paint job behaved with my washes, and I noticed reactivation if I applied it while the paint was touch dry – something which was not a problem with regular acrylics. This was important information for later, as I didn’t want to ruin the exterior paint job.
Once it dried well, I place back the wings, and followed up with a white drybrush all over the ship exterior to pick up the edges.
I then applied my floor polish brown black wash. Also added some spot washes at the mechanical parts for oil grime and at the headlights with a soft tone. Once that dried, I followed with a final white drybrush all over the interior and exterior.
Overall I am thrilled with how it turned out. Took me about one day to finish it, but it was a joyful experience. Some pictures of the finished thing with my Five Parsecs from Home: Bug Hunt troopers.
I replaced the transparent PLA screen with a reprint using rectilinear solid infill for a grid look, but finally settled on a Hilbert curve solid infill as seen in the last interior image. I think it looks best as it gives this reinforced glass look.
Really amazing! Seems a resin print! Even the pilot seat and the controllers, so tiny and yet so detailed. The markers (simple markers not even the AP/AK ones) paint job unbelievable good, i’ll try it! One question, why did you use the gamemaster’s primer? Keep going you are truly inspirational
Some more terrain items I have 3d printed for my sci fi battles. Mainly barrels, crates. Since I am scaling down for 15mm, single small barrels and crates are kinda pointless. They get knocked around easily, are hard to setup, and provide only minimal impact to the terrain. Therefore I chose grouped or larger containers.
They are beautiful, i’m jealous! Small scale and very detailed, what is your secret?
Thank you!
It boils down to a few things: planning ahead, good models, and a good well calibrated printer.
The Bambu Labs A1/mini have proven to give robust quality prints. These are mostly printed with default settings. The fact that I go low in scale means I can go as high in quality as I need without spending a lot of time in printing. A 60% scale is approximately 3 times faster to print, and it offsets the increase of going down to 0.08mm layer height.
I spend a lot of time planning ahead. This includes looking at finding the right models for the job. If I can find terrain that prints well, paints nicely and works as intended, then that’s preferred. Also I plan ahead the paint job. A model might be printed and wait a long time before painting, not so much due to laziness (which is more a fact for miniatures models) but more so because I am trying to figure out the best series of steps to paint them quickly and have them look good enough.
Hope this helps!
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Here some alien ground formations/fungi that serve as rough ground, LOS blockers or hills.
For this set of alien flora I gathered many different models and scaled, cloned and rotated them to fill some area bases.
Spray primed. Zenithal with airbrush, and primary colours set with airbrush. I then did a wash and drybrush before sealing with a floor polish wash.
I realised I had not posted the terrain I have been diligently working on since summer. An FDM printer is great for terrain, so much that I am having trouble finding storage space again.
The showcase here is a space junkyard. 6 different piles of space junk, some may look familiar to fans a long time ago of a galaxy far far away.
The paint job took a while. They were spray primed gray and zenithal primed with an airbrush. I painted them in different metallics: silver, bronze, copper, tin and graphite for variety. Followed up with my rust technique: heavy stipple brushing with a drybrush of random and successive colours: van dyke brown, burnt umber, raw umber, burnt sienna, raw sienna and vermillion. I added some rust texture by doing a pva-baking soda-vermillion mix and applying it thick on spots near painted rust. Sealed with a brown-black floor polish wash.
Yeah, they say that 15mm allows you to store things easier. But because of that, then you want to have several things, so in the end you end up storing the same amount as in 28mm.
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Onibaba, 
technoalchemist are discussing. 
Solo, Pen, Paper and Dice 
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