EndTransmission's modular game board (over the hills and into the woods)

[gamer Mac]

very nice work

[Bloggard]

oh my, hexes ... flipping fantastic, everything. I want your board.

and 'scarfolk' ...

[EndTransmission]

Thanks!

A few steps forward yesterday thanks to some webinars that were interesting to listen to, but didn't require keyboard interactions.
The graveyard pathways are coming along nicely. They still need dirtying up a little bit as who keeps their graveyard pathways *that* clean? I'll be adding some weathering powders in to dirty it up a little bit and maybe some leaves scattered across them. Who knows what inspiration will strike



I also started work on the Lychgate for the graveyard in Blender. Still a few tweaks before I'm happy to try printing it, but so far I'm happy with it. At some point I need to work out curves and the texture sculpting properly... currently the textures are fine, but not as smooth or controlled as I would like.

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I got a question via PM earlier about how I create the hexes, so i figure a flashback is in order

The toolset I use is from https://www.hexterraintoolkit.com/, which gives you modular template pieces to make the basic hexes as well as hills, rivers and trenches. I wouldn't worry about sheets 5 and 6 for the interlocking bits, unless you're really desperate to stop drift. Given my table has raised edges, it fits in nice and snugly. As mentioned previously, I was not enjoying cutting out squares and then cutting the hexes. There was a lot of waste and the process assumed good alignment to make sure the hexes are correct... so I decided to cut corners and get the hexes bulk cut.

To do this, find yourself a company that does custom foam cutting services for sign writing and events. I forget who I actually used, but there are places like http://www.foamcutting.co.uk and have a chat to them about costs and file formats required. The foam comes in sheets, so there is a minimum size available, but the sheets come in multiple thicknesses. I went for one that was just over three times the thickness (about 50mm deep; one tile should be 15mm) that I needed, so i could make cliffs more easily in the future. I think it cost me about £80 including postage for a box so big I'll have enough for ages to come.

The company that I went with just needed an image with the cutting plan on. So the easiest way to do that is to use Quickhex (https://zhodani.space/goodies/hex/qh.html) to generate it. You can put in the dimensions of the foam sheet that your chosen company will supply. The hexes from the original tools had 50mm edges, so I used that as the edge length in Quickhex. If you want larger ones, you can use that instead.

The toolkit comes with a nice cutting guide, so using a hot wire cutter becomes very quick to divide it up


For edge pieces, you need two types and helpfully there are enough pieces in the kit to leave these permanently stuck together. The other sections for hills etc. will need dismantling every now and then, depending on how many sloped sides you want. At some point I need to start practicing with hills as some of the sample boards on the Hex Terrain site look really nice.

For some of the larger pieces, such as the buildings and fields, I still use these hexes, but glue them together with wood glue and tape over the bottom to provide a bit of rigidity. These ones tend to also get a layer of Vallejo texture paste over the top to help strengthen the joins as well.

[Bloggard]

thank you very much ET (!).

must admit, my brief experiments with a hot wire cutter (prob. a naff one) wouldn't give me much confidence in achieving your results. But keen to see more of your set-up.

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Not much progress on the actual board this weekend, other than slicing a load more hexes and edge pieces while the printer was working its merry way through the Lychgate parts and an archway for the graveyard wall.

The Lychgate is being modelled here by our resident necromancer, Bob. You can see his nice halloween style accents the graveyard beautifully...





The roof is a separate model as I didn't want to have to wait 10 hours to see if the print failed. I probably could have saved time by printing it all as one piece, but having it in 2 makes it a little easier to paint as getting in under that roof would be a pain.  I'm still slightly confused by the gate height though. In Blender the bottom bar is sitting above the floor, but as you can see from the photos, the bottom hinge and crossbar are embedded in the floor... if I ever get around to releasing the models for public consumption, I'll need to go back and look at that again. If.

As for the archway, this is the first time this has actually printed out properly. I suspect adding a new flat plate to the bottom covered up some rogue pixels that were causing it to fail... to I may do that to all the items in future, just to make sure. On the left you can see the new archway with it's wooden door. On the right, you can see an earlier print of the archway all cut up and turned to rubble. This was printed a while back and accidentally broken at the archway as there wasn't the door there to strengthen it. The old one was also a few mm too wide for the base, so this helped bring it back into the hex so that it sits nicely with the other walls.

[Wirelizard]

That's looking great. A lychgate is one of the things my church/graveyard setup still needs, so if you ever clean this file up I'd be interested in a copy!

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Well there's a driver to clean it up if ever I've heard one! I'd love to see what other people do to it, so sure! I've been contemplating uploading all the files to MyMiniFactory, but I always get concerned that people that know how to do 3d modelling *properly* will be scornful that they aren't optimised... I should get over that as I know they print on an Elegoo Mars without issues; not tried an FDM printer though. What do you have?

Today's update is quite small. I needed to print a couple more walls to finish closing off the three sides of the graveyard wall... and there was so much space left on the print place that it has been expanded a few more hexes with four more tiles of graves and some more pathways... now I just need to design a mausoleum that fits with the GW plastic ones to fill the last hex. It's not too far off having a complete 2x2ft graveyard as it's own board for 7TV games. They are all curing at the moment, so I can hopefully try painting it all tomorrow.

[Codsticker]

That looks fantastic, another piece of work that inspires me to get a printer.

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Given that today has mostly been undercoating stuff, I've a small present to anyone that wants it. I've started to clean up the models, fixing those last niggly bits that annoyed me after the prints... and uploading them to MyMiniFactory for free. I'd love to see if anyone prints one for their boards, so please either PM me or post a link in here to your threads

The first one to be approved is the lychgate: https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-122536

[Wirelizard]

Well there's a driver to clean it up if ever I've heard one! I'd love to see what other people do to it, so sure! I've been contemplating uploading all the files to MyMiniFactory, but I always get concerned that people that know how to do 3d modelling *properly* will be scornful that they aren't optimised... I should get over that as I know they print on an Elegoo Mars without issues; not tried an FDM printer though. What do you have?

My brother (who posts here every so often as Burgundavia) has an FDM printer, an Ender 5 I think it is. I commission prints from him and he gets paid in having good scenery to game on and/or beer.

I'll send him the link to the lych gate and see what he says about printing it out on his Ender.

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Excellent stuff, sounds like a good deal to me! If we weren't in lockdown I'd be getting a friend to print me one on his Ender 3 Pro, which is leading me to have this daily fight with myself. I shouldn't really buy an Ender until I make models that need it. Then it becomes a necessity, right?

I'm just creating all the screenshots needed to upload all the matching wall options, so hopefully the whole set will be printable tomorrow/friday.

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For anyone that wants them, all the walls and gates are now free to download over on https://www.myminifactory.com/users/MrMagpieCreates

I'd love to see what people do with them, so please post links to your blogs or provide feedback here!

Today's update is hills.


The template set includes pieces to make various hill slopes. I've tried these in the past with poor results, but I gave it another try yesterday and, with a bit of polyfiller as a skim over the top, they actually worked this time! On the table they look really nice, providing a rise in the terrain... but you can't really see it in this photo unless you're looking hard for it behind the Mantic hedge. I've removed two segments to show that the windmill really is one level higher than the base. I spent lunch cutting some more hill pieces and sticking gravel to them to make it a bit more obvious they are hills...  it will be nice to make it a bit less flat. Sadly there's quite a bit of waste material cutting these out... but not enough to be of use in other tiles. The intention is to make enough hill pieces to raise the windmill up another layer or two so there can be some cliffs added to the board as well... that will eventually lead to a mine entrance. One step at a time!

[blacksoilbill]

Fantastic thread! Some really great craftsmanship, and I absolutely love the mood of the terrain.

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Thanks! It's been fun making the terrain. It's something I avoided doing for years and have only just had space to do it. Unfortunately my brain is not suited to the 3d geometry required to build modular hills that are more than one level today... I've had to give up on that for a bit before my brain melts.

On the plus side, this morning I did manage to finish painting/flocking the lychgate, some more walls, the side gate and four more sets of graves. For now, the graveyard can be considered complete! At least until I decide to print some more graves or wall variations... This is double the size it was originally intended to be, I just kept on filling spare space on the build plate with more graves or walls... oops! Unfortunately I clearly wasn't paying attention at 4am when I painted the new walls as they are a slightly different colour to the rest of the brickwork *face/palm*



I'm pleased that the grain on the gate is visible at this scale. I thought it was too faint when I printed it, or that paint would fill it all... but lo and behold. Washes pick it out nicely


I also had an earlier version of the archway without the door that got broken... so I broke it some more to create a ruined archway


I also managed to base the mummer men to go with the dancing girls, who are now making their merry way through the graveyard (completely missing the giant werewolf behind them)...


On their way to the yearly sacrifice of the nosy journalist sent to cover the may fair