Will 3d printers soon take over painting as well?

[Ozreth]

Saw this mentioned on another forum and wondered what the folks here thought. I don't know much about 3d printing, but does it seem like soon enough they will be able to pump out well painted figures? Is the technology there? HeroForge currently does some I believe but they don't look good.

[Elbows]

I think this is similar to the self-driving car concept.

People who don't want to paint, or are too lazy, or paint terribly will flock to pre-coloured 3D miniatures.  This only makes things better for the rest of us.  No one who enjoys painting their own minis (or puts up with it in order to have something cool on the table...) will be flocking to this tech.  It's not going to put commission painters out of business, and no one is going to stop painting because pre-coloured 3D prints exist.

I would 100% embrace playing against someone with pre-coloured prints, vs. the swathes of gray plastic and poorly primed crap that passes for "an army" at my local game store.

[Dubar]

I know some of the 1/144 scale aircraft I've purchased from Shapeways can be bought with colors applied by using different color filament.  They're nice but the colors of the aircraft and markings seem a bit faded to me.

I've printed approximately 40 1/72 scale aircraft on my Elegoo Neptune 4 Pro but all but 1 have been done using 1 color of filament, the only reason the 1 had 2 colors was because I ran out of the color I initially started with.

20 years ago I was skeptical I'd ever see a 3D printer printing something I would want, who knows what we'll see in near future.

I'm still waiting for the Star Trek Replicator and the "wand" they use in the medical bay!!!

Can you imagine talking to your printer and telling it you want a scale aircraft in the paint scheme of a well-known pilot and minutes later there it is?!?!?! 

[Westfalia Chris]

I think this is another aspect of 3d printing that falls into "can produce great utility if applied correctly" territory.

I could, for example, see the point in using appropriately-coloured filament (or resin) to produce specific parts in a colour that will reduce the effects of paint chipping, or printing various components of a model in suitably-tinted material to reduce the need for painting, as seen in modern "Plamo" kits, such as Bandai's. In that way, it may be attractive to those who don't enjoy painting that much, as described by Elbows.

But given the issues with material changeover times, I fail to see how it could reasonably be done in printers suitable for high-quality printing of monobloc figures. Multi-spool filament printers, obviously, but those will most likely remain limited with regard to layer height.

[Fitz]

Relatively recently I've started seeing the output from the new generation of colour resin printers, which use (to horribly over-simplify the process) a sort of inkjet system to build the models. They feed from an array of CMYK resin drums, and the surface colouring is about as good as you'd get from a 2D inkjet printer.

At the moment, the printers are pretty expensive, as are the coloured resins. But that will change. I doubt that they'll ever be as cheap as cheap resin printers are now, but I foresee a time when they'll be affordable for an enthusiastic home printer.

The models still have to be "painted" of course, but digitally, and the quality of the "painting" will still depend on the artist. It should be a lot easier to do eyes though.

[Inkpaduta]

Yes, if the quality gets good I can see a number of people doing this.
However, many will stick with metal figures and thus keep painting their own.

[ced1106]

Archon's already doing it with *some* terrain. For them, the costs don't scale, so, while prepaints are more expensive, they haven't been able to offer as much of a volume-based discount as they do unpainted plastic. DougC on Dakka has been posting screenshots of the prepaint prototypes. I've noticed prepaints for smaller companies being *very* popular, maybe b/c crowdfunders have deep pockets. Or have too many **** mini's to paint b/c of all those KS projects. Start here and work backwards : https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1500/797368.page

EDIT: Big pic : https://imgcdn.gamefound.com/richtextimage/richtext/865ca0c4-c091-4fc1-83fa-6f6f1c2d00b3.jpg

HeroForge has been offering 3D painted for years. At $20 per mini (I think they were $40 at one time!), you're talking only RPG'ers who have been playing their characters for a long time. Maybe a Frostgrave wizard? https://www.heroforge.com/products/printed-plastic/

[Bloggard]

As an example, I was under the impression / had assumed that the coloured-in figures offered here:

https://only-games.co/

are colour 3D prints? *

they don't inspire confidence by providing only poor quality images for the most part (some are computer renders rather than the actual physical colour output too).

But high /decent quality with custom control and 'reasonable' prices is bound to come I suppose.
It'll be a different 'look' to properly painted figures I should think.

* - actually - just checked some of the listings: yes they are 3D colour prints.

[Rhubarb633]

As an example, I was under the impression / had assumed that the coloured-in figures offered here:

https://only-games.co/

are colour 3D prints? *

They are indeed 3D colour prints. Out of curiosity,  I ordered a couple of figures from Only-games last year.

Verdict - Not bad. I think they compare favourably with hand painted 'tabletop standard' (though I know that's a subjective term). Cost may be a deciding factor and I do think at present that these figures are aimed more at the RPG crowd, rather than tabletop wargamers.
I wrote more about my views on this on my blog, if you are curious:

https://tworoundsrapid.blogspot.com/2023/09/colour-me-curious.html?m=1

[fred]

These are interesting- way better than what I was expecting.

As you say cost is still an issue - but that will only come down.

Not sure what I think about this as a direction of travel - I do like to paint my figures, but sometimes getting an army on the table has a value of its own. And the simple fact is there is always more figures to buy!

[Osmoses]

'N' Gauge (so 12mm-ish) construction workers by Noch. They do them in Z gauge too...

https://www.noch.com/construction-workers/35050/