finding myself at a crossroads. - UPDATE: Things happened!

[Ray Rivers]

Well... you could have done worse, I guess. 

[OSHIROmodels]

Lovely work mate 

[Bloggard]

fantastic.

[CapnJim]

Those buildings turned out great!  Well done, lad!

[DintheDin]

The building work and the weathering are so convincing, many congrats, Sigur!
But I'm cracking with the little cabin! 

[FifteensAway]

Very nice work.

Having recently purchased some very nice 3D printed buildings (in 15 mm) I am impressed by the detail and the care in design as to how they fit together.  But also concerned at a certain amount of fragility.  Once glued and assembled and painted they will look great but I will put extra effort into how they are based to better protect them.  Not nearly as strong as either solid or even hollow resin cast buildings.  On the other hand is the 'scatter terrain' stuff available.  Vast and spectacular additions from 3D print.  Stuff for historical games from Dungeon Artifacts, buildings and scatter terrain.  Oh, and the buildings were not what you would call cheap, not overly expensive but not cheap either. 

I mention the above in supporting your decision to, in the main, scratch build.  Probably 3D buildings somewhat more robust in larger scales - but only somewhat.

Now working with a local young man who does 3D printing and getting some neat stuff, like much more realistic mangrove trees.  Vast array of 3D items - some that just look absolute crap and others that are just stunningly beautiful.

And surprised at the negativity towards MDF - which I had from the start but others thought me off base and 'shouted' me down.  Some people have made them look really good - with all that extra work.  But out of the box they look atrocious to my eyes.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Grumpy Gnome: Thanks very much!

@Ray Rivers: Thanks!

@OSHIROmodels: Thank you, Sir. This coming from you is extra nice. That Oshiro guy - he knows his buildings building stuff.

@Bloggard: Cheers!

@DintheDin: Thanks muchly. Yeah, I like working with wood and I like weathering wood.

@FifteensAway: Thanks for the insights! Yeah, that's a thing I noticed about 3d printed buildings as well - it's not like they're very cheap. They're usually almost up there with resins. The factor of robustness is also a good point to bring up, especially with such larger buildings. I fully trust the stuff to work perfectly fine with 6mm terrain, 10mm terrain and so on, but with 28mm.... not sure. It depends, I suppose. Additional work's never a bad idea, because in my mind it's the only way of getting proper "natural looking" textures on there. I think that now that 4Ground is gone we're on a good path with MDF. It's the inexpensive variant for getting a nice sub-structure to build upon.  Get somehting you can slap some wall texture on, add some details and file/hack at some of the "wooden" parts and it can look nice. And some of those kits are really well engineered (got a few from Kromlech's 1939 Poland range for this project and was well happy with the price vs. what you get on those. Good kits.). Problem with MDF is that when we see it in person it's very often the sort of "quickly put together and airbrushed for that club 40k tournament".


Hello, hello. I'll be the first to admit - that was a lot of dots to paint.





...but now the buildings are at least painted (okay, the insides aren't ). The above is the largest one, which I'd saved for last. It's scratch-built by yours truly, window and door frames are by Warbases (lovely people, great service. And custom parts requests are handled very swiftly and don't cost much at all), roof tiles are by Charlie Foxtrot (equally lovely people)

Now on to doing the floors of the few that got/em (cow shed, barn, pig sty, hay ....storage ...thing. Phew. And then I finally have to make a decision about whether to use large garden bases or base all the fences and all the scatter terrain separately and put together gardens ad hoc each time. Right now I'm kinda back on doing garden bases, but maybe without gluing the buildings down onto them to keep them switchable.

I was thinking of getting 3mm MDF OR maybe use 2-3mm plasticard (out of fear of warpage and the roughly rectangular gardens I have in mind might just fit the A4 format). Any ideas?



Also, maybe I should change the title of the thread...

[FifteensAway]

Again, nice work - and meticulous (the dots!).

On the gardens, not entirely sure this is what you are after, but maybe those detachable gardens that are open on one side for backing up against a building.  Depending on sides of buildings, perhaps interchangeable between games.

For just gardens, I've been considering building bases with perimeter fencing but 'blank' interiors that will have 'drop in' bases for the actual gardens or crop fields, etc.  Fences can be different styles of wood or stone or blocks or bricks.  Gives versatility and ability to quickly set-up and take down game terrain, a very important consideration.  You could do something similar with buildings as long as you have a 'standard' building foot print to match the fields.  Wouldn't have to be one standard footprint, could have a few different sizes for buildings and for gardens, etc. 

[CapnJim]

Yep - nice work indeed.  Painting all those dots would drive me crazy.  Well, crazier, anyway...

[Bloggard]

lovely work.