Your 10 favorite 15 mm 3D prints for Pulp gaming

[FifteensAway]

Curious what folks consider to be their favorite 15 mm 3D prints for pulp (which means the topic is pretty wide open)?  Can be figures, vehicles, watercraft, aircraft, buildings, scatter terrain - whatever you think adds to the pulp gaming experience.  Since people will ask - images and links to either source for preprints or STLs.  STLs can, of course, be sized accordingly but preprints need to have a 15 mm option to count.  And we are talking traditional pulp so circa 1925 - 1945 but that is a loose parameter.

And it is okay if you don't get to 10.

List away!

[frd]

I think you have set the bar too high - there's slim pickings when it comes to pulp in 3d in general, and the numbers get even smaller when you talk models suitable for 15mm. I've been hunting for 3d printable pulp models for couple years now and I would find it hard to find 10 models that are ready to print in 15mm.

There are handful of 3d sculptors out there making things suitable for pulp. The problem is they are usually too puny to work in 15mm. It's not just aesthetic, the elements are so small that they are prone to breaking. I had multiple models break off at ankles or loose arms.

To remedy that I have been modifying the models the using meshmixer to make them chunkier. Comparison (using free Adaevy Creations model) between simply scaled and my "chunkyfied" versions below. Not only they fit better with non-3d printed models I have, but it makes them considerably tougher. I'm happy to share the process if there are people interested.

I'll go through my collection of STL files and see if I can find 10 models that can be printed in 15mm by simply scaling

[frd]

Here's some of my favorite 3d printable models that only need scaling to work in 15mm:


Dragon's Trapper Lodge Gorilla - use as Kong.
Requires no scaling - the default scale gorilla is around the size of Kong from 2005 Peter Jackson's version for 15mm figures. The same sculptor has a more modern take on Kong (from the new Monsterverse movies) if that's your style, but that one would need to be scaled accordingly. In fact the whole Lost Continent and Simiax Legions lines from this sculptor are worth a look. Bunch of models would fit right into a pulpy lost world campaign!


Zombies and other Pulp/Occult/Sci-Fi Nazis from Kyoushuneko Miniatures.
This sculptor makes weird WW2 miniatures for different countries, but their German line has a decent selection that would fit right into Pulp (zombies, werewolves and scientists). The good thing is that the sculpts are pretty chunky and don't include any overtly tiny/fine detail, so simply scaling them down would work decently well for 15mm (although I would thicken them to be safe, little worried about the fingers snapping off. If it happens with zombies, it won't be much of a problem. Apart from the fingers, the figures are hefty enough to not break easily). 


Vehicles from WindhamGraves from his Thingiverse and Patreon.
Windham focuses on XX century vehicles in 1/100 scale (I usually scale his stuff 110% to match the chunky 15mm minis better). While a lot of his stuff in not suitable for pulp (bunch of it is military WW2 stuff), there's decent amount of it that fits: Ford Model T, Model TT Truck or the Liberty Truck will work in many pulp scenarios. He has more suitable models, those three were just on top of my head - check out his whole catalog on this spreadsheet.


Crooked Dice U-boat
While Crooked Dice offers a good selection of pulpy miniatures, just like most miniature stl files out there they are scaled for 28mm and would require a bit of "chunkyfing" to work well on 15mm scale. However, their terrain and vehicles would scale well enough. The U-boat is a staple of pulp, and their model would scale down to 15mm without much issue. You'd probably want to print the railings on a resin printer to be safe, but the u-boat itself would print just fine on an fdm printer.

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That's all the models that would work well just by scaling the 3d files down to 15mm I can think of right now. All the other models I have need a little work to work at this scale. 

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Bonus you need to really scale UP this one!

Skyfox3Ddesigns offers a free 1/350 Skycarrier Graf Zeppelin II! It's a huge model as it is, and it would need to be scaled up around 350% to work with 15mm figures, but if someone is crazy enough to attempt such huge project, it would make an awesome setpiece for a pulpy battle in the skies!

[FifteensAway]

fed,

I fear you may be right - my own searches haven't turned much up for 15 mm.  Was hoping a bit of the 'group mind' might reveal more.  You've put forth some interesting area to explore further.

[frd]

I really wish there was more 15mm stuff out there. I've been keeping tabs on the 3d printed side of the hobby for a while now, and I have only seen a handful of creators making stuff for smaller scales (sadly, none really suitable for pulp). However, I'd love to be proven wrong - if anyone knows of any sculptors who make models like that - do prove me wrong!

If anything, I have seen more creators going even bigger now, with 32mm becoming more widespread. Those models are packed with so much small detail that it not only would be difficult to scale down, but even difficult to paint at the scale it was designed for

Saying all that, for many of the pulpy models out there it's not that much work to tweak them to work at 15mm - so at least we have that option.

[Cat]

3D Print Terrrain buildings scale well. Their 28mm Napoleonic buildings are designed to go down to 15mm.  I've had friends print out a number of them at a squidged gaming scale (~10mm footprint but 15mm height), and they've come out fine.  They've also done smaller versions of a number of their sets designed for 6–12mm that will scale up fine to 15mm.
 
Their WW2 sets have some items that would be particularly pulpy for Euro settings — train sheds and stations, small harbour boats, and plenty of general buildings.
 
Their Arabic & African set has some nice large boats along with a goodly range of buildings.