The Day Games Workshop Lost the 3D Printing War

for the past four years I've had a LoveHate relationship with 3D printing and the whole idea of 3D printing kind of sounds too good to be true just throw some magical goo into a printer and out pops any miniature you can imagine and to be fair for the longest time for me anyways it was too good to be true hence the aforementioned frustration but I finally found a printer that lives up to the hype so today I'm going to go through the tricks that I use to make what comes out of this look as good or better than this [Music] right up front let's make this clear I am a miniature painter first and foremost I really don't have any interest in digging deep into the science tweaking and experimentation that goes with the 3D printing hobby all I want is a printer that's easy to set up it works consistently and it produces Miniatures of the quality of the resin or plastic models I can buy in the store I guess when when I say it out loud it does kind of sound like I'm asking for a lot but it's what resin 3D printer companies have been telling us their products can do since they became popular a number of years ago and only now after years of trying all sorts of Brands learned all sorts of tricks that aren't widely shared and spent a lot of hours with my frozen 8K Sonic mini do I feel like that promise has finally come true so let's get into what I do to easily print awesome quality Minis and we'll paint one along the way and we're also going to discuss the final hurdle that if conquered will lead to the fall of traditional model making as we know it I've owned seven different resin 3D printers at this point and every time the startup is the same you take it out of the box and follow the Bare Bones instructions the print doesn't turn out for any number of reasons and you have to sink so many hours into trying to get the dang thing to just work like it said it was going to I just want a 3D printer to work like a toaster I take it out of the box and I just make toast and the only time a printer has ever done that that straight out of the box work how it's supposed to has been the Sonic 8K mini full transparency here this video is sponsored by Frozen and the reason why it is is because I reached out to them because this printer really changed the entire game for me and I wanted to work together with them to tell everyone about how I use it so if by the end of the video you wanted to check out any other products click on the link down in the video description below because that link lets them know that I sent you the number one thing that will frustrate you in sync hours and hours of your time into is dialing in the printer settings to get that perfect detailed model these settings ensure that your prints stick to the print plate and have consistent crisp high level of detail in your Miniatures I've made some slight tweaks to my 8k Sonic mini over the year or so that I've had it to really dial in the perfect looking miniature so I'm going to share those details down in the video description below so if you want to try out those settings yourself you sure can now before we go any further I want to share a couple of tips that really really have made my life as a 3D printer so much easier first thing I do is use a playing card to mix the resin in the vat prior to printing especially if the resin's been sitting there for a while the resin that's included with this printer doesn't separate like just about every other brand I've used but it's still a good habit plus while you're doing this you're able to check for any partially cured bits of resin that may have broken off and the vat and you can fish those out next I use a retractable razor blade scraper to remove the models from the printer plate it may not seem like much but honestly this tool is a godsend in 3D printing it makes it so much easier to pop off your models with this thing compared to the putty knives that come with 3D printers just come at the models with a slight angle like this over the print plate and it'll pop right off once you printed some models you're going to clean off the excess resin with isopropyl alcohol and this step was always really messy for me and it made me dread even using my printer that was until I picked up a wash and cure stick station with this thing I just throw my models in the basket turn it on for a couple of minutes and they come out clean you can even put the print plate face down right into the cleaner before you take the models off from here I just soak the models in hot water for a couple of minutes and then pull them off of their supports without the fear of breaking any of the fragile bits off of the models the final step before we sit down at the hobby desk is to cure our models and any UV light will work for this including the sun itself but a curing station will ensure that it will cure evenly across all the models you put in in just a few minutes it's nice that you don't need a Washington curing station to just get started in 3D printing but I found once I picked those up I was printing way more because all this extra steps after I've printed the models can kind of take a good bit of time if you don't have a machine that does all that work for you it's important to note that up to this point I have spent a bit more time on the creation of this model than if I would have just spent 50 bucks and bought one at a store but it only cost me about a dollar worth of resin now I will have a little bit of prep work to do here and that work is slightly different than a typical plastic model kit so let's go through how I approach it immediate win for 3D printing are there are no mold lines we will have these little bumps where the supports connect to the model how many and how big these bumps are veryy based on the model and how good of a job the company did placing the supports you can choose to ignore these little divots if you like to I like to clean them up because it doesn't take long at all but I also don't stress out if I've missed one or two the process I use is to start with little miniature files like these to sand them down and then come in with a nice high grit sandpaper either with regular sandpaper or my tried andr sanding sticks to smooth out the spot entirely sometimes I'll find that there are tiny little supports still attached from one part of the model to another if I find these I just grab my hobby knife and just pop them off if my print's in multiple pieces my go-to adhesive is Gorilla super glue gel this stuff will bond like crazy and and it's really thick I just put in a tiniest dot attach the two pieces and it's set for life most of the time multiple piece models will fit together perfectly but if there is ever a gap I really like to use this Mr hobby dissolved putty to really get in there and after it dries that Gap is erased now that our model is printed clean and assembled let's take a closer look at what we're dealing with now our dwarf here is a larger scale model than most Warhammer but even the tiniest details like the individual strands of his hair and the crisp edges of his scale mail are pretty much on par with any 40K model I could buy so does this mean that gamees Workshop is done for and the 3D printing is the future of miniature wargaming and painting as we know it not entirely at least not yet and the reason why actually has nothing to do with the technology of the printers this Frozen printer has shown me that is absolutely up to the task in the printing quality oh no the final hurdle are the models themselves and to that we have to look to to the sculptors don't get me wrong there are some sculptors out there making amazing models for 3D Prints but the vast majority of the best work being done in miniature sculpting is done for companies like Games Workshop and manufacturers that can produce their own resin casts to sell you at this point we've seen the likes of Duncan pachy and Louise leave Games Workshop to start their own Endeavors but we haven't seen any sculptors what would happen if some of the great sculptors of Games Workshop were to leave and start their own business making 3D print files that you could print at home and create all your armies for a fraction of the price now obviously they wouldn't go out on their own and use the Games Workshop IP to produce these Prints but who do you think makes the great aesthetic decisions that makes those iconic Miniatures of Games Workshop so amazing it's not senior leadership it's the art team so yeah all I'm saying is if that day were to ever come things would get interesting back to the task at hand the model I printed and I'm painting today is an adorable dwarf holding a puppy I'm guessing some of you might want to know where to get this model and others in the range so I'll put a link down to durgen paint Forge in the video description I often feel that I've got more freedom and experimenting and just having fun while painting a 3D print after all if I screw it up I could just print another one side note I've never actually reprinted a model because I screwed up the first one's paint job but just the idea that I could means so much it takes off so much weight on my shoulders because I'm not really worried about screwing up the 60 or $70 expensive plastic or resin [Music] kit one thing I've noticed with the models I've printed on the Sonic mini is that when I get to the painting stage I don't have those tiny layer lines that I always used to see on my old prints from old printers granted I choose to print at a very tiny layer height meaning that we get maximum detail at the expense of the prints taking longer to complete one of the best feelings I get in this hobby is that feeling like I'm stealing when I get to the painting and I realized that my primed model that I 3D printed is completely IND discernible from something that I didn't make myself and would have cost so much more the experiment I'm putting into practice today is working with a really strong warm light that lands on the important parts of the model and Fades away as we move towards the lower and back half of the model I'm doing this to help myself understand lighting and hopefully take some things away that I can improve on as a part of my painting one thing that I learned is how much a thin glaze of an orange between each layer really helps blend the colors while reinforcing that warmth of the light without much [Music] work remember earlier when I said that the last hurdle for 3D printing to conquer is the sculpting well once you get to the painting stage with some of these models that are created for 3D printing that's going to hit you right in the face so often sculpts intended to be 3D printed are way overdesigned too many details too many lines too much crap on top of crap this happens often times because these models are not sculpted with the painting process in mind painting a billion details isn't Fun it takes forever it becomes extremely confusing to recognize what I'm even looking at and the model doesn't have any sort of distinct aesthetic because it's so overdone think about it this way the most iconic Warhammer figure the Space Marine is at its core incredibly simplistic and yet it's still a ton of fun to paint why because even though it's simple it's not boring you can paint it a million different ways you can learn how to paint volumes because the shapes are easy to recognize and by making small changes among different units and poses you can keep things fresh as a designer without just slapping on more stuff I honestly think if more sculptors were miniature painters we'd have a lot cooler models with a lot less stuff all over them the good news is we're seeing more traditional sculptors like durgen paint Forge here offer their models as STL files as well so if you have a printer and you see awesome work being done make sure you support those sculptors so they can keep making things for us to print and paint at Home speaking of that if you know any amazing artists that do 3D sculpts for for us to print in miniature and then paint up put them down in the video description below because the more we can learn from each other about amazing artists the more we can support them and paint cool stuff back to the painting by starting the paint job with a warm Shadow from the front and a cool shadow from behind I don't need to stress about painting every little detail here things that go unpainted feel more like they have just fallen into Shadow sure if I wanted to spend a ton of time and paint every single detail on this model as best that I can I could but that isn't my focus of today's experiment I'm just seeing what looks good learning about light and moving on to the next part of the model that interests me and when this model is done for me today I won't feel bad that I didn't spend a 100 hours on it because I just printed it up and I can always find something else fun to print [Music] next [Music] thanks for hanging out with me today and talking 3D printing and painting those things in a way that's easy it's quick and it doesn't invest tons of my hours to just get to the fun part printing and painting and thanks to Frozen for being great Sports and partnering with me today but more importantly for making a great product that is constantly running down in my hobby room if you haven't already check out the link down in the video description for the printer the wash and cure station and the resin at some amazing prices and finally a big thank you to my patrons because of you I get to reinvest in the channel for things like 3D printers and hobby products to Tinker with and share my findings with you so if you want to join us over on the ninjan patreon and get some awesome rewards like access to my Discord server I'd love to have you in the links down the video description as well I'm going to be back here again real soon I've got a big project on the horizon and I want to bring you along for it but between now and then make sure you find time in your day to slay the gray

Channel: Ninjon

Views: 255,161

Keywords: warhammer, painting warhammer, painting warhammer 40k, painting space marines, painting age of sigmar, miniature painting, mini painting, mini painting 101, miniature painting tutorial, beginner miniature painting, army painting, games workshop, contrast paint, warhammer lore, squidmar miniatures, speed paint, 40k 10th edition, new warhammer, speed painting, eavy metal, 40k army, combat patrol, warhammer community, new 40k, 3d printing, phrozen, printing miniatures

Id: F4JkYUa292U

Length: 14min 22sec (862 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 27 2023