Open gaming mini license

[limburger 21708xp 0]

@phaidknott unless those sculptors are already getting paid royalties for every sculpt for everyone that is manufactured I’d say nothing will change. Software industry is similar … the average grunt won’t see things change because they weren’t getting any royalties anyway.

The top tier talent has nothing to fear as people are going to want their products and they probably want to get them as close to the source as possible. Heck, all they need to do is find a way to provide something unique (maybe signed and hand cast from a 3D printed mold in unique/distinct materials?).

It’s kind of like the music industry. They simply need to produce more content and form a cult of personality if they want to stay relevant, because the barrier to entry is going to get lowered.

There’d be no way in heck to compete when your output is just a bunch of barrels or something else non-descript that has no real unique character of its own (like rank&file troops or vehicles).
There is a market for unique and distinct sculpts with character.

It all depends on wether or not the industry is going to be stupid like the industries who continue to try to force restrictions on sale and use of digital content. It may depend on what the consumer wants, but they rarely get to say anything as the masses vote for the cheapest product of the lowest quality and rarely care about who made it under what circumstances.

[uptrebor 2125xp 0]

One other area that I have used personally…..get someone else to print the files/miniatures for you…various options available…I chose to use a business listed on Etsy.uk and was very impressed with the quality of the products received.

so even if 3D printing doesn’t sound like it for you the option to have minis printed that you like or want.

There is the risk that the prints don’t meet your expectations, but using reviewed and recommended services will lessen the risk.

I would like to also recommend the business ,person that I used .

Mikes bits …….found on Etsy.uk

Great quality prints at affordable prices compared to other services or users.

[onlyonepinman 18062xp 0]

We are a long, long way off home 3D printing supplanting purchasing miniatures. The technology, although not prohibitively expensive is still not “plug and play” anf it also carries some additional overheads, especially resin printers that require a lot of cleanup and generally speaking involves handing and use of some fairly nasty substances.    In order to become the default way of buying miniatures it needs to be more convenient than buying them.  Therefor I propose that 3D printing needs to achieve the following standard before it stands a chance of being the goto way of obtaining miniatures:

1) You supply the files to the printer directly from a computer without needing to do any prep work

2) Every file must print first time nearly every time

3) Miniatures must have zero post print cleanup, or if they have any it must be minimal and be achievable with easy to obtain substances

4) The unit must require minimal upkeep in terms of print medium and cleaning

Whilst the technology is generally getting better there aren’t actually that many additional uses for home 3D printing beyond miniatures so there isn’t a great deal of commercial incentive in undertaking the R&D required to achieve the standard I described above.   I am not saying it will never get there at all but that journey will be slow because of the lack of other uses for the technology.

There are a few other issues that I also think need to be overcome, such as the quality of the resin itself. A 1kg bottle of standard Elegoo Grey is £40 here in the UK. That £40 doesn’t really go as far as you might think, especially if you get a few failures. It really starts to get pricey if you want to print anything sizeable.  I recently printed a tank from Antenociti’s workshop that used the best part of half a bottle, so that cost about £20, which is not a noticeable saving over buying a resin cast vehicle of a similar size. The resin is also incredibly brittle and small components such as swords and spears are liable to snap even under gentle pressure such as a paint brush.  I have seen reviews of other resins that have more flex in them and so are more robust however they’re also almost twice the price

Don’t get me wrong, IFL my resin printer and as someone who loves Cyberpunk, it has really enabled that genre of miniatures in a big, big way. I don’t think I could go back to not having one. However I cannot honestly say that 3D printing is an easy process. It’s quite labour intensive and messy.

[torros 23816xp 0]

@onlyonepinman I add that being able  to print in a substance that doesn’t need to be cured like resin who be a big step forward. It may already exist of course

[onlyonepinman 18062xp 1]

@torros in theory, if they can meet the standards I listed, the material itself wouldn’t be a problem. In short you should be able to put in a cartridge, much like a normal printer, press a button on your PC and in a couple if hours out pops a miniature, completely cured and cleaned. And much like a normal printer, the contents of the 3D printer cartridge should be totally irrelevant to the user.  The 3D printer needs to completely separate the user from the materials and process required to actually create the model.  When 3D printers can do that, then GW might need to start paying attention. However I suspect GW are already paying attention and will start acting accordingly as technology starts to approach that standard.

[limburger 21708xp 0]

GW had better be paying attention. If only to see if there’s anything that would make it work for their customer base/profit margin.

The contents of Inktjet cartridges are irrelevant to the user, but the industry still insists on scaring people into buying only their variants (with all sorts of consumer hostile features baked into the systems). I really hope 3D printing doesn’t head in that direction as well.

Not having an use-case outside of the miniature hobby for consumers really is the biggest thing. OTOH … it might be just the thing for a new force inside this hobby to specialize in creating an ecosystem that would work as advertised simply because of the restrictions that allows for.

[onlyonepinman 18062xp 0]

@limburger that’s pretty much the only direction it can take for it to replace buying store bought miniatures.  It has to be easy; users want to be able to just type in a printer brand or model number and be told “this is the thing you need”.  Consumer Hostile features also bring with them a high degree of convenience.  You might find that there are several different standards around which most printers are built, you may find some manufacturers go with their own bespoke cartridge design or both of these might be true. You may also find 3rd parties sell off-brand variants.

 

The games/miniatures industry isn’t big enough, or rather doesn’t have enough big players with sufficient collateral to develop the technology. In order for it to get to the level it needs, someone needs to find more use cases in order to make it worthwhile investing the money required to fund all the product development.

[maledrakhParticipant 11996xp 0]

My 2 cents:

I am a self-professed whale when it comes to buying miniatures, and have a far too large collection of minis I will never get around to painting. I can’t seem to stop buying minis.

However; after I bought my resin 3D-printer and have successfully printed off a few dozen excellent minis on it, I have lost almost all interest in purchasing physical minis, be it in online shops or through kickstarters. The level of detail and general quality of the mini is really not that far from boutique resin, depending on the design of course. There are alot of really talented designers out there. (Also, it lowers the bar / intimidation levels for painting, as I can experiment more on “expensive” minis. If I screw up, I can always just print off another one.)

Instead all that expenditure has moved to .stl-based digital content kickstarters and patreons instead, my printer is happily printing away as I write this.

I have seen several other miniature enthusiasts already state similar views on other forums.

This means in practice that customer retention -especially the long standing big spenders-  has recently become significantly more difficult for the physical minis companies.

 

 

[blinky465 17028xp 0]

I’m with @maledrakh – my resin printer has completely changed my whole outlook on the hobby. From a personal point of view, miniatures are no longer “precious” – they can be disposable, meaning I can be “fearless” when painting. It’s made me enjoy painting miniatures again (after many, many years of just watching from the sidelines).

I too have no interest in buying physical minis any more (I was never the most voracious buyer, but even I have a good few hundred pieces of lead and plastic knocking around that will probably never see a paintbrush). But I’m more than happy to stick 6-8 on a plate and print them off and paint them over the course of a week.

Being able to “digitally kitbash” is another benefit of swapping physical for digital models. But for me, it’s the immediacy and the repeatability that knocks bits of lead and plastic into a cocked hat.

Like @maledrakh my “pocket money” now goes on .stl files. And it’s money that probably wouldn’t have gone on physical models anyway – £7-£8 for a dozen .stls which can be printed multiple times looks like good value to me. £5-£8 for a single mini? Nah. I’m now regularly spending £30-£50 a month just on minis (before I got my printer, I’d probably spend that in a whole year). My spend on minis has gone through the roof – yet it feels like I’m spending relatively little, but getting *loads* of minis to paint every month (plus the option to print multiple copies for pennies).

I still relate it to the music industry.

Yes, there are people who still boast about buying vinyl and CDs and niche releases; but the fast delivery mechanism (and relatively cheap price) of downloadable/streaming music is how *most* people get their music now. I’m still convinced that – as more people “take the plunge” and invest in a 3d printer, it’ll lead to more people (like me) not only switching to .stl but *increasing* their spend on digital models.

GW can only ignore it for so long. It may take the best part of a decade (personally, I don’t think it’ll be quite that long – given how resin printing was relatively niche when I got mine, it already feels “mainstream” within the hobby) but I still reckon – as a publicly listed corporation – they won’t be allowed to ignore an ever-increasing market forever.

 

 

[onlyonepinman 18062xp 0]

I also have 3D printer – two in fact, one SLA one FDM – and they are amazing. However they hasn’t, and probably won’t, replace purchasing miniatures entirely for me.  I find it really useful because I can almost have any miniature I like – there’s a huge market of STL files.

There’s still a cost associated with it that needs to be taken into account – time. The prep work and clean up is significant, the print times themselves are not insignificant;  printing small numbers of miniatures is all well and good but honestly would I want to print an army? No way.  If you print a multi part model you still have the assembly time on top of that too.  If you want to print anything large like a monster or a dragon then you really need an FDM printer and they are much more temperamental.  You can print them in resin but it can start to get a bit pricey

There’s also a learning curve involved, especially around the slicing software which means you have to have an interest in the technology itself in order to really get into it.  I still think it’s a very long way off becoming a disruptive technology in the miniatures market.  I certainly haven’t stopped buying from any of the companies I used to buy from and currently have no plans to do so.  I know a couple of people who have but they were only buying for RPGs, not miniature wargames

[horati0nosebl0wer 19649xp 0]

I think that there is a means of doing laser printing in powder that avoids the issue of resin. I learned a little about it from working at an operation that put liners into industrial piping. The issue would be scale of operations and cost as generally those parts were run for aerospace orders creating airducts, special medical orders and engineering equipment. The only issue is the staff needing to wear the environment suits and masking up in order not to breathe in the powder or track it on their clothing but with the tech used for fumes around resin and the cleaning of loose particles it’d be easy for home use. As far as I saw the issue with supports is eliminated as the powder not hit by laser fusion acts as solid (powder) encasement. With more of the fear removed from the material standpoint I think that more people would jump in on the creation aspect. The only issue would be the powdered plastics needed. That might be interesting for better recycling as I had a friend who worked in a plastics recycling facility that recieved separated material by composition and shipped then back out again for reuse.

We aren’t afraid of plastics and a different form would just be sitting around the hobby den like plaster for model train terraniacs. This might be a branch off into material exploration as companies like Reaper did in switching some business from metals.

[timchubbKeymaster 3166xp 0]

Interesting thread as usual i am late to the party…

Few thoughts:

1. GW (Or any one with their own universe) will NEVER offer STL’s unless they shutter there manufacturing business, it makes no sense at all from a business point of view, the whole industry relies on premium luxury good mentality, they would never give the keys to their IP’s to the world the profit margin is none existant when it relies on an honour system, as it would be viewed as opening the doors to the recasters, as soon as one STL is sold, its available for free, if they put drm on it, then its a speed bump but utterly ineffective, and would only work on certain models of printers which supported the drm. All you would need to do is data log the print session over usb, and that’s pretty trivial with an off the shelf usb data logger, in a hobby (3d printing) rife with boffins in sheds, dicking about with raspberry pi’s, if the system did the drm on the printer it self, then you would just data log the impulses to the steppers and reverse engineer the STL from that (effort, but not that hard, you could probably co-opt the design checker in autocad to do the bulk of the work)

   Also it would be a rights nightmare so lawyers, nonsense, chapterhouse 2.0, divide by 0 error, the board would never even entertain it after every none copyrightable word had been changed, otherwise we would still have eldar/dark eldar, imperial guard and the old world (i will never believe that it was the rules, or even dwindling sales that prompted that change but the use of orc, dwarf, elf more than anything else)… thats the cold hard truth of reality smashing against the dream im afraid.

2. I have been dicking about with home/diy cnc since the early 2000’s its getting better but i just dont think it will ever become a ubiquitous tool in peoples homes, but printing services will fill this niche, but then adds costs and delay to the process
3. I do think there will be a halfway house solution though, sprues of cheap styrene armatures which you print the accessories for
4. The real kicker from a practical point of view is a lack of clear standards for printing capacity and capabilities, for it to work in a mass market ALL 3d printers would need a standard like paper sizes i.e. A4/US Legal, otherwise its pot luck if you have the capacity to print anything larger without modifications to the design
5. In order to get 3d printing suitable for mass adoption it would require giving up most of what makes hobby 3d printing and CNC fun for me and instead just buy into annother money printing scam for the usual printer manufacturers, i enjoy the freedom currently i have and wouldnt trade it for the pricefixed mess home/office dead tree printing is, basically i think that the promise of 3d printing would be forever limited and held back by the likes of HP/Cannon/Lenovo if they define a standard and bring an affordable printer to market subsidesed by the refills (ever wondered why the ink refills costs 2/3’s of what you paid for the printer [im assuming £30 tesco/pc world/argos “special” offer here]…)

Makes me feel like Moulder “I want to believe”, just think it will be like linux on the desktop [OSX does not count nor does android, the kernels are sufficiently different not to be linux]v(as much as i would love it to be my primary environment, its always been my secondary OS on my PC but thats a different story mainly crappy hardware dongles various FPGA and PLC compilers demand), works great if you put the effort in but will never gain the mass adoption outside of technical circles, would love it if i get proved wrong but i just dont think it will ever gain enough traction to become more than a niche in a niche

[limburger 21708xp 0]

Part of what I like in plastic minis is the assembly proces, because it’s like a little 3D puzzle (with instructions).

As such I kind of doubt I’d stop buying plastic, but then it would depend if the stuff I want is or isn’t available as STL (it probably is, I just haven’t looked). It simply is time vs convenience really.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a 3rd party a la CD Project/GoG would appear that would once more provide proof that quality service and consistent content will keep people buying product that could have been acquired through less legit means. It would have to be a true believer in the anti-DRM / copy-left style of thinking though, which means there’s no way GW would be the one to do it.

@timchubb I think for all intents and purposes the dominant manufacturer is going to set that standard for 3D printing. At least I’ve noticed that the few kickstarters that did STL were already focussing on one of the popular resin 3d printers (I think the Photon one). So in theory that will resolve itself.  Kind of like how mobile apps are bout iPhone and Android, with very few platform exclusives.

3D printing may be like Linux for the hobby. It may be just a bit too fiddly and geeky for folks who just want to play tabletop games. It probably will be more a matter of marketing than technical expertise that decides the fate.

[onlyonepinman 18062xp 1]

@timchubb all those things could be overcome if there was a commercial demand for them. It’s the demand that’s lacking. Someone would need to find a reason for people to have one in their house, if the only reason is to print miniatures the market will remain relatively small.

I don’t know whether GW would ever make the switch to a purely digital format, it’s really hard to predict the effects that disruptive technologies might have, it would be driven by the extent to which the technology disrupts. However, the conditions required for it happen even hypothetically, are many years away I think.

Now, if someone somehow decides that the future of kitchen items is 3D printed knives, forks and utensils (literally just pulling ideas out of my arse here) for or something like that then you might see a rapid improvement in the technology because suddenly everyone would want or eventually even need a 3D printer. But without that impetus the rate at which the technology will advance will be relatively slow and will likely just ride on the coat tails of other industrial uses, a couple of years behind and GW are safe.

 

It’s still pretty good fun though

[timchubbKeymaster 3166xp 0]

@onlyonepinman the commercial demand argument doesn’t stack up though, the problem with 3d printing conversations is that you have them with people who have seen light, and are either on the upwards slope of the learning curve or at the level where you have more success than fail so it all gets a bit echo chambery and objectivly inspite of nigh on 20 years of effort in bringing this to home markets there has been very little improvements over the basic reprap extruder design nor meaningful sustained growth in user base (hence my comparison to Linux on the desktop) , with the biggest change being lower cost photo resin solutions entering the market. The biggest changes have been the rise of modules and Chinese clones rather than scouring the rs catalog(s) for parts and broken printers.

As I said I would love the dream to come true, but I don’t think we will see it as expected, much more likely is that we will see local fabs popping up on highstreets like vape shops did, offering local manufacturing on kit beyond what is reasonable to call prosumer

And for mass adoption something would have to give, much the same way that record companies didn’t offer print at home artwork and labels to stick on a cdr, companies will never give there ip away like that, without whole sale international changes to copyright and patent law it’s unworkable and even then the business model would be more akin to paetrons virtual busking jar than a profit loss based business eg doesn’t scale past a handful of people. Fine for cottage industry, wouldn’t want to rely on that if I had employees.

Great hobby though I just don’t buy into the hype

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