I'm thinking that if you did evert creature thar came along, that would be a lot of work, and you'd probably spend more time working on some of them than you would actually using the models, before banishing them to storage, unlikely to be used again. It's an obvious solution to only do some rather than all.
So, my question is, what proportion of creatures do you actually create? How do you decide on which ones are worth creating, and which ones can be dealt with in other ways?
If there are loads of a particular type, how many will you actually create? How do you deal with the others?
And how do you deal with the creatures that you haven't actually created? Does it stick out that some are not actual miniatures, or is it just part and parcel?
As a related but not really directly relevant question, how long do you spend on each miniature when you create them?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
By create, do you mean paint or actually sculpting your own?
I guess whatever applies to you. Personally, I'm going to be 3D printing STLs that other people have made (/HeroForge) and then painting...but if you make them from scratch or buy the miniatures (prepainted or painted yourself) or whatever in between, any input is appreciated. The term "create" is intended to be open ended.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
By create, do you mean paint or actually sculpting your own?
I guess whatever applies to you. Personally, I'm going to be 3D printing STLs that other people have made (/HeroForge) and then painting...but if you make them from scratch or buy the miniatures or whatever in between, any input is appreciated. The term "create" is intended to be open ended.
Oh, sorry. I don't print miniatures myself, just dungeon tiles, ships and other terrain. When I buy hero forge (I do have an addiction to that site) I have them print them. I do spend about 6 hours a week painting miniatures though. Mostly Reaper or Wizkids miniatures.
You can get batches of plastic, pre-painted minis for relatively cheap. They can fill in for most of what you need: packs of goblins, town guards, giants, wolves, etc. Then you use custom ones for PCs (well, players should provide their own) or important, recurring NPCs.
Also, be careful, mini painting can become its own time consuming sub-hobby. It gets addictive for some people.
I broadly split minis into two categories; generic and set piece
Generic minis are small, medium, and sometimes large creatures that come up often. For stuff like gnolls, goblins, bandits, etc I have Heroforge Pro+ which gives a free themed pack of 5 stls each month. I pay a friend to print these off and they serve as a good batch of minis to draw from. I'll also buy minis from the Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures range, such as beholders and gelatinous cubes
Set piece minis are huge and bigger creatures that I print on my FDM printer. The quality doesn't match resin prints, but it's cheap for me to do. I have fewer of these and only one of each (unless I need multiples for a specific reason). I have a backlog to paint consisting of Tiamat, the tarrasque, a purple worm, and a roc. Also I have a bunch of paints.
When it comes to painting, I have an airbrush with two different guns; a vacuum fed brush for coating large areas, and a gravity fed brush fine detail. I use this for priming, pre-shading, and covering large areas of colour and blending on larger miniatures. I then use army painter paints for detail and painting smaller miniatures. For the generic minis, I'm going to be using army painter speed paints, which do all the shading for you which will make them much quicker to paint en mass.
Ultimately I try and make sure everything I buy and paint looks cool on display, so even if I don't ever use it, it's nice to look at.
I'm slowly trying to get myself back into sculpting, and finding myself very rusty! I probably should plan out what I make to match what creatures I will need for my games - so far I've made a Galeb Dhur, a Roper, a Mimic, and some of a homebrew giant monster. Thus far I've only run the giant monster, and the model was not anywhere close to being finished!
So much of my stuff is homebrew, I should probably invest in a 3d printer and learn how to sculpt digitally so I can make some minis for them!
I'm slowly trying to get myself back into sculpting, and finding myself very rusty! I probably should plan out what I make to match what creatures I will need for my games - so far I've made a Galeb Dhur, a Roper, a Mimic, and some of a homebrew giant monster. Thus far I've only run the giant monster, and the model was not anywhere close to being finished!
So much of my stuff is homebrew, I should probably invest in a 3d printer and learn how to sculpt digitally so I can make some minis for them!
3D modelling was always my weakest area at uni (using 3DS Max), so when I came back to it using blender, I didn't have high hopes. However, things have vastly improved not just in terms of the accessibility of the tools, but also the availability of information. So yeah, I'd whole heartedly recommend at least giving 3d modelling a shot! And 3d printers aren't that expensive, relatively speaking.
I'm slowly trying to get myself back into sculpting, and finding myself very rusty! I probably should plan out what I make to match what creatures I will need for my games - so far I've made a Galeb Dhur, a Roper, a Mimic, and some of a homebrew giant monster. Thus far I've only run the giant monster, and the model was not anywhere close to being finished!
So much of my stuff is homebrew, I should probably invest in a 3d printer and learn how to sculpt digitally so I can make some minis for them!
3D modelling was always my weakest area at uni (using 3DS Max), so when I came back to it using blender, I didn't have high hopes. However, things have vastly improved not just in terms of the accessibility of the tools, but also the availability of information. So yeah, I'd whole heartedly recommend at least giving 3d modelling a shot! And 3d printers aren't that expensive, relatively speaking.
Awesome, thanks for the encouragement! I used to have Blender on my PC, I will have a look and see how many hundreds of updates it needs to work now...
I'm slowly trying to get myself back into sculpting, and finding myself very rusty! I probably should plan out what I make to match what creatures I will need for my games - so far I've made a Galeb Dhur, a Roper, a Mimic, and some of a homebrew giant monster. Thus far I've only run the giant monster, and the model was not anywhere close to being finished!
So much of my stuff is homebrew, I should probably invest in a 3d printer and learn how to sculpt digitally so I can make some minis for them!
3D modelling was always my weakest area at uni (using 3DS Max), so when I came back to it using blender, I didn't have high hopes. However, things have vastly improved not just in terms of the accessibility of the tools, but also the availability of information. So yeah, I'd whole heartedly recommend at least giving 3d modelling a shot! And 3d printers aren't that expensive, relatively speaking.
Awesome, thanks for the encouragement! I used to have Blender on my PC, I will have a look and see how many hundreds of updates it needs to work now...
You don't update Blender (I was surprised to find), rather you have to download and instal the latest client, which will pull over all your presets from your current client.
Here are some 'waystones' I made with almost no experience sculpting or modelling bar what I used to have about 15 years ago at uni
Awesome, I'll definitely look into re-downloading it and getting myself through some tutorials! I seem to recall that all I ever managed was to make a monkey head (pregenerated) and then turn it to liquid. I've never spent any real time 3d sculpting - it should be a fun challenge!
Here are some 'waystones' I made with almost no experience sculpting or modelling bar what I used to have about 15 years ago at uni.
How easy do you think it would be for someone with basically no modelling experience to learn how to model a miniature without a course? I'm reasonably good with computers and even done a bit of coding, but I've not used blender and only a tad of CAD.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Here are some 'waystones' I made with almost no experience sculpting or modelling bar what I used to have about 15 years ago at uni.
How easy do you think it would be for someone with basically no modelling experience to learn how to model a miniature without a course? I'm reasonably good with computers and even done a bit of coding, but I've not used blender and only a tad of CAD.
Easy depends on what you consider difficult. I wouldn't say easy. Simple yes. Easy - maybe not. It takes time and effort. That being said,
You can teach yourself almost anything these days. To be a plumber, electrician, coding, and certainly software. I'm self taught and nearly fluent (I work professionally with it but still have a lot to learn) the following:
Adobe Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, InDesign, Affinity Publisher, and Wordpress. Hours and hours of watching tutorials on YouTube (often on repeat), and even more hours of clicking on buttons and seeing what happens. I'm 100% certain you can teach yourself how to model in any 3d software.
Here are some 'waystones' I made with almost no experience sculpting or modelling bar what I used to have about 15 years ago at uni.
How easy do you think it would be for someone with basically no modelling experience to learn how to model a miniature without a course? I'm reasonably good with computers and even done a bit of coding, but I've not used blender and only a tad of CAD.
There are a lot of good youtube tutorials out there for learning Blender. While I'm vaguely familiar with 3d modelling, I had no blender experience and honestly couldn't remember anything I'd learned previously; I certainly had never done any sculpting in blender.
By searching on youtube, I was able to find some very good, very clear tutorials that guided me through the process. If you can find your way around a computer, then I think it'd be fairly accessible.
I approach it the same as Davyd: I have a fairly large "stable" of minis for day-to-day stuff and then I will often sculpt or build monsters for particular set pieces.
One other good source of minis is the second-hand market - Craigslist or eBay or any of those. You can sometimes get someone's whole collection for cheaper than even plastic minis and they often have a lot of love and care put into them already. The people I have bought from were really happy that they were going to be put to good use again.
I have not done any 3D printing yet, but I love working with wire and kneadatite (sculpting epoxy). I also modify/cannibalize existing minis to make them into something else. For instance, I used a skeletal dragon as a base for a zombie dragon. But it's a big time investment so you can't do it for every session.
I only "make" Miniatures when I need to solidify an image of the character I have in mind...otherwise I just roll with something already preset in the miniatures that our group owns
I generally only make the PC I am playing, and if the party agrees, I make a second one to give the DM if the party wants to make a gift of the minis to the DM.
As a DM, I only make (buy and paint) the major iconic figures in the game. These are typically the major NPC that grants a quest or has some great influence over the party.
I worry that with only a small push I could get real crazy buying and painting minis. I already painted all the pieces in my Axis and Allies set.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
It's a very small percentage of ppl that manufacture minis to use in their games. I bought 3 of the D&D board game sets and that includes several of the common Monster types. I have several of the fancy miniatures of epic creatures which I may never use, but a good miniature doubles as a decoration, and if I meet some DMs that want to borrow them, I don't mind sharing. I play at my local shop and there's several tables present.
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How often do you do it?
I'm thinking that if you did evert creature thar came along, that would be a lot of work, and you'd probably spend more time working on some of them than you would actually using the models, before banishing them to storage, unlikely to be used again. It's an obvious solution to only do some rather than all.
So, my question is, what proportion of creatures do you actually create? How do you decide on which ones are worth creating, and which ones can be dealt with in other ways?
If there are loads of a particular type, how many will you actually create? How do you deal with the others?
And how do you deal with the creatures that you haven't actually created? Does it stick out that some are not actual miniatures, or is it just part and parcel?
As a related but not really directly relevant question, how long do you spend on each miniature when you create them?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
By create, do you mean paint or actually sculpting your own?
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I guess whatever applies to you. Personally, I'm going to be 3D printing STLs that other people have made (/HeroForge) and then painting...but if you make them from scratch or buy the miniatures (prepainted or painted yourself) or whatever in between, any input is appreciated. The term "create" is intended to be open ended.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Oh, sorry. I don't print miniatures myself, just dungeon tiles, ships and other terrain. When I buy hero forge (I do have an addiction to that site) I have them print them. I do spend about 6 hours a week painting miniatures though. Mostly Reaper or Wizkids miniatures.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
You can get batches of plastic, pre-painted minis for relatively cheap. They can fill in for most of what you need: packs of goblins, town guards, giants, wolves, etc. Then you use custom ones for PCs (well, players should provide their own) or important, recurring NPCs.
Also, be careful, mini painting can become its own time consuming sub-hobby. It gets addictive for some people.
I broadly split minis into two categories; generic and set piece
Generic minis are small, medium, and sometimes large creatures that come up often. For stuff like gnolls, goblins, bandits, etc I have Heroforge Pro+ which gives a free themed pack of 5 stls each month. I pay a friend to print these off and they serve as a good batch of minis to draw from. I'll also buy minis from the Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures range, such as beholders and gelatinous cubes
Set piece minis are huge and bigger creatures that I print on my FDM printer. The quality doesn't match resin prints, but it's cheap for me to do. I have fewer of these and only one of each (unless I need multiples for a specific reason). I have a backlog to paint consisting of Tiamat, the tarrasque, a purple worm, and a roc. Also I have a bunch of paints.
When it comes to painting, I have an airbrush with two different guns; a vacuum fed brush for coating large areas, and a gravity fed brush fine detail. I use this for priming, pre-shading, and covering large areas of colour and blending on larger miniatures. I then use army painter paints for detail and painting smaller miniatures. For the generic minis, I'm going to be using army painter speed paints, which do all the shading for you which will make them much quicker to paint en mass.
Ultimately I try and make sure everything I buy and paint looks cool on display, so even if I don't ever use it, it's nice to look at.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I'm slowly trying to get myself back into sculpting, and finding myself very rusty! I probably should plan out what I make to match what creatures I will need for my games - so far I've made a Galeb Dhur, a Roper, a Mimic, and some of a homebrew giant monster. Thus far I've only run the giant monster, and the model was not anywhere close to being finished!
So much of my stuff is homebrew, I should probably invest in a 3d printer and learn how to sculpt digitally so I can make some minis for them!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
3D modelling was always my weakest area at uni (using 3DS Max), so when I came back to it using blender, I didn't have high hopes. However, things have vastly improved not just in terms of the accessibility of the tools, but also the availability of information. So yeah, I'd whole heartedly recommend at least giving 3d modelling a shot! And 3d printers aren't that expensive, relatively speaking.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Awesome, thanks for the encouragement! I used to have Blender on my PC, I will have a look and see how many hundreds of updates it needs to work now...
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
You don't update Blender (I was surprised to find), rather you have to download and instal the latest client, which will pull over all your presets from your current client.
Here are some 'waystones' I made with almost no experience sculpting or modelling bar what I used to have about 15 years ago at uni
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Awesome, I'll definitely look into re-downloading it and getting myself through some tutorials! I seem to recall that all I ever managed was to make a monkey head (pregenerated) and then turn it to liquid. I've never spent any real time 3d sculpting - it should be a fun challenge!
-Edit: and here is that magnificent creation XD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NSWv2LWHbw
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
How easy do you think it would be for someone with basically no modelling experience to learn how to model a miniature without a course? I'm reasonably good with computers and even done a bit of coding, but I've not used blender and only a tad of CAD.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Easy depends on what you consider difficult. I wouldn't say easy. Simple yes. Easy - maybe not. It takes time and effort. That being said,
You can teach yourself almost anything these days. To be a plumber, electrician, coding, and certainly software. I'm self taught and nearly fluent (I work professionally with it but still have a lot to learn) the following:
Adobe Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, InDesign, Affinity Publisher, and Wordpress. Hours and hours of watching tutorials on YouTube (often on repeat), and even more hours of clicking on buttons and seeing what happens. I'm 100% certain you can teach yourself how to model in any 3d software.
All things Lich - DM tips, tricks, and other creative shenanigans
There are a lot of good youtube tutorials out there for learning Blender. While I'm vaguely familiar with 3d modelling, I had no blender experience and honestly couldn't remember anything I'd learned previously; I certainly had never done any sculpting in blender.
By searching on youtube, I was able to find some very good, very clear tutorials that guided me through the process. If you can find your way around a computer, then I think it'd be fairly accessible.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I approach it the same as Davyd: I have a fairly large "stable" of minis for day-to-day stuff and then I will often sculpt or build monsters for particular set pieces.
One other good source of minis is the second-hand market - Craigslist or eBay or any of those. You can sometimes get someone's whole collection for cheaper than even plastic minis and they often have a lot of love and care put into them already. The people I have bought from were really happy that they were going to be put to good use again.
I have not done any 3D printing yet, but I love working with wire and kneadatite (sculpting epoxy). I also modify/cannibalize existing minis to make them into something else. For instance, I used a skeletal dragon as a base for a zombie dragon. But it's a big time investment so you can't do it for every session.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I only "make" Miniatures when I need to solidify an image of the character I have in mind...otherwise I just roll with something already preset in the miniatures that our group owns
I generally only make the PC I am playing, and if the party agrees, I make a second one to give the DM if the party wants to make a gift of the minis to the DM.
As a DM, I only make (buy and paint) the major iconic figures in the game. These are typically the major NPC that grants a quest or has some great influence over the party.
I worry that with only a small push I could get real crazy buying and painting minis. I already painted all the pieces in my Axis and Allies set.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
It's a very small percentage of ppl that manufacture minis to use in their games. I bought 3 of the D&D board game sets and that includes several of the common Monster types. I have several of the fancy miniatures of epic creatures which I may never use, but a good miniature doubles as a decoration, and if I meet some DMs that want to borrow them, I don't mind sharing. I play at my local shop and there's several tables present.