New Resources, to wit: Hero Forge

Since the last incarnation of the forum things have changed. 3D printing has moved from an expensive nerd hobby to something anyone can get into. Services that provide this or meshes to print are common.

I’m going to point out Hero Forge. I am not paid by them, quite the contrary, They have a lot of my money. I currently have 40+ of the color printed miniatures, all of characters from my past campaigns or current ones.

It is true you can’t get everything, but the number of options increases monthly. For some one that once glued and pinned pieces of lead together to get just the right mini, this is a godsend. I’m getting no younger painting is hard.

I’m going to wholeheartedly endorse this service for making just the right mini for your character. It still lacks in the supers department, they need more modern dress options, and they still do not have horse people (Help me out. Ask for it.)

Limitations stated, I love it and will continue to drop too much money on little plastic toys.

PS: They are resin printed and ARE fragile, treat them like pewter.

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I’ve used them once for a mini as I rarely play rpgs that use minis. Shipping to the Antipodes is of course always an issue. I mostly use them for screen captures for images of characters. Most recently for the game “A Little Magic” a friend ran at the Phenomenon convention earlier this year.

That said though I’ve since moved on to various AI sources for rpg characters and art.

In the long run it’s cheaper to buy your own 3D resin printer and make them yourself. There are thousands of creators out there for any genre you want. If something isn’t to your liking then you can hire an artist to make the miniatures you want.

As for 3D printers, I really enjoyed using my Elegoo Mars 2. When I can afford it I want to get an Elegoo Jupiter.

For the resin, I recommend the Water Washable since it’s cheaper. For disposal of the water you just leave the lid off your dump bucket off a bit to let it evaporate. Once it’s evaporated just take the lid off and let UV light shine in to cure the resin that’s left.

My eyes are not up to painting anymore. And considering the time it takes to do a good job they are worth. Of course YMMV.

You can hire people to paint for ya bud.

You cna hire them to paint for you. It will cost more that $20 a figure.

Well I’m only offering you a better solution where you get the miniatures your want at a price you like. It requires a bit of work. Hero Forge is okay, but if you want say all of the monsters in the AD&D 2E Monstrous Compendium then you’ll have to print them yourself.

Also, you can scale the miniatures to the size you want with Chitubox or in Lychee slicing software. You are not constrained to the scale that Hero Forge sells. If you want to play your game with 34mm or 54mm figures you can. You just have to be willing to pay for the resin to do it. I’m fairly certain that with our bad eyesight that we can easily paint 34mm-54mm scale minis. :wink:

Just a heads up, READ THE FINE PRINT before you use Hero Forge.
Hero Forge: TOS from the Abyss

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I’ve only bought a few from Heroforge, but the results have always been excellent, and I’ve composed a couple more just for screencap-portraits, for online and for paper character sheets (where else can you get an Eladrin with whip & shield for 4e Dark Sun, ha!). I’ve recently got back into painting, though, and growing curious about 3d printing, and there’s an impressive number of people coming out with printable files lately, so who knows what’s next?

Home multi color printers? I have a Mars 2 downstairs, woefully under used.