First Structure

[Valkiera]

Greetings everyone,

I'd like to build a small, to start, but active medieval village. Been searching the web for some idea of dimensions and for the life of me, can't find much. What do you use for your average door opening and interior wall height? I can scale the rest of the building once I have an idea of how much space is needed to fit the 28/30mm miniatures.

Reading through a few WIPs, it looks like many use 20mm x 30mm/35mm for single doors and 40mm to 50mm for floor to ceiling height in an average room. Do these sound about right?

Any advice or tips are greatly appreciated.


Thank all,

Val

 

[Digganob]

I would love to help you Val but I make stuff more by feel then using silly measurements. Which also shows why I'm still an armature. One thought I would do is take a trip to your local hobby shop with a tape measure and siphon some measurements off scenery from there. That could get you headed in the right direction. Good luck.

 

[TBroadwater]

One thing I've tried before is finding an image of a wall with a window and door. I then take a moment scaling it digitally before printing it. Once its printed I can take a look at how the proportions hold up to the mini. You can then translate that to the other pieces you need.

 

[Valkiera]

Thanks for the ideas, I did make a trip to our local game shop. Not real helpful, the assembled items they had varied greatly, along with the figures they had. Room height was between 2" and 4", with some looking very out of place. That shop was more about playing and less about painting and terrain, as the standard response was "we just mainly play here". So I gave up and came here.

I'll have to go to the next town over, they have a couple shops too. Perhaps someone there is a terrain builder.

I've never been much of a player, I enjoyed the paining and building, most of my miniatures are the OLD D&D from the 80's and 90's. So I'm just stepping back into the arena, guess I should update to some of the modern miniatures too. :embarrassed:

Thanks again,
Val

 

[Digganob]

Are you trying to build your terrain/building to scale with the miniature?

 

[Valkiera]

Yes, but one I don't own. So I think my first step is to purchase a copy and work from that. It all started with a friend asking me to build one of the LotR buildings, then I thought it would be spiffy to create a small building for myself as practice before diving into a project for someone else. Since I haven't built anything for a few years, and I have never done a 100% scratch build of this type. I've done true 1/2 and 1/4 scale, but you have plans to work from.

I'll have to figure out which set it is her son is using, without giving away the surprise. It's for his B-day in Aug, so I have some time, but also not a lot of time when you consider what it takes to do one right.

 

[Digganob]

If you are doing it to scale of the miniature you can possibly do your measurements off the mini's height. Like say the mini is Joe Warrior, and he males are usually around the 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 feet tall, build up from there. Measure your door if its 7 ft tall base that measurement off your mini's height so if your mini is 6 ft and door frame is 7 ft you have a ft to add to the height of the mini. Hope that helps some.

 

[Wyrmypops]

Rule of thumb with 28mm scenery seems to have each level around a 3 inch height. A bit of variance makes more sense in fantasy terrain, they weren't using standardised cut blocks/girders and architectural plans.

 

[Valkiera]

True point Wyrmpops.

Thanks folks, this should give me a place to start, hope to share some photos in a few days of what I started.

 

[RuneBrush]

Personally buildings/vehicles at 28mm are never 'true scale' but normally slightly smaller which makes them more realistic. What type of building are you doing? If you've ever visited one of the recreated roundhouses, you'll know that you actually have to duck to go into the building (they also have sunken floors), so you'd want slightly smaller than a miniature for those

 

[Bloodhowl]

You mentioned this was for LoTR. There are a few articles on the interwebs that may help you get an idea for the scale. Here's a link to one of a Rohan House:
http://scottswargaming.blogspot.com/2008/12/lord-of-rings-terrain-rohan-house.html

Here's the plans from a GW article on building a long house:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070421094601/www.games-workshop.es/lotr/pdf/plantillas_rohan.pdf

If you google Lord of the rings terrain that should give you plenty of reference material from which to base your own construction.

 

[Digganob]

Can't wait to see it Val.