I recently bought five orc figures to print on my 3D printer from Dragon Lock, so I figured I might as well add to my WIP as I paint one of them. I picked the one I though looked the best, and would print the best.
The printer I've got is a Dremel PLA printer, and I've been using the default software that came with the machine. They've since partnered with Auto Desk's Print Studio to add the ability to do supports, repairs and that sort of thing.
Aside: I've been playing around with it while writing this post, and found a rather unusual thing happened. Print Studio had an "optimize rotation" button, which, being shiny and candy-like, I pressed. It put the orc snout down, and touching the bed in several spots. That's... an interesting idea of how to print it. Might do that just to compare. It might actually print better.
The settings I used for it are below. It's a pretty basic printer, and I've done some dungeon terrain from their Kickstarter back at some point. I've also printed up large stuff, and attempted a CAV scale wooden pallet (yeah, that was too small).
.10 mm layers
.25 mm first layer
3 shells
35% infile, lines
80mm/s with 100 mm/s travel speed
220°C
Fan on, 45°overhang
So using the values above, here's the first picture. It's printed out in black.
If one looks at the ax handle, at the top knob you'll see a little curly que. That's what happens when the printer doesn't have any supports across a location. By default (as shown in the settings), it's looking for a next layer that's no more than 45° angled to the next one. Well, that doesn't work very well with sudden horizontal surfaces such as the bottom of the torso portion of the figure. There's a lot of curly bits under the "kilt" (English failure for me noggin'), but I could always paint those as decorative tassels, really thick hair, etc.
All told, it used less than 1.5m of PLA, which using the price I pay, comes out to about 30 cents for the material. That's really affordable for building up masses of mobs for a group to plow through. But let's get painting, and I'll start documenting some insights into this figure.
Now it's
really easy to see what we're up against. This is just automotive filling grey primer. And there's a lot that it didn't fill. But, it's a mook, and cheap, so let's not worry about winning any awards with it. (I've got a resin printer Kickstarter I've back, OLO, so it may do this at a better resolution; we'll see). There's that big curly string at the bottom of the base. That's a vine tendril maybe. The handle of the ax... that's... uh, very worn and aged wood. Yeah. The snout is... uh... lots of hair. Yeah. That's the ticket.
Okay, so it's going to be pretty obviously a 3D printed figure. Meh. Mook. Cheap. Skip it. Let's start a base coat. I'm using Olive Drab, and going over the areas that are skin... and places that I think are skin.
Here's where some insight comes in on how we can make this look better.
Thought #1: There's no way a wash is going to work on this. It'll just exacerbate the layering. Not much to do there but avoid washes. If I'm going to want to do shadows, it's going to be by the brush.
Thought #2: Forget painting sculpted details. Anything I can do to add detail however, will probably help hide the layering. Fancy patterns to simulate fabric (which might be really well looking, as I've got half the "weave" already built in), or insignia, or other such clutter will be useful in hiding the layers.
Now, in the, (ouch) four hours I've been writing this post, I hit upon using the support features of Print Studio. Here's what it looks like if I print it in the same position. I believe all the yellow areas are locations where it's unsupported, and will frizz on me. Eh. Let's see what happens.
And since it's pretty easy and cheap, let's do that strange optimized rotation, with supports. It looks like this:
That's... interesting. But for science! I proceed!
