Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Winterfell by a 3D printer

I caught this "print" on blastr a few days ago.  What we have here is a 3D printer created model of Winterfell by Daniel Ammann, executive VP of R&D for u-blox (Switzerland).  


3D printing is a (relatively) new technology that has a lot of people quite excited in the tabletop hobby. In short, it promises to put the design and manufacturing power of miniatures in to the consumers hands.  I think we're still in the early days at the moment to be honest.  A lot of the prints that I see look a little odd around the edges - like they haven't quite been cast well, or flashes of excess resin hasn't been trimmed (or trimmed too much), or mis-cast, or something.  But the reason that this particular print caught my attention is that it is the first one I've seen in a while that looks quite convincing for what it is.  

That lead me to think that a tile narrative game (cf. Mighty Empires, Planetary Empires) could be printed well using this technology -- one could readily imagine a Westeros inspired set of tiles to base a narrative campaign off of.  The future of this technology is exciting for the tabletop, but I do wonder what impact it'll have on companies like Games Workshop.  

1 comment:

  1. Is it bad that I had the theme song going through my head while reading this?

    You know... I don't think I have ever seen a 3d printed minis (or what have you) actually painted. hmm.

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