My custom mini from Heroforge

[pinkymadigan]

I backed the Heroforge Kickstarter a while back, and just got my reward. I backed for $30 to support the idea. I was dubious about the ability for the company to pull off a quality figure but figured $30 was a good way to support the technology and test the final results.

 

Here's the original design I ordered:

 

Though not visible in the picture, I intentionally introduced a clipping issue, which was either caught by the software or by Heroforge's QA team, as when I received the model the clipping issue was resolved. The eye cover clipped through the right side of the hood (left side of picture, hidden by flame), but I'm happy to report the defect was absent in the test piece.

 

Upon receipt, while getting ready to prep the mini, I accidentally dropped it about 3-4 feet onto a carpeted surface. As advertised, the material the "high detail" plastic is made from is a bit brittle, and the piece fractured at the arm:

 

 

I attempted to drill into the material at the arm to set a pin to fix the hand, but the material is too brittle for that. I ended up just using superglue, and fortunately the join seems to be relatively strong.

 

The second thing I noticed was the surface. Despite the "high detail" material, there were significant surface artifacts on almost all the surfaces. I primed and drybrushed the mini to see how bad the situation was:

 

 

Pretty bad. I had some work to do...

 

 

Note the base edges are not very sharp, I'm assuming the corners broke when I dropped it, I didn't have enough time to notice whether this was the case before the drop, so that's what I'm assuming.

 

More to come...

[ShadowRaven]

details are a bit too soft for my tastes, but not bad all the same... What it does make me think though is a weathered statue

[pinkymadigan]

I tried first to just use some plastic sanding needles, which worked well, for the most part, but after applying the first coat of paint, it was obvious a bit more work was needed:

\

 

The mini next to it is a Mantic ghoul. The HF mini came on a 25mm base, the ghoul's is 20mm.

 

For reference, the inspiration for the mini originally was Theresa from the Fable videogame series:

 

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/fable/images/b/b5/Fable3_Theresa.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120909140251

 

That image is huge so I won't link it here, but that's the basic color scheme I ended up going, just simplified so I didn't have to do a lot of freehand.

 

Next step I decided a coat of brush-on sealer all over might help smooth things out, and it was good enough for me. Here's how it looked with the sealer and a few more base coats down:

 

 

Not perfect, but I've struggled through worse minis, for sure.

 

At this point I was pretty confident I could make an assessment of the material, and Heroforge in general. 

 

I think Heroforge is doing great work. The company has put together an excellent site with a lot of potential, and I was happy to contribute towards their ultimate goal, but I have to say that the material they are using does not accomplish its goal.

 

For the price point, a mini made by Heroforge is going to have to be a unique, one of a kind mini that you really can't kit-bash together yourself. Unfortunately, the material that they are printing with is too brittle to game with, and is not high quality enough for a display piece, IMO. You really can't do much besides attempt to smooth the surfaces. Maybe if you got an excessive amount of greenstuff skill you could use one of these as a mostly complete armature or something, but the material doesn't lend itself to conversions either. I couldn't drill into it, it became obvious the drill was going to break the piece along a stress fracture rather than putting a hole in it.

 

I can't recommend doing this for general miniature purchasing, but if you want to support the technology, and the future of Design-Your-Own-Mini, this is a good place to start. I think maybe they need a new printing partner, they are currently using Shapeways, but I'm not knowledgeable enough in that area to make a call like that.

[pinkymadigan]

You can see how after working the paint over and over the details got a bit muddy (the belt buckle became some sort of rune design), but the texture started to smooth out, so that was good:

 

That's pretty much it for the WIP details, I did this all on Saturday, and took the final pics yesterday. I'll edit the show-off link in here in a few minutes.

 

Final:
http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/58971-fables-theresa-my-original-mini-from-heroforge/

Edited January 19, 2015 by pinkymadigan

[MonkeySloth]

All in all it's not bad considering where the technology is. Be interesting to see what this price point gets you in 5 years.

 

Shame that it's too brittle to even use in a game.

[kodiakbear]

 

At this point I was pretty confident I could make an assessment of the material, and Heroforge in general. 

 

I think Heroforge is doing great work. The company has put together an excellent site with a lot of potential, and I was happy to contribute towards their ultimate goal, but I have to say that the material they are using does not accomplish its goal.

 

For the price point, a mini made by Heroforge is going to have to be a unique, one of a kind mini that you really can't kit-bash together yourself. Unfortunately, the material that they are printing with is too brittle to game with, and is not high quality enough for a display piece, IMO. You really can't do much besides attempt to smooth the surfaces. Maybe if you got an excessive amount of greenstuff skill you could use one of these as a mostly complete armature or something, but the material doesn't lend itself to conversions either. I couldn't drill into it, it became obvious the drill was going to break the piece along a stress fracture rather than putting a hole in it.

 

I can't recommend doing this for general miniature purchasing, but if you want to support the technology, and the future of Design-Your-Own-Mini, this is a good place to start. I think maybe they need a new printing partner, they are currently using Shapeways, but I'm not knowledgeable enough in that area to make a call like that.

 

 

Thanks for the well thought out assessment .

[Adrift]

 

 

At this point I was pretty confident I could make an assessment of the material, and Heroforge in general. 

 

I think Heroforge is doing great work. The company has put together an excellent site with a lot of potential, and I was happy to contribute towards their ultimate goal, but I have to say that the material they are using does not accomplish its goal.

 

For the price point, a mini made by Heroforge is going to have to be a unique, one of a kind mini that you really can't kit-bash together yourself. Unfortunately, the material that they are printing with is too brittle to game with, and is not high quality enough for a display piece, IMO. You really can't do much besides attempt to smooth the surfaces. Maybe if you got an excessive amount of greenstuff skill you could use one of these as a mostly complete armature or something, but the material doesn't lend itself to conversions either. I couldn't drill into it, it became obvious the drill was going to break the piece along a stress fracture rather than putting a hole in it.

 

I can't recommend doing this for general miniature purchasing, but if you want to support the technology, and the future of Design-Your-Own-Mini, this is a good place to start. I think maybe they need a new printing partner, they are currently using Shapeways, but I'm not knowledgeable enough in that area to make a call like that.

 

 

Thanks for the well thought out assessment .

 

That really is a fantastic assessment. Thank you.

[Arc 724]

 

 

 

At this point I was pretty confident I could make an assessment of the material, and Heroforge in general. 

 

I think Heroforge is doing great work. The company has put together an excellent site with a lot of potential, and I was happy to contribute towards their ultimate goal, but I have to say that the material they are using does not accomplish its goal.

 

For the price point, a mini made by Heroforge is going to have to be a unique, one of a kind mini that you really can't kit-bash together yourself. Unfortunately, the material that they are printing with is too brittle to game with, and is not high quality enough for a display piece, IMO. You really can't do much besides attempt to smooth the surfaces. Maybe if you got an excessive amount of greenstuff skill you could use one of these as a mostly complete armature or something, but the material doesn't lend itself to conversions either. I couldn't drill into it, it became obvious the drill was going to break the piece along a stress fracture rather than putting a hole in it.

 

I can't recommend doing this for general miniature purchasing, but if you want to support the technology, and the future of Design-Your-Own-Mini, this is a good place to start. I think maybe they need a new printing partner, they are currently using Shapeways, but I'm not knowledgeable enough in that area to make a call like that.

 

 

Thanks for the well thought out assessment .

 

That really is a fantastic assessment. Thank you.

 

Agreed, Very good. I was actually just on their website making characters and wondering about them. 

 

 

ON a side note, Dremel just came out with a 3D printer... I wonder it is better than what they are using. (?)

 

EDIT: Can I be rich and just buy them the best of the best in 3D Printing then get all my miniatures for like 50% off... Oh i am a dreamer...

Edited January 19, 2015 by Arc 724

[smokingwreckage]

on the 15mm FB group, shapeways was being discussed. One guy said he used a dip or two in Future to smooth out the surface. Worth a try?

[pinkymadigan]

on the 15mm FB group, shapeways was being discussed. One guy said he used a dip or two in Future to smooth out the surface. Worth a try?

Maybe, yeah, but I think you'll see a bigger loss in hard edges doing that? Dunno, haven't worked with future myself but I thought it was thicker.

 

The brush on is nice because you can control what it hits, and try to keep it away from the corners between two different surfaces.

[storm72]

Nice work and great post.I purchased after the Kickstarter,so, I have weeks to wait for mine but this helps me to know what to expect. I had fun with the software but wish there were more options but as a miniature enthusiast for the better part of 32 years I just need to see what the future held. Although, I prefer hand sculted miniatures I'm not close minded to the new advances in technology.

[Bionicspacejelly]

it's nice to see what the actual model looks like. I'm excited when 3d printing gets to the point where a model is indistinguishable from a traditional one but right now I think working with one would drive me up a wall. I like what you were able to do with that one though. 

[Mad Jack]

 Oof... Broke on a carpet??? That ain't good.

 

I'll agree that it's definitely a good start for breaking new ground on the technology, but it's definitely not quite ready for primetime in my opinion as far as the quality of the material and the printing go. I'm looking forward to seeing where this ends up in a couple of years, though.

(I almost threw some money at this one just to support it, too, but I accidentally forgot about it.)

 

Nice paint work on the flames.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Mad Jack

[smokingwreckage]

Maybe they can do a thermo plastic, that gets printed, then you slow-bake it to strengthen it. It works with some epoxies, I think a car manufacturer tried a paint that they didn't bake on, but instead left it to the Australian sun.

 

I would expect it would be possible to use a second pass - like baking - to expand the available properties. Well, possible eventually. Meantime the obvious way tog et around it is to make a silicone mould and cast the model in some sort of low-melting-point alloy... of some sort.... maybe tin based...

 

[Lidless Eye]

Thank you, this has been one of the best demonstrations on what the Hero Forge stuff is like in the flesh.