"28mm Scenery & Weapons from Spinneyhead" Topic

Good potential here, but I think the quality of the product pics needs to be improved a bit. I can't make heads or tails out of the Guardbot Squadron picture. Is it on its side?

It would be very cool, too, to see a print-on-demand service for people wanting to do their own CAD work but who don't have access to a 3D printer. Any thoughts along those lines?

If I understand what they are selling here, you are buying a print from shapeways of Spinneyhead's design. If you do your own CAD work, you could use shapeways as well. This IS print-on-demand.

Wonder if they've considered more interior furniture. It seems that things like barroom/saloon bar, tables, chairs, pool tables, piano, store shelving, etc. would fit many periods from Old West / Victorian / VSF to Gangsters to modern warfare to street violence. Outdoor items like hitching posts, Jersey barriers, water troughs, streetlights, etc. would also seem to be good candidates for multiple applications.

Also agree on the pics. You can't expect to do well in sales if the customer can't even tell at what he is looking. Poorly focused, badly lit, or just plain confusing pics not only do not help, they may hurt a company as folks who look once, can't see what they are looking at and never come back.

JJ

Oh, okay! I guess I didn't read it closely enough. Thanks, FF!

If I wanted to by some of those guns, how many do I get for the $6.71?

Looks like you eight for $6.71. Price also varies depending on the material.

I forgot to add that the price includes delivery. If you're outside the European Union it may be lower because they won't charge you VAT.

There are a couple of other people doing games stuff on Shapeways. If you take a look around you can find stuff like dungeon furniture to help take your order over the $25 USD minimum. I'll think about doing some furniture of my own in the future.

Yes, the pictures are a bit poor when I look at them again. I'll work on that. There is an option to do a 3d fly around of the models though, to get a better look at them.

I can't seem to figure out the online Creator utility. Can you only make stamps, cufflinks, etc., using their utility? Or can you use it for other things as well?

The online creator utility is pretty simplistic; you just use it to make slightly customized trinkets as you've seen. To get custom models out of it, you have to provide the 3D work yourself.

coolness. Now I have to learn how to do 3d modeling… any suggestions on where one starts with that?

I've been using Blender. It's open source, blender.org should have downloads. The learning curve's very steep, but it's laso very powerful and featuure rich.

Google Sketchup has been recommended to me. I've never tried it though. It's free, but I think you need to buy the Pro version before you can start exporting files.

Shapeways themselves have quite a few tutorials on where to start, formats etc.

Shapeways print quality is crap, even their most expensive "white detail" sucks. Sorry to say that, but it is really bad.

use the strong white and flexible and you have more holes between the print lines than actual model.

That's not been my experience at all. Strong white and flexible has an interesting, slightly rough, texture because of how it's printed. It certainly isn't going to give you a super smooth finish but it's still quite pleasant.

take one of your guns then, spray it grey and show a photo of it, if its in strong&flexible it will be covered in print lines and gaps.

if you want a decent printer then use printapart in the usa. the idea of shapeways is great, but for small models such as wargames figures and scenery the quality just isnt there.

couple that with a 25$ min order and it just doesnt work.

Shapeways' minimum feature size is 200 microns. You can judge for yourself if that is reasonable print quality.

I've ordered pieces from Irrational Designs
link and found the detail quite good

My own pieces ( shapeways.com/shops/objects ) have also worked well for me. :-)

printapart seems to offer much better resolution, but it looks like the cost is higher (about $4/cm^3 when I last looked).