stl files) made by professionals, you buy the material (filament spools instead of plaster), and after a long casting process (~4 hours for a basic 2″ x 2″ wall, per FDG) you have a piece of gaming terrain. It’s a fascinating idea, really kind of Hirst Arts 2.0. That’s one of the pieces in the Traps add-on, a gelatinous cube, being printed. So, you’re probably savvy enough to assume there’s some gaming-related connection here, and you’re right: papercraft kings Fat Dragon Games are looking toward the future by introducing their Dragonlock terrain tiles on Kickstarter.
Fdg 3d print terrain Pc#
Give it another few years, and when the practical/home-use applications of 3d printing are possible in cheap, over-the-counter versions-“hey, I don’t need to leave the house and buy a box of screws when I can just hook my printer up to some metal filament and print one”-boom, they’ll start to compete with laser printers as a sub-$200 device, a throw-in whenever you buy a PC from a big-box store.
![fdg 3d print terrain fdg 3d print terrain](https://www.fatdragongames.com/fdgfiles/wp-content/uploads/FDG-Youtube-web-cover-3-627x376.jpg)
We’ve seen 3d-printed prosthetics, clothes, cars, and guitars.
Fdg 3d print terrain professional#
We already have a lot of cutting-edge professional uses for 3d printing. A few years ago, a good one would set you back around $9k today you can snag a solid Ultimaker 2 for $1,500 or $2,500, while the Printrbot Play starts at $399. Remember when laser printers where huge, expensive affairs say around 1996, where every small office would have their own bulky laser printer tower sitting off in the corner? They were just starting to retail under $10k, with personal printers starting around $500. That’s 3d printing today. We’re still in the early days of 3d printing, where the increase in quality and decrease in price are happening at exponential rates. It’s a technology that’s in its initial stages and requires lots of patience and some tweaking of the controls, making it a lot less appealing to the average non-technical consumer who wants an appliance that “just runs” than it does to the kind of person who’s psyched about their latest Arduino or Raspberry Pi project. It’s a niche that makes the tabletop gamer niche look huge large segments of the 3d-printing crowd are using them for commercial/industrial needs, and the consumer userbase is still in the “hobbyist” phase, primarily your local makerspace or hacklab crowd. Meanwhile, 3d printing is slowly becoming a reality. Each one has their own advantages and complications-Hirst Arts is time-consuming, but so is painting your unpainted DF terrain pieces, and (to a lesser extent) so is papercraft. None of those are really bad options, with each having their own appeal to different sections of the market.
![fdg 3d print terrain fdg 3d print terrain](https://ageofminiatures.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/3D-printed-terrain-from-Aroscon-Denmark-3-of-9-1.jpg)
![fdg 3d print terrain fdg 3d print terrain](https://www.fatdragongames.com/fdgfiles/wp-content/uploads/FDG-Youtube-web-cover29.jpg)
Gamers interested in tabletop terrain tiles typically have three main options: Miniatures live at an awkward intersection, a niche within the already niche “tabletop games” market, making miniatures terrain a niche of a niche of a niche.