Home Forums Terrain and Scenery 3mm Scale Terrain From Leftovers

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 59 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #201163
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    It came to m, as the fellow says, in a moment of aberration. Using some leftover bits from other projects and some print and play buildings I’m doing a teeny tiny city for an experiment.


    That’s asphalt texture applied to some square plywood with contact adhesive. Next I’m going to do a street grid, appropriately scaled for 3mm combat.

    Out of curiosity, I often see skewed city streets on people’s urban game mats. What do you think of that? It’ll make the tiles less modular of course, but it seems stylish. I guess the idea is so that two people sitting across from each other don’t get straight shots down a street towards each other? What do people think of straight versus skewed city tiles?

    #201164
    Avatar photoMike
    Keymaster

    Skewed (like Olde Europe streets?)

    #201165
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    Well, skewed like not orthogonal to the edges of the game space. To wit:

    FLG Mats: Overgrown City

    #201168
    Avatar photoMike
    Keymaster

    Oh I see.

    Not sure what I prefer, though I suspect roads going off on a diagonal would make me want to go down them more right angled or straight roads.

    The feel more urgent somehow.

    #201175
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    I decided to dive in and start playing around, since I have a lot of this material and it’s going begging otherwise. Ruined one of my tiles with some masking tape which tore off the paper surface, but the second try was more successful.

    https://www.thewargameswebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/hm_bbpui/201175/9qrw04c8xsctibz4fbzidr7brxj7g8do.jpeg

    #201183
    Avatar photoMike
    Keymaster

    Ruined one of my tiles with some masking tape which tore off the paper surface,

    Bummer, can you go over the tear with roads to hide it?

    #201184
    Avatar photoA man without minis
    Participant

    At a glance, I’m not too keen on the diagonal roads. They seem less versatile with fewer configurations that fit together.

    #201191
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    I think you need a combination to get that feel of a city that has grown over time, as opposed to some idealistic and lifeless perfect grid (even if shown on a diagonal instead of orthogonal)

     

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

    #201217
    Avatar photoThomaston
    Participant

    You could easily achieve the slanted effect with normal grid style by covering the board with cloth so it’s angled.  You’ll need a larger board than the area you want to play with but that might not be a problem with modular boards. The cloth area could be for unit stats etc as well.

    I’m with DSG and irganic looking city gives much better line of sight challenge than angling.

    #201232
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    Yeah, I’m just screwing around really. My thought was to see what a 12” square bit of city would look like at 3mm scale. Answer so far is: not realistic but probably pretty playable. We’ll see. For something done on the sides with a bunch of leftover materials for effectively no cost, it’s not bad so far.

    #201409
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    Played around with the city tiles a little but they kind of lost their flavor. In looking for other bits and pieces I came across some old foam packing blocks from a box I had to build years ago for an architectural model. In the theme of doing some one off terrain with stuff I don’t have to buy, I pulled out the ol d hot wire foam cutter and started breaking them down in the manner to which I am accustomed, and cut a few landforms as tests. This might have some more mileage, and at least is a good way to waste a little time after a rough week.


    Again aiming for small games with a little modularity. These tiles admittedly aren’t going to be quite as compact but the bones are good. Once I did some Terrainmaker hexes from GHQ only to find well into the project that they were all skewed and didn’t line up properly, which was quite the bummer. However the techniques there seem to be analogous to what I’m doing here.  And of course, these squares, being uniformly pressed and angle cut, may suit the modular requirement better, and will give me a square edge like my obsessive mind craves.

    I also found some black craft paper which I may use to edge the tiles and give them a little bit of toughness along the corners. Although I also think I have some foam coat somewhere, have to go looking – that would toughen them up as well.

    #201472
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    Well I now have a nice stack of 10cm square, 15mm thick foam blocks and am putting together some land forms. I also am trying this: in my garage I found a roll of mass-loaded neoprene foam, which is used to line toolboxes. It gives a little heft to the tiles annd gives them a little bit of slip resistance, although not much since they’re so lightweight to begin with. It also raises them about 1/16” so I would only use them on the base layer tiles, not the stacking ones. I’m mulling it over – it certainly is a clean look.


    #201477
    Avatar photoThaddeus Blanchette
    Participant

    Ooh, that last material is nice! I have never seen it before! I wonder if you could get it in hexagons…?

    We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

    #201479
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    The neoprene I have to cut myself, but it cuts with sharp scissors. Then you can just glue it onto the bottom of the block with foam glue. I could cut these into hexes but I’d need a jig of some kind and I wasn’t in the mood to make or buy one when squares seemed like they’d suit my purposes all right.

    #201506
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    That’s some nice backing.  It’ll allow you to cut into the foam without it falling apart or misaligning.

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

    #201520
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    I like it, it’s not as slippery as plain foam, and it does have a little heft to it. If it had been real vinyl it would have been better but I’m trying to use what have lying around. I’ll probably end up adding it later in the process though, after the tiles are painted and flocked. My hope is that it’ll help a game setup keep from slipping around as I play. Probably I’ll still need a tablecloth or some such in order to really prevent that.

    #201544
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    Related but unrelated: my a project my firm had been secretly working on for over a year has been made public and hit the news, an upcoming satellite campus for the Univ. Of Texas at Arlington.  My boss just bought us 2 new filament printers and we are asking for a 3rd so we can print the whole campus site and buildings at 1’=100′ in less than 2 weeks for the Uni.  We will see how it turns out as most (including topo) was done in Revit but some in Sketchup (by others, and their models are not good), but I have a feeling the detail is going be extremely low as none of this was designed for 3d printing from the get go.  Just the site will be about 64 square pieces!  If it goes well we may print off a whole ‘nother one to display in office.  (and maybe it’ll become a battleground some weekend when no one is looking!)

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

    #201545
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    “You know it’s amazing how this off-world colony looks in NO WAY like the University of Texas.”

    #201681
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    So I found another pack of foam at my office – I bought too much way back when, and as it turns out, it came from different sources. And this second pack is, shall we say, “slightly irregular.” The blocks are smaller than the other ones, have dinged edges and a lot of marring from pressure. I was worried it would just be more waste – back in the closet for another five years until I have to build another 1/16″ scale model and ship it to another country – but then, another item from the old days came to hand, the “Hex Terrain Toolkit,” which I bought into some years back but then never really managed to figure out. The biggest problem for me then was that you had to punch holes through the hexes to align the jig, which was messy, time-consuming, and left me with crumbly holes in my terrain plates. However, I am finding that the irregular blocks are just right to cut hexes out of them, and so far at least flat enough on one side to align the hex jig by hand.  With a little care, I have been able to make this:

    https://www.thewargameswebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/hm_bbpui/201681/do422zhe2ibl4wvcwssbgl9s482gbij3.jpeg
    And this is most satisfactory as an evolution of my thinking here, not to speak of a decent way to salvage some foam that was not working otherwise. I have yet to determine if I will recut my other square blocks as hexes now – the foam is slightly different in consistency – this stuff is slightly softer. Either way it’s a fun exploration – and it harkens back to my TerrainMaker project, with the difference being that these hexes actually align with each other quite neatly! It will be fun to try to make this work.

    #201684
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    Cut up the whole stack of foam, and here’s a keen side effect: they fit perfectly on a puzzle board I have. Very acceptable so far!

    #201688
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    I took a stab at using the hex kit for carving some slopes and almost immediately broke one of the pieces. What a pain. Those considering it, be aware that it’s built way too tight and as a result needs a ton of “working” to go together, during aging time parts are most likely to get broken.

    Regardless, I am finding I like the results of freehanded slopes, anyway. This is after all an alien planet I’m modeling, so some rougher terrain suits me. So far it “feels” right.


    This was a good Sunday’s work!

    #201703
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    Glad it’s working for ya!  Many moons ago I tried making my own hexes, just for a “living” campaign map for D&D, and it just about killed me.

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

    #201706
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    Yeah it’s working far better than I had any right to expect, really. Last night I went to bed thinking of how to do mesas and tablelands, like the backgrounds of all the barren planets in Calvin and Hobbes comics when Calvin imagines himself as Spaceman Spiff. I have to scrounge more packing material for that I think. But the big part is that the hexes fit beautifully, and the slopes look good and I have a system to cut them pretty regularly on the matching slope edges. I do have to think about roads though. Since this is an inhabited but somewhat depopulated planet, I think some abandoned settlements will be appropriate too – if you’ve ever read the Philip K. Dick book “Martian Time-Slip,” the term “AM-WEB” has come to my mind – a dilapidated socialized housing project used as a dumping ground for undesirables from other parts of the colony. The Middle Eastern high-rises from Brigade would be great for that.

    #201710
    Avatar photoMike
    Keymaster

    Oooh just caught up on this. You are very prolific.

    And those slopes are cool.

    #201717
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    Yeah it’s going to be a pretty desolate planet so sloped landforms with large buttes and mesa above are what I want to model. Then there will be roads, and moveable settlements. The margin at the left of the board I’m going to fill with some black cardboard so I can mount the name of the scenario on it, like a map label.

    #201746
    Avatar photoThaddeus Blanchette
    Participant

    What are the board dimensions?

    If you want some spectacular terrain effects for weird  outcroppings, use spray insulation foam and carve it… or don’t. Uncarved, it gives a strange bulbous textured appearance that looks really alien.

    We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

    #201775
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    I may give that a try, actually. Although this is more of a windswept planet – I’m thinking of Monument Valley as my visual inspiration.

    #201783
    Avatar photoThaddeus Blanchette
    Participant

    This technique works great for an alien Monument Valley look. The resulting dome-like forms look very eroded, but they are rounded, rather than angular.

    You squirt out some insulation foam in dots and jiggles. Small ones.

    Let the resulting balls dry for a few days.

    Cut them in half with a very sharp craft knife.

    Sand the bottom down until it’s level.

    Base on thin, rigid material.

    Paint and flock.

    We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

    #201810
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    I’ll have to give that a try!

    For now, this is what my land forms are looking like – talus and dunes mostly.

    #201890
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    OK, so I have a decent modular setup pretty much down.  I have been playing a little with special forms like buttes, but I’m not there yet – they look suitably “alien” but I’m not quite sure they’re what I want to depict on this battlefield so I’m still experimenting.  Stacked rock formations were interesting but not what I was after – that goes in the box for later.  And I’m attempting to seal these hexes with Mod Podge, which I’ve never tried but word has gotten back from those who have that it’s what I want for a basic liquid coating that doesn’t require any special mixing or activators.  So I think it’s time to get technical about what parts I want in my basic set and what I need to complete it, and so I did a quick spreadsheet:

    The “blocks” are 4x4x2 craft foam blocks I had, and they have been easy to cut and pretty reliably cut up into three final tiles for each block.  And luckily, between what I have left and what I have already made, this is very attainable with material on hand (I think – I might need to break down and source some more, but not until I totally exhaust my supply).  So for starters I am going to fill in this list, seal it, flock and paint it, and see what kind of battlefield I have at the end of that.  If I need more, I will then adjust the list.  The quantities are based in part on the old Geo-Hex box sets, two of which I have and love, but which are definitely too large for 3mm scale use – forms and shapes are too far apart.  But as a basic kit of parts, I think it’ll suit.  I altered the quantities a little just eyeballing it, so I don’t yet know if it’ll really be enough of one or the other part in practice, but you have to start somewhere!

    For my expansion, down the line, I’ll have three-level slopes and escarpments (I’m not sure if I will need that, but maybe), and then rivers/wadi hexes, and then I’ll probably do some moveable hexes of forest or jungle as hex toppers.  A big unknown is also how I’ll handle roads.  My mind’s eye sees each of the flat hexes as reversible, with road on one side and blank on the other, but I’m not 100% sure I can pull that off.  It’ll depend on how well the sealer works and what’s left to work with after that, whether I want to make the roads an actual rutted surface or if I’ll just model it with a special paint job.

    #201895
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    Selected a color palette for this one. I went with an ochrey desert and got some cheap sample pots from the hardware store.

    Also found that Mod Podge will likely be exactly what I’m after. It’s not like sealing in plastic as some people have said but it is a nice, consistent finish, and above all it stiffens the edges of the foam very effectively, giving the tiles a nice, durable edge, which is always the first part to accumulate damage. The alternative I tried was Foam Coat, which is super dense but has to be mixed up from a powder, is a colossal mess, and is more of a paste than a liquid, which adds more body to the hexes than I want. I want to keep the edges nice and tight.

    Have to go overseas this week, yet again, but I feel like this is getting on track.

    #201896
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    And this is my final test hex. I’m very satisfied with the look. It’s got a very good weight with all the sand and paint on it, and all it needs is one top coat of matte sealer. The ochre desert is exactly the color I’ve been looking for, and it’s mottled with the other browns and highlights to keep it from being too uniform.

    #201902
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    That does have a very satisfying look, the texture is marvelous.  The trick will be to be able to have the highlighting be even across multiple hexes and to keep the complete game board from looking polka doted due to the center of each being lighter than the edges.

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

    #201903
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    That does have a very satisfying look, the texture is marvelous. The trick will be to be able to have the highlighting be even across multiple hexes and to keep the complete game board from looking polka doted due to the center of each being lighter than the edges.

    Yeah, for sure. I’m trying to be as random as I can, and I would much prefer a slightly irregular mottling to that “polka dot” problem. I have a feeling that if the mottling pattern is small scale and random enough it will all blend. You can see here that the upper left skews a little darker, the highlighting is sort of irregular – the only way to be sure is to give it a fair test I think, so I’m prepping about 12-15 tiles to confirm. Enough to know, not enough to be a giant pain in the ass to replace if it doesn’t work right and needs to be adjusted.

    #201921
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    A friend of mine sent me this in response to my excitement about how this project is turning out: this would be perfect as Spice. He’s not wrong. I just need to get some Sardaukar!

    https://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/show/item/T1354

    #202130
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    So I had a lot of nervous energy to work off after last week so I branched this project off in a second direction. While waiting for a batch of 10cm hexes to dry, I decided to try some 4cm hexes as well, for a truly “travel sized” experience. The outcome has been pretty excellent so far. These will each have a little strip of magnetic printer paper under them, which is enough to hold them firmly to a sheet of stainless steel. The battlefield is thus 12” x 12”.




    The mottled color leans more heavily on the yellow ochre than the base brown which I think is a better look.

    #202157
    Avatar photoDarkest Star Games
    Participant

    2 sizes of hexes, are you mad?!?!  Oh, wait, of course you are, as are we all.  Carry on.

    "I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

    #202165
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    I’m quite mad, of course. I’m totally insane. The beauty of this is that it fits perfectly in a set of steel boxes that in turn nest inside an old ammo tin. It’s all totally modular. Also the paint and the sand add a great deal of weight and strength to the surface of the tiles. It’s all very sound so far.

    #202166
    Avatar photoMike
    Keymaster

    Looking good and very productive of you!

    #202173
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    By the way, for my fellow Americans and maybe some few lucky British, this item here is making it all possible: a perspex ruler marked in whole thirds of an inch. Lovely. Instantly scales up the battlefield.

    LITKO Premium Printed Double Sided 1/3rd Scale Inch Rulers, 3mm

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 59 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.