Shapeways Pricing

You have until October 7th before Shapeways changes its pricing.
Good news is, it should be cheaper to print. The bad news is items that have more than piece will go up in pricing.

As an example the Recon 4 pack will cost close to $30 with their new pricing guide lines.
The good news is some of the prices are going down, if they are a one piece print.

Recon Vehicle

The plan was to pull this from Shapeways on the 9th this month. With the unknown state ofthe Robotech Gaming Center site currently in Limbo . I am going to keep it up in the store for the time being.

Factory

Upon a request from Breetai, he wanted a custom Factory designed for his table top.
I've up loaded two versions of this factory. One that is just the basic factory and the other I included two civilian trucks to go with it. Since shape ways automatically charges you $2.50 for the print, the more objects you can sneak into a print the more you can drive the cost down per model.

Here is the link to one of the Factorys. http://shpws.me/vRkG

Looks like all of the models are now showing up for sale so that issue has been resolved.

Shapeways delays

I've added a Rounded Building to the Shapeways store tonight as well. I noticed the Recon vehicle isn't showing up for sale yet. Seems there is a rather lengthy delay with their system when you check mark a item to make it available for sale.

I will keep an eye on this and if it still doesn't show up for sale by the morning. I'll contact them and see what the problem is.

Recon 4 Pack

For a very limited time I am going to offer this 4 Pack of Recon vehicles up on my Shapeways site.

https://www.shapeways.com/shops/Reckless

 

On 9/9/14  I will be pulling it down from the Reckless shop.



Small set back

Due to an unexpected car repair I am not able to purchase the 3D printer this month. Luckily enough,  it is only a minor set back.

Because of this delay, I made a few more items available on shapeways.

I would like to post up a time line on when I will have that 3D printer. But until I can take another hard look at my budget, I dont want to promise anything yet.

Bursting Point

Well I found the 3D printer that should do the job for what I need it to do. I will be ordering the SeeMeCNC Orion 3D printer by the end of the week. I was hoping the Sculptify 3D printer would be in my price range but its layer thickness is at the 100 micron level. This immediately took it out of he running. I needed to find a printer that can handle 50 microns or less.

This Yoda print shows the difference in print quality from an 100 micron layer thickness on the left to the 50 micron layer thickness on the right. It is still not smooth as a babys butt, but it should do the trick.





So why did I title this up date bursting point?
After years of sitting on my Robotech 3D models and sitting back in shadows.
I am finally going to do something with them.




I will start working on a Fleet Scale Space Combat System.

In the very near Future.

I now have the funds to purchase a Makerbot Mini.  Now it is a matter of doing more research to make sure all this hard earned money is not being wasted. On something that cant do what I would like it to do.

I have three games, eventually four when Arcadia Quest comes out, that I will be producing game related items for. Dust Tactics-Warfare, Zombicide and Robotech Tactics. I may expand out from there but I want to keep my focus primarily on these four games. Eventually I would love to develop my own miniatures but one thing at a time.

I need to do some research on opening an online shop that can handle credit card transactions.

up-date

I havent given up on this project. I just had to direct a lot of my attention to pulling off a chain of miracles. Miracle #1 be able to get a house loan , with an illegal house foreclosure still on my record. Miracle #2 find a house with in my budget that is not 100 years old or needs a ton of work. Miracle #3 be forunate enough to get some help from my family for a down payment. Miracle # 4 be able to take possession of the house by March 1st. Miracle #5 to be able to do all of this in 20 days.

Never tell a person it cant be done, when they are in fact in the process of doing it.

needless to say, that was the hard part. Now I need to focus my attention to packing up and moving. And leaving this apartment for good by the 28th at noon in February.

So dont count on anything new till mid March. Maybe sooner but dont hold me to that.

Some old fashioned building

I spent the better part of the day just playing around with some poster board. This was in part an experiment to see how many large buildings I could create and if I still had the patiences to do so. The good news is these three large buildings only costed $5 and I still have plently of material to make 10-20 more depending on their size. The down side to this is that it is very labor intensive, roughly 2-3 hours per building. They do look nice but i would not recommend doing odd angles or shapes.

Another part of this was to see if I could offer up these type of buildings. Even with making a template for them, these buildings can not be mass produced quickly. Frankly even selling one for even $5 is out of the question for 2-3 hours worth of work. 

Anyone's best option is with Hawk's war gaming with their free 10mm paper buildings or Burned in Design's once they get back online. 

http://www.hawkwargames.com/blogs/downloadable-buildings

http://www.burnindesigns.net/search/label/6mm

Condo "A" Series 1

This is just one of the Modular Condo's I meshed out a few weeks ago. All of the series one Condo's top floors will be interchangeable with each. This one is the "A" model, the base of this kit is 4.5 stories tall with an 3 story top that can be placed on it. Or if any one chooses they can just opt to use this one kit as two different buildings.

Dimensions: cm: 8.546 w x 4.7 d x 4.6 h
Price: $ 31.71

Grocery Store

Since I work at a Grocery store, I thought it would be only fitting if I would create one that closely resembled the one I work at. This store features two cooling units on the roof, a warehouse dock door in the back plus the side door you can see on the left hand side.

Dimensions: cm: 10 w x 6.2 d x 1.602 h
Price: $17.69

Officers Housing

Every Officer needs their own housing either on base or off base. This one story house features a solar panel on the roof top and plently of windows.

Dimensions: cm: 6.928 w x 8.526 d x 1.384 h
Price: $14.83

Mom and Pop Shops

Every city in the world has these little Mom and Pop shops with there own housing on the top floors. Most neighborhoods rely on these small business for their common house hold needs. This pack of shops comes with One two story building with its own billboard built into the roof line. The second building is a three story with a billboard attached to its side. Some shop owners often rent these billboards out to supplement their income.

Dimensions: cm: 5.436 w x 3.3 d x 3.05 h
Price: $13.36

Arcade

After spending so much of my early childhood playing arcade games, it only made since to include one. At almost 4 1/2 stories tall or 44mm it has some good height. It features three billboards on the front face of the building. The mid one has the raised lettering of "Game Center" on it. There is another smaller billboard right under it and nested above the two doors. The third billboard is the giant one on top where the arch sort of cuts threw the bottom of it. I trimmed three of the walls to 1mm thick and did two reinforced external bands around the building to give it more support while reducing its cost. Not in the price range that I would like but 4 story buildings bumps the price up. It took a good amount of time to get all the raised lettering shaped right and to pass the wall thickness test through Shapeways. This is just one of many other buildings I have sitting on the back burners.

Dimensions: cm: 4.4 w x 3.438 d x 4.2 h

Price: $17.59

Review: Garage 2 Pack

First Impressions: Again I was still surprised on the actual scale of these buildings. I was a little concerned on how they packed them, one on top of the other in a zip lock like bag. Upon taking them out, is when I noticed something was not right. The East outer wall of the smaller factory like building was missing part of its wall section. The weight of these buildings felt lite but very solid. Just a little disappointed that one wall section was missing. The Garage building turned out just fine and the smoke stack did not get broken or lost in the whole process.

[Rendered]

[Front Garage]

[Corner Garage]

[ Front Small Factory]

[Missing East Wall]

Size & Details: The Garage and the Small Factory like building does not have a large amount of details to it like the "Dragon Restaurant" does. Both are relatively small in size and both feature a unique smoke stack like feature. Both feature some very basic detail features because of the unique building profile to help keep the costs down.

Defects & Errors: Like I mentioned in the first part of this review, the missing outer wall section on the east side of this model was noticeable. Beyond that all of the lines and details are present. This printing seemed very solid , no noticeable external -/+ .15mm variances on the model. Internally the North Western inner corner of the building seems thicker than it should be by a fraction of a millimeter.

Changes & Improvements: This 1st printing was noticeably cheaper in price. I went back and thicken the North wall by 1mm to strengthen the over all feeling of the building. Upon viewing the East wall, I noticed that the outer wall and the inner wall had a .12mm gap between the two surfaces and corrected it. An area of concern for me is the Garage's smoke stack. The four angled vertical posts are with tolerance range for shapeways printing. But possible breakage still worries me, could be that I am still rather new to the printing process. I would consider adding some sort of weight to these buildings.

I will most likely not do another test printing of this pack. With the corrections to the 3D mesh it should print out just fine. I am still concerned with the Garage's Smoke Stack getting broken or lost in the printing process.

Value: At $20.24 for two buildings with a unique profile and different sizes they are getting closer to being more in the affordable range instead of being $12-$15 a model.

Over All Rating: 3.5/5
-2: Missing part of the East wall.
+.5: Good Value

Review: Dragon Restaurant

First Impressions: When I looked at this model still in its packaging, I could not believe how small it really was. After working on the 3D mesh for so long, you sort of get tunnel vision on the true size of the product you are working on. You quickly forget all the changes and details you are making to this model are in the millimeters and you loose track of its true scale. Taking the model out of the packaging is when it hits you on how lite this building is. In weight alone it feels about as heavy as a billing statement you would receive in the mail. Structurally it feels solid, you can see the walls flex a bit when you put some pressure on it but it doesn't feel or look like the walls with collapse under the pressure. Good amount of detail and it closely resembles the computer rendered picture of it.

[ Rendered]

 [Front]

 

[Back]

 

Size & Details: The two pictures above will give you a reference of scale. The Duracell battery is 52mm high, which in 1/285th or 6mm Scale equals 52ft in Height. The center point of the "+" symbol is exactly 42mm high or 42ft in Scale. Looking the model over and giving it a close inspection I noticed that the balcony windows on the top floor do not seem very pronounced. You can still tell what they are intended to be, just do not expect them to be sticking out 2ft in scale. The west wall of this building is only 1mm in thickness and it was designed this way to help shave off the cost of printing this building. All of the window lines are present with the exception to the one on the very corner. I will talk about this in more detail under the defects and errors portion of the review. Both doors are pronounced well on this model. Over all, this model has very good paintable lines and surface areas which will allow you to make these little details pop.

Defects & Errors: The down side of 3D printing is there is a -/+ .15mm degree of error that can occur during the printing process. This doesn't seem like much but when you are working in the 1/285th Scale that roughly means a 3 inch possibility for error in Scale.  An example of this is noticeable under the top floor awning above the front door. It is a very minor dip that is roughly 8-9mm long and only a fraction of a millimeter in height. Nothing that a fine file or hobby knife couldn't fix with out much effort. The only other noticeable defect is the corner window vertical strut. It appears to only have printed the upper part of it and or it broke off during the printing process. Again nothing that a fine file or a knife couldn't smooth out and it doesn't take away from the over all design of the model.

Changes & Improvements: Well as stated as above the corner window vertical strut maybe over complicated on the 3D mesh which is why it was either damaged, broken or lost in the printing process. Basically that corner has three vertical window struts with in an 2-3mm area, which is not leaving much room for that -/+ .15mm error. Over all if I was going to make any changes I may take a closer look at this corner and just possibly omit that one strut altogether, since it will not affect the over all look of the building.

The only other improvement that I could see is giving this model more weight. Maybe by gluing a washer or penny into it to give it more weight on the table top. Another other option would be to insert a Styrofoam core up into the building.

Value: At $14.59 for a single model seems fairly high for even my expected standards. Being an Dragon Restaurant in which every city needs a Chinese Restaurant, makes it a must have item. The amount of detail and themed looked makes up for some of the extra cost.


Over All Rating: 4/5
+.5: The amount of details in this model for its size.
- 1: Weight just doesn't seem heavy enough.
- 1: Loss of 1 vertical window strut.
+.5: Value

Condos & Officers Housing

Every city needs Condos! This is my first attempt at building a modular 3 pack of buildings that the tops are interchangeable with the other bases. Giving you 9 different looks for your building needs. Some players may choose to use the tops as just other buildings, if they don't mind the fact they do not have visible doors. This pack comes with two 3 story building bases and one 4 story base.  Plus a 1 1/2 story top with Penthouse, 2 story top and a 2 1/2 story top.

All the bases have a 1mm raised inner roof that is meant for the top section to nest down into. It should be possible to connect the bases on top of another base. Again, if you do not mind a door to no where 4 stories up.

 

 

Another small building I have been working on was actually a request. We can not have all of our Officers with out housing so I jumped at the task. This 1 story building with solar dish on top will be offered in packs once I get it to pass the Shapeways inspection.

 

 

 

Other News: I got a confirmation e-mail from Shapeways stating my three proto-type buildings (Dragon Restaurant & Garage 2 pack) will be here by the 21st of Jan. Once they arrive I will take more pictures of them and check the quality I will make them available for purchase. 



Garage Two Pack

Here is another Rendered shot of the Garage Two Pack which will be available soon.
The Garage is a three story building not counting the upper stack. The upper stack would bring this model closer to five stories tall. The smaller two story building could function as a smaller factory. As with the Garage the stack on this model is also closer to five stories.

In an attempt to help drop the production cost of printing these buildings I grouped these two together.

Dimensions:  cm: 3.066 w x 8.714 d x 5 h
Price $ 20.24

 

 

 



About Reckless Terrain & Miniatures

How Reckless Terrain & Miniatures came about:

I originally started working on this project because I wanted to have nice buildings for my tabletop game. As it turns out there has been a demand for themed 6mm buildings and structures for table top games like Battletech (tm) & Robotech RPG Tactics (tm). After tinkering around with the Shapeways web-site and a few 3D models of mine. The dream can now become a reality.

 My goals with Reckless:

1st and foremost is to build 6mm themed buildings to fluff up my table top while making it as cost effective as possible for 3D printing when ever possible. As an example, one test vehicle I did had a price of $ 4.18 per model. When I made it available as a 4 pack it dropped the price closer to $ 2.50 - $ 2.75 per model. These buildings will be hallow much like a monopoly board game house. The walls and roofs will be on average a little over 1mm thick, where most windows and doors will be closer to .7mm in thickness. I do intend on making more buildings of different heights, widths and sizes so not every building looks the same.

The Future of Reckless: 

I am planning on doing vehicle packs but I am still trying to get used to the constraints on 3D modeling with Shapeways so the item can be safely printed and yet keep the cost down. I am going to look into doing building packs as well to see if I can drive the cost down per building. I am currently looking at putting a civilian vehicle in with some of the buildings as an added bonus. I also have a few ideas about more themed modeling packs but that is classified for the time being.


What can I bring to the 6mm table top gaming community?

In my younger years I spent countless hours and money into playing Warhammer 40K going as far back as when it was only called Rouge Trader.  I am a table top gamer at heart and I have a good idea of what the players want in order to fluff up the looks of their miniatures and terrain. Trust me I have been there and often wanted items that just were not being produced. Now Finally technology has caught up to hobbyists so we can finally produce the items that we always wanted. 

My Back Ground: 

I have been a hobbyist 3D modeler since the game release of Star Fleet Command (pc) game. I quickly learned how to import new models into the game engine and was known in that community as AncientAngel. After many attempts of trying to make a Robotech Modification for Star Fleet Command. I got involved with a group of Robotech Fans that attempted to make an MMO which was known as the Robotech MMO Project. I was one of the modeling DEV's that produced most of the 3D models for the project. I also briefly got involved with a Home World Modification called, Fleet Commander in which my 3D conceptual design of the Firestar Parnassus was used in the game.

Trade Marks & IP:

Reckless Terrain and Miniatures does not contest the rights or any associated trademarked property of their respective holders. Any mention and Fair use of their property in this blog is not intended to infringe on these rights. This Web-site / Blog is completely unofficial and is not endorsed by Battletech (tm), Robotech RPG Tactics (tm), Harmony Gold (tm), Palladium Books (tm), Ninja Division(tm) and Big West (tm).

Dragon Restaurant

After two days of working on this model and fixing Shapeways errors the model is finally complete and ready for 3D Printing.  Once I get the proto-type printing of this model in the mail and checked for quality I will release it for sale.

Dimensions:  cm: 4.184 w x 3.406 d x 3.01 h
Price $ 14.59