Okay, so I have never denied the fact that I use tools like Poser, Blender, Daz3D, Fusion360, and some others to make my models. Sometimes I do a bit of kit bashing when I make stuff such as the Chinork or Ka-Kapta as I prefer to call it. But just the other day and today I stumbled across some tools that I think can be real changers to anyone wanting to “make their own miniatures”.
So why did I put that in quotations? Because not everyone has the ability to sculpt a 3D model in Blender or Maya or whatever. But you can make your own miniatures with the right tools and selection of parts, and with some jiggery pokery, you can get some really decent minis to drop on the table… if you or a friend owns a 3D printer or 10.
So the first one I came across was Udo’s Customizer. An incredibly useful tool that uses libraries of body parts ( and potentially can be use for mecha and vehicles ) to assemble miniatures which you can then adjust the pose of. This tool saved me roughly two days worth of sculpting and rendering to get the ork models I needed to make for a friend. Check out the orks in the centre of this picture. There’s plenty of detail and they are already scaled for the game they’re going to be use in.
The Weirdboyz and the Monocycle came from Thingiverse… but that lot in the middle, was done in about 2 hours ( slight learning curve ) after I watched the videos on how to use it. That is absolutely insane. Check out the first one I actually did with the program:
So okay, that’s all cool and shit, but what if I want to make something besides orks? Oh my friends, this program has been designed to be literally limitless in what you can create. No shit, I built up some more parts for the 40k Sisters of Battle that you can already download for free and make some battle babes, but I already a LOT of parts I would throw into Windows 3D Builder and just assemble, save and print… but it was tedious and very time consuming. Now I will admit it has taken me a while to work on the library for this simply because of the learning curve. I just went through Thingiverse downloading even more parts I want to add to the library which is already VERY robust in most sections and even includes bases !!!
So this tool in itself is simply incredible and it only costs $10.00 a month ( but will also go lower when the creator gets more patrons over on Patreon ). It already has a ton of libraries to choose from covering most if not all of the races from the 40k universe. But… check this shit out…
Yeah yeah yeah I know that heavy bolter looks a bit janky because of the ammo feeder, but look at the detail, it’s all there and you can even mirror the models you make to essentially double you force in only a matter of minutes. I am absolutely in love with those wings for the Seraphim, they are just so detailed and perfect it’s unreal. And yes, I will be building up a Sisters of Battle force to play with one day.
So okay, that’s a game changer for those who play Warhammer… it doesn’t stop there my friends. As I hinted at the fact it could potentially be used for other things like vehicles and mecha earlier, I am saying this could be used to create miniatures for other games like Flames of War and Team Yankee or virtually any game you can think of that you can build a library of parts for !!! So that’s going to be another project for a rainy day and might even come sooner if I can keep my 3 days off from work schedule. Essentially what I need to do is create the models so they have what I’m gonna call “break points”.
These “break points” need to be in a place on the model that will allow another part to fit almost or completely seamlessly into the other part. So for example, on a soldier for Team Yankee or even Flames of War, I can use the LCE ( load carrying equipment ) to cover the joint. This will then let me attach a wide variety of arms holding weapons, pointing, or giving the bird. Imagine loading up something like F-14/15 and being able to just make a click and change the weapon load out for it.
That’s Game Changer #1 and you can get in on it over here at Udo’s Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/m/6258491/posts as I said, it’s right at $10 a month for the license to use the program, and you can even upgrade to a merchant plan if you think you’ll be making more than $300/mo with it.
Once I get the Sisters of Battle library completed I will get it listed on his website for everyone to enjoy and use to create some kick ass battle bitches !!! I kid you not, I have TONS more stuff to add to this library and as more is created it will be added. Here’s a sneak peek:
So check it out here, watch the videos, and see if this is something you might be able to wrap your melon around: https://www.udos3dworld.com/customizer.html
Game Changer #2 is a web based tool that will allow you to take a 2D image and pull out a 3D model !!! What sort of witchcraft is this I speak of ??? Monster Mash !!! Just watch this video…
I haven’t played with this yet but it’s going to happen here shortly, like literally when I wake up later today and I am over this crud the whole family got. But yeah, dude loads up the image of that rhino and pulls a 3D model out of it… that’s just like pulling a rabbit out of your butt, or is that hat… hmmm, been dealing with too many asshats as of late.
So you’ll notice in the video he takes that 3D model into Blender which is another FREE tool for using with 3D modeling and stuff. You can get it here: https://www.blender.org/
I’ll update this post once I get to play with Monster Mash and can get some screen captures, but if you watch the video you can see exactly how it works and what it does… pure witchcraft I tell you.
So be good to one another and go make something… don’t think outside the box, question why there’s even a box to begin with !!!