3d-printable terrain for all your samurai wargaming needs
| << Designing the samurai pond 2019-07-31 | Painting the samurai pond >> 2019-08-03 |
Wow! This is the 150th blog post!!! Let's celebrate by showing you something pretty damn awesome......
The new Samurai Pond (and all the accessories) has now been printed! Not just once, but TWICE - just to show you the possibilities of scaling it up!
£ This is the pond printed at normal 100% scale, which gives a pond approximately 12.5cm (5") in diameter. The bridge is a resized version of the one from the Samurai Bridges Set, carefully sized to stretch across from one bank to another.
It's a simple two part print for the bridge, with no supports needed. Then you glue the knobs on top and you're done. It is just wide enough for a 25mm base.
£ The pond itself is a one-part print, and this one above was printed at 100% scale, at 0.2mm layers. The design is intended to be watertight, in case you want to pour in clear resin or water effects to increase the depth of the pond's surface. The thickness of the water "base" is actually only 1mm - something that can't easily be achieved with MDF or scratchbuilt terrain.
All of the other accessories were printed at 0.1mm layers, because they're so tiny! You can see that the reeds are designed to be glued to the base before adding any resin effects, but the lilypads are intended to be added AFTER resin effects, so they sit on top of the water.
Also included are koi carp (about 24mm long) in straight and curved versions, and it's worth resizing and mirroring to add some variety. The smaller fish in the photo above were resized to 16mm, and still printed okay on my Tevo Tornado (a PLA printer).
£ ..... ta-da!!! Here's the BIGGER version of the pond, printed at 170% scale - giving a fairly large pond of approximately 21cm (8.5") diameter. This was also printed at 0.2mm layers, and did take quite a few hours!
As you can see, the bridge no longer stretches from bank to bank, so included in the set is a small movable "island", which can be moved around to fit your chosen layout. In this version, I used one bridge to stretch to the island, and then some stepping stones (also included in the set) to finish the path to the far bank.
£ Some turtles are also included, partially submerged, along with reed clumps. Also, if you look really, really closely, you might see the ninja assassin - something I wanted to include because it's too funny not to include!
£ Since the 'island' is movable, you can play around with layouts. This one uses two bridges to span the pond - which would look great reflected in the glossy surface of the pond. They're often seen here in Japan, and referred to as a "glasses bridge".
£ Finally for today, this is a size comparison between the small and large ponds. No photoshop here!!!
Okay then, I'm off to start painting these cute little models, so stand by for some very picturesque painted scenes!
| << Designing the samurai pond 2019-07-31 | Painting the samurai pond >> 2019-08-03 |
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