3d-printable terrain for all your samurai wargaming needs
It's finally finished!!!! Our biggest project yet, this MASSIVE Japanese samurai castle soars 5 levels up into the sky, and sits atop a mighty stone platform!
£ Here's the completed castle in all its glory! What a building! What a print!
£ Without its stone base section, this castle is still guaranteed to dominate any table you place it on!
£ If you want to use the castle without its large 36cm base, then you can print this ground-level door section (with opening doors, of course) for access to the interior.....
£ ... and here's how that ground-level entrance looks.
£ Personally, I'm aiming for maximum "WOW" value, so I chose to use the big stone base to raise my castle even higher. To do that, you should print this underground entrance section, which comes with opening doors, a locking bar, and wide stairs up to the next level.
And yes, stairs in Japanese castles really are that steep!
£ .... and here's the version with the underground entrance. Nobody's going to mess with this castle!
£ Want to see what it looks like from an attacker's eye-level? Here you go....
Nope. Not going to attack that, I think!
£ Another view of the whole castle, with its intricate roof shapes. What you can't really see in this photo is the detail that has gone into every single part of this model.....
£ .... so here's a zoomed-in version of the entrance and first level. The exterior has wood grain modeled on almost every surface, and other walls have an authentic sandy texture sculpted on. Each roof tile has been carefully modeled to show up every detail of this magnificent building!
£ I'm rather looking forward to painting these roof sections.... at least from the top! I'd better stock up on spray paint!
£ If your tastes are more military, then you can leave off the ornamental roof section above the underground entrance...
£ .... but I couldn't resist adding a little more bling, so I chose to add the optional roof on there!
£ Now it's time for the full set of level photos. Here's the base level, with its main entrance leading up to the 1st level. Note the second smaller staircase on the right - this leads down to a basement level, so if you really want to go nuts you could add dungeons, kitchens and storerooms down there!
£ The 1st level has a slightly military feel to it, with 6 small rooms and a surrounding corridor. There are small holes for archers, and you could also add window shutters if you want make it a real fortress. All those doors actually slide, by the way!
£ The 2nd level contains the grand "throne room" - the largest room in the castle. A slightly narrower room and corridor make up the other half of this level, and there is a secret door connecting the two rooms. After all, every lord needs an escape route, right?
£ The 3rd level has 3 decent-sized rooms, and these could be used for important meetings or councils of war.
£ The 4th level only has two rooms, most likely sleeping quarters for the lord of the castle and immediate family.
£ Finally, we have this elegant 5th level room, with doors on all sides and a surrounding balcony from where you could sneer down on your enemies!
£ The top roof section has a stunning roof shape, only found on the most important buildings of the land. Those ornamental dragonfish statues complete the look - although they could actually be added on roof sections on every level if you really want to make a statement to your rivals!
£ So how big is it? Well, here's the castle corner tower (minus its base) as a size comparison.
£ HOW BIG?! Well, pretty darn HUUUUUGE! It will also give your arms a good workout just lifting the whole thing!
Apologies for the stupid grin on my face - perhaps I'm just happy not to be modeling roof tiles for a while?
This model will be hitting the paint desk tonight, and will be released next week! Watch this space...
Photos of the fully assembled samurai castle are coming tomorrow, so here's a final guide to putting together the 2nd level of this huge model - the Throne Room level!
£ This level prints in 9 pieces, which all have slightly different support placements. To help with this, each section is labelled; "FR" for "Front Right" and so on.
As for other levels, the little joining clips should be used between sections to give them more strength.
£ The support beams are similarly labelled to match the corresponding parts, so they're easy to glue into the correct place.
A couple of head-height beams glue into place above the alcoves at the sides.
£ The surrounding roof sections are printed in 8 parts, and can be glued in place as shown.
£ Now we move to the interior of this level. We start by printing the four floor sections, which glue in as shown.
£ The central wall section can be printed in two pieces, or as one larger piece if your printer is big enough.
I'm planning on painting some fancy ornamental designs on the screen doors in the throne room, so I was careful NOT to glue this central wall to the floor. At one end of the wall there is a secret door section, and you obviously don't want to glue that in either - or it won't spin.
£ The rest of walls can be glued in as normal, as shown in the photo above, and then the bottom rails for each of the doorways can be slotted in to place.
£ The final steps for this level are printing the sliding doors and the huge number of tatami mats. The mats are a pretty tight fit, so I'd advise leaving the last row unprinted until you know whether you need to print those one millimetre shorter, for example.
And that's it! We're done!
The last level of the castle is now finished, so some very large photos of the entire castle will be unveiled tomorrow - watch this space!!
We're almost there now! One more level (the 2nd level) is currently printing, so here's an assembly guide to the 3rd level of the castle.....
£ Assembly starts like many of the other levels; in four quarters. As for all the parts from this level, none of these sections require print supports. Each section's model is marked with letters to show where they go in the arrangement, and you'll need to pay attention to this or the floor supports won't be in the right places.
Once the four sections are printed, you'll also need to print the corresponding floor supports. These are also marked with letters, so it should be an easy job to slot those in the correct place, as shown. A couple of overhead beams fit into place in the alcoves for extra strength.
£ There are also two roof sections for each quarter, which can all be printed without supports. Carefully glue those into the correct place around the outside.
£ Now we start to get onto the fun stuff - the interior of the 3rd level. There are three rooms on this level, plus a hallway, so you should start by printing the walls and the wooden floor section. For those of you with larger printers, there is a combined version of the wall sections, too.
£ Next you should print the doorway pieces, which slot into place between the floor of each room, and plenty of tatami mats.
TOP TIP: Leave one row of mats unprinted for now, and dry fit all the tatami mats before gluing. You might find (like I did) that the fit was very tight in places, so I found it easier to print one row of tatami mats 1mm shorter than normal, so they would fit more easily against the wall. That seemed easier than sanding down 1mm from several mats.
£ Add in some sliding doors, a handrail and the staircase, and the 3rd level is complete!
Time to put these together....
£ Wow!! Getting enormous now!
The last level should be printed and assembled in a few days, and then we can take a look at the completed building!
Progress is finally flying ahead on the samurai castle! While the next level prints behind me, it's time for an assembly guide for the castle's 4th level.....
£ These are all the parts required for the complete 4th level. The main sections comprise of 4 quarters, each with 3 parts - cut to fit on smaller printers and also to ensure that the edges of the roof sections print as well as they can without supports.
£ Start with the four room quarters. You will need 2 of the left piece, and 2 of the right. These are of course printable without supports. Glue these together, and don't forget to add 4 joining clips for extra strength.
£ Print 2 of each roof section (without supports), and glue them as shown. It's a bit fiddly to make sure everything lines up, so take your time and go bit by bit. There are also a couple of thick beams to be glued in place above the alcoves on each side.
£ Next job is to print the 4 floor supports - 2 of each shape. You'll find that they only fit one way - with the two at the front different from the two at the back, because of the hole for the stairs.
You can now start to add in the floor and walls as shown, and then two doorway pieces are glued on the left and right for the sliding doors. You might want to dry-fit all the floor pieces including tatami (see next step) before gluing.
One extra piece of short wood is included in the walls file, which is designed to fit in on the left alcove, underneath the beam. It plugs the small gap left between the sliding doorway and the alcove wall.
£ Print 22 tatami mats, and glue them in as shown. I found this to be a pretty tight fit, so keep some sandpaper on hand to smooth off edges.
You'll also need 6 sliding doors, which can be inserted in the doorways and can be left unglued, and then finally the staircase to the next level.
£ That's it - you're done!! Your authentically detailed fourth level is complete.
Let's add the 4th and 5th levels together....
£ You can see from the photo that the join is pretty invisible. You can carefully slide the 5th level section up from this one for gaming inside!
£ Now it's starting to look like a castle, eh?
£ I can't believe it looks this good with only the top two levels done! It probably weighs close to 1kg at this point, by the way.
On to the 3rd level next.......
Here's a special sneak peek for those of you checking in to the blog regularly - an assembly guide for the fifth level of the samurai castle.
Half the levels are now fully printed and assembled, with the others soon to follow - but strangely it's easier to work backwards from the top level, to ensure all the roof sections line up once printed (and to spot any problems in the files!). So please bear with me.....
£ The central section of the 5th level is this single room with a door on each side. It prints as one piece, without supports. Please note that you will need to cut off the 5 built-in support posts in one corner (circled in red above), as those will block the stairs if not removed.
£ As for other buildings in the samurai collection, you can open and close doors. The doors in this section all lead out on to the balcony, and can be hinged with a piece of brass rod or filament. Simpy insert the rod all the way down, and cut at the top of the door, as shown above. Each door has a top section that is glued in to place above the door, locking in the hinge rod.
The support beams for the floor is printed as one piece, and includes space for the stairs to lower levels (on the right of the photo).
£ The next step is to glue in 7 tatami mats in the arrangement shown above, and then the extra wooden sections and stair railing (top left of the photo).
£ Next we go BIG! The lower parts of the 5th level are printed as four quarters (two left and two right sections), and the upper room is then slotted into place and glued. Apologies for this, but these four sections will need to be printed with supports. :(
* Angie from our partner shop Alt Reality Terrain mentions that the best choice for her was Cura "tree supports" for printing this section, by the way. Thanks for the tip, Angie!
With the central room glued in place, the last parts are 4 balcony floor sections to be slotted around the outside of the room, and then the 4 corner knobs. You can add more if you want to make it even more decorative!
£ We're almost there now! The top roof is printed in two halves (the same section twice), and are simply glued together. This can be printed without supports, and I decided to print very slowly at good quality (0.1mm layers) - because the top roof will probably be inspected more closely than any other section of the castle by gamers!
If you look closely at the corners, you might notice a tiny piece of built-in support right near the tip (2mm long bar, circled in red in the photo above). This can be carefully removed if you prefer, but in all honesty probably nobody will ever notice if you leave it there!
£ With the two halves of the top roof firmly glued together, you can finally print the decorative shachihoko dragonfish, and glue those on top. These are very small, so I printed them at the best quality my printer could manage, and they look great!
If you really want to make your castle even fancier, you could print extra dragonfish ornaments, as they will fit pretty much any roof spines on the castle, on any of the 5 levels. So go nuts if you want!!!
£ With the roof section placed on top of the 5th level, you can get some idea of just how super-detailed this castle will be! It's huge, and every part of it has been lovingly designed. The roof tiles in particular, have caused many headaches for creating the files, but the final sections seem to be rolling off the printer smoothly now.
So apologies for the delays, and thank you all for your patience!!
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7 Comments :
Wade
2020-12-04 (Fri) 12:27PM
All i can say is WOW! Great job. Not looking forward to printing it but I'm looking forward to when its finished :-)
Ja
2020-12-04 (Fri) 13:11PM
Fantastic job! The attention to detail on this castle is what sets it above the rest. It is another fine example of the quality work 3DAW puts out.
I was looking for a Japanese temple building this year, but everything I found was inadequate in some fashion. When I saw 3DAW has one in the works, I decided I could wait for you to release it, knowing the attention to the details would meet my rigorous standards.
2020-12-04 (Fri) 14:40PM
Thanks, Ja! Those comments really mean a lot to my motivation to keep going on mammoth projects like this. The castle had me pulling out my hair several times!
The temple stuff is pretty high up the list for projects to be tackled soon (we'll be asking for votes soon), but it will definitely be released in pieces, rather than a massive release at once (like the castle). That tied up rather too much of my time, and it's nice to do little side projects to keep energy up!
Warren
2020-12-04 (Fri) 19:00PM
It is beautiful and so nice seeing photos of a print, not just digital images which is what most seem to do nowadays. This has been so worth the wait, as I knew it would be, next it will have to go into the que to print, unfortunately some other very large prints to finish first.
Rob
2020-12-04 (Fri) 20:48PM
That looks really good. No doubt it also doubles as one heck of a paper weight!
Angus
2020-12-14 (Mon) 1:12AM
Wow, David, ths is really a monumental work. You attention to detail shows in every blog post and photo. This is by far the largest, most ambitious, 3D printable structure I've seen in my years of browsing and printing. It's very impressive.
How might it be used? What I see you having completed is perfect for an inverted "dungeon crawl," with a Sengoku theme. One enters at the bottom with encounters as you ascend toward a goal at the top. The potential for surprises along the way -- the secret door for instance -- keeps players on their toes. Added to this is the care you have taken to make a layout Japanese, for example in Level 1 having only interior rooms with a walkway around the outside, similar to what we see in epic samurai movies. Nice.
Overall, let me add a hearty Well Done to the outpouring of amazement over this project. I'll also add my encouragement to expand this line into other Asian countries with iconic architecture -- China, anybody? Korea?
2020-12-14 (Mon) 10:19AM
Thanks, Angus! Yes, I'm planning to use it as a campaign of 'mini-battles', where the outcome of the fight on one level affects the situation on the next level up!
The interiors were very important - it's just a waste building a beautiful exterior but skipping all the tatami and sliding doors on the inside! I tried to make it as believable as possible, but it was really tough squeezing everything (especially the stairs!) in without it being unplayable.
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