Category Archives: Infinity

Posts related to Infinity, the science fiction skirmish game from Corvus Belli.

Historicals, Infinity, Pulp

BSC 2018: Correcting some too thin errors

Leave a comment

As I am fairly new to 3D printing, I am learning a tonne about what not to do. One of the biggest issues I have discovered is that things that look good in CAD can look absolutely terrible once printed, given the resolution of the printing or the limitations of FDM 3D printing. Today I wanted to talk about three different, but similar errors I made: making a part too thin to print correctly.

Back corner of the cab

First up – the back corner of the cab. As the backside of the cab is curved, it thins quite a bit at the very back corners.

Back corner of cab in blue. See the thin joint at the very end

When you bring this into Cura to slice it for printing, the problem becomes obvious.

Back corner of the cab, showig that when printed, it will only be two layers thick (~0.8mm)

The solution to this is to thicken the back wall of the cab, which I did by adding a flat piece to it:

Back corner corrected with additional piece (in red)

Once you bring that into Cura, you see that the narrowest part is now at least 1mm thick, so the piece shouldn’t be so weak.

Thicker corner sliced in Cura
Fenders

The next piece I tackled was the fenders. They were originally 0.25mm thick, which means that they were just over one layer thick when printed at 0.2mm and only two layers thick at 0.1mm. This meant they basically didn’t print at all.

Fender dimensions
Fender sliced, showing no overlap

The solution to this problem is two-fold: thicken the fender up to 0.5mm and also only print at 0.1mm (considered Fine quality).

New fender, now 100% thicker!
New sliced fender, showing overlap
Top of the windshield

This is actually entirely my error. I made the windscreen and frame around it taller than the sides or back of the cab. This meant when I cut up the model to slice, the top of the windscreen disappeared. Oops.

 

Top of the windscreen, showing the height difference

 

Top of the cab when sliced. That grey area is supposed to have yellow lines for printing
Historicals, Infinity, Pulp

BSC 2018: First print of 1956 PANG

Leave a comment

The new printer board for my 3D printer finally showed up, so I got to printing the first print of my 1956 PANG. It was less than a full success. As you can see in the pictures below, I have a bunch of work to do.

Printed truck on build plate. Printed without the side compartments. Excuse my messy garage

As can be seen on the build plate, a bunch of details didn’t come out right – the biggest of which was the top of the cab for some reason completely failed to print correctly. I also accidentally selected brim intead of skirt, so I had lots of cleanign to do.

Front & side view. Lledo Model A, Copplestone Chinese and Infinity Ariadna for scale

The sides of the truck aren’t very smooth, and a bunch of the finer details simply didn’t print.

Side rear view of the truck
Side rear view of the truck with Lledo Model A, Infinity Ariadna and Copplestone Chinese for scale
Front and side view of the truck

So what next? First of all,my printer needs some upgrades:

  • A part cooling fan (the Ender 2 lacks it by default)
  • Belt tighteners (and the belts replaced with metal-core of some kind)
  • A more modern Marlin (the firmware that runs the printer)
  • A lot more tuning

On the truck, the first thing I am going to do is shrink it by 25 to 30%. It is too large for what I want. Then I need to some work on the model itself

  • Thicken some of the walls so that they print, especially the fenders, which didn’t print at all
  • Clean up some of the smaller details, possibly removing them for now
  • Re-cut up the cab so it prints correctly

Anyway, I have my work cut out for me!

Historicals, Infinity, Pulp

BSC 2018: PANG print layout

Leave a comment

I finally got around to laying out the 1956 PANG for the first printing. As you can see from the pictures below, I am trying to remove the need for supports which will mark the surface of the final print.

Final draft for reference
Final draft for reference
Laid out in TinkerCAD for printing
Laid out in TinkerCAD for printing

I chose not to break out the rear section or the bins for initial printing. I likely will in the final version, as it will speed up print time and make it cleaner.

Cura print layout
Cura layout, with approx. print time. Note that my printer (Ender 2) has a fairly small print bed, so this will fit on it

 

One final note: I am certain that there will be tweaks needs to be this and I am missing things, namely an interior and side mirrors to start.

Historicals, Infinity, Pulp

BSC 2018: 1956 PANG first printable draft

Leave a comment

Build Something 2018 continues and I have been pretty quiet for the last week. Part of this is because I am waiting on the warrantied printer board, so motivation is low. Also been busy with other things. But today I kicked myself into gear and go the first printable draft done of the 1956 PANG. Take a look below (the red rectangle is 32mm high and is there for reference):

Front view of 1956 PANG truck
Front View
Front angled view of 1956 PANG
Front angled view
Rear view of the 1956 PANG
Rear view of the 1956 PANG
Side view of the 1956 PANG
Side view of the 1956 PANG
Rear angled view of the 1956 PANG
Rear angled view of the 1956 PANG

 

Historicals, Infinity, Pulp

BSC 2018: 1956 PANG continued

1 Comment

Well, Build Something 2018 is well underway at Lead Adventure. You can follow all the entries, including at least two other 3D printed things, over on the subforum.

And what of our 1956 PANG tricycle truck? Yesterday saw a lot of work on the back end.  As of two days ago it looked like this:

I really didn’t like the aspect ratio of the truck – height, etc. So I completely rebuilt the back end so it was taller and thus looked narrower:

Early work on 1956 Pang

Today I started working on the front end, which is a lot harder. It has a lot of curves with curves, so it going to be a real challenge to do well. I am not overly happy with the look (too wide and squat) so might rebuild the front. Here it is in exploded view.

Front end of 1956 PANG, exploded view on right
Front end of 1956 PANG, exploded view on right

What I love about modelling this way is that if you don’t like something, it is trivial to rebuild it. Play with the ratio, etc.

Infinity, Science Fiction, Terrain

Alien Dog Monsters!

Leave a comment

A few days ago Corvus Belli, the company behind Infinity, had a tweet and FB post asking their fans which of two alien “werewolf” varieties they liked better. For those not familiar, one of the interstellar colonies in the game’s background, Ariadna, has dog-like natives who have managed (don’t ask for details, it’s pure anime genetics) to crossbreed in a few cases with humans, resulting in alien-human werewolves of several different types!

This seems like the sort of thing that would cause wild comment and speculation in the rest of the human cultures when Ariadna is rediscovered. The background fluff is full of gloriously over-the-top tabloid style reporting, so I channelled that and used CB’s photo to create the following street ad that will be appearing on a billboard on my Infinity scenery in due course.

Are Ariadnans still REALLY HUMAN or are they ALIEN DOG MONSTERS? Tune in to find out, and click to get the full-size 1500px wide version suitable for printing at good resolution!

I apologize for nothing!

Conventions, Fantasy, Galleries, Infinity, Science Fiction

LANtasy 2017 Photos!

2 Comments

Our local “big” convention, LANtasy, was a couple weeks ago now. I participated in the Blood Bowl & Infinity tournaments all weekend, and my Infinity terrain made up two of the four tables in the Infinity tourney. We’d hoped for more players and had originally reserved space for up to eight Infinity tables, but six players was it. I managed to come dead last, by a fairly good margin, including conceding one game at the bottom of the second turn (of three) but they were good games on good tables!

I brought my Lizardman team, the Handbag Factory (they’re crocodile figures, hence the joke name) to the Blood Bowl tourney and did nearly as badly, including one game where I got six lizards including my Kroxigor killed and didn’t injure a single orc…

Some photos – see captions for details.

Trumpeter Salute 2017 was last weekend in Vancouver and was a lot of fun. Lots of different games, a chance to see folks I only ever see at Trumpeter, and I ran a Pulp Alley game that was a blast and greatly enjoyed by all six players. I haven’t processed the photos from that yet, so I’ll do another post this weekend about that show.

Infinity, Links, Painting, Science Fiction, Terrain, Tutorials

Links of Interest, 24 Feb 2017

Leave a comment

Last time I mentioned a couple of YouTube painters that had good series of to-the-point, well-edited painting videos. Victor Ques is another I should mention; his ongoing “Weekly Painting Tips” series just hit episode 100 and has lots of good content. For his 100th episode he did a really nice 15 minute video talking about when to use some of the techniques he and other painters talk about; it’s a really good overview to accompany the technique-specific videos he’s already done.

Victor Ques’ recent video on painting techniques.

Painting Buddha doesn’t seem to be producing videos anymore, but they had a really high-end multiple camera setup, with a camera on the miniature, a camera on the palette (so you can see how colours are mixed and thinned) and a talking-head camera. Their painting black armour tutorial is well worth watching, even if it’s more advanced and involved than a lot of us are going to do regularly!

A few quick links to finish off with!

Bricks’n’Tiles is a small Windows program to create endless, seamless brick, tile, and other textures for creating paper or card buildings with, but even if you don’t use Windows or don’t feel like you need to buy the program, they have some sample sheets downloadable from their website that are potentially useful.

Free Islamic Calligraphy has a lot of high quality graphic files of Islamic calligraphy, including the awesomely sci-fi looking Kufic style. Lots of good stuff if you want to add some easy Islamic (or Haqqislamic, for Infinity players!) flavour to your scenery.

Infinity, Science Fiction, Terrain

More Jungle To Rumble In

Leave a comment

Scored another big paper towel roll from our recycling bin, so I decided to make a fallen tree instead of another upright one.

Like the other trees, the fallen tree started with a paper towel roll, scrap cardboard, some CDs, and my hot glue gun. I made the root ridges lower so the tree would sit mostly level, and glued on a few random bits of cardboard to break up the surface of the paper towel roll a bit. All the ridges are made of two strips of cardboard, so they’re a bit thicker.

Tree assembled, with Infinity Ghulam light infantry on a 25mm base for scale. Click for larger.

I used a pair of CDs as a base, and didn’t bother filling in the gap between them.

Right after assembling the fallen tree (I love hot glue, there’s no waiting for glue to dry or cure!) I got to work with white glue, some paper towel, and toilet paper for bark texture. I filled in the two ends with scrap cardboard and a bunch of paper toweling, added some ridges of paper towel here and there, then covered the whole thing with toilet paper, pushed into place with a damp brush and sometimes my fingers, with extra white glue drizzled on as needed to make sure everything was well stuck down.

Bark texture done with toilet paper. Click for larger.

That needed to dry overnight, so the next evening I got the basecoat done, mostly brown paint with a bit of black and some tan to add a bit of variation, with a squirt of white glue mixed in for extra strength.

Basecoat all done, still wet. Click for larger.

After the basecoat had dried overnight again, I did some drybrushing with tan and white paint to bring the bark texture out, then splodged on some green paint in two different shades here and there. That didn’t really need any drying time, so I got the hot glue gun out again and the box of random plastic plants and other greenery. I finished the fallen log off with a mixed batch of plants and foam, then ground foam grass over the base and here and there on the log as well, and declared it done!

Finished fallen log, same Infinity figure on 25mm base as the other photos. Click for larger.

The finished piece is about 9″ long, 3″ wide, and 2.5″ tall. I’m looking forward to adding it to my jungle themed tables!