Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Thinking in Three Dimensions

Okay, so pretty much my entire gaming group is made up of technophiles.  So naturally we think that 3D printing is the greatest thing since...umm...2D printing, or whatever.  Anyway, we're seriously considering pooling our cash and buying a 3D printer, preferably a kit which we can have fun assembling.  Naturally we immediately thought how great it would be to be able to print out gaming figures, dice, terrain, playing aids, etc. with it.  I'm particularly interested in designing stuff in 3D as an outlet for my artsy side.

As part of exploring the feasibility of 3D printing as a venture, I have started learning how to use TinkerCAD, a free 3D design program which works in a browser.  The tutorials are pretty fun so far and but I can see how difficult it would be for me to actually sculpt miniatures with it--and that's on top of the fact that I'm not much at sculpting anyway.  Playing aids, dice, and terrain look pretty doable since those are not as complex to design.  Luckily lots of other people have had the same idea and there are lots of miniatures, etc. already available at Shapeways. Thingiverse, and other sites.

One thing I particularly want to design from scratch are cool tokens to use as Awesome Points during play.  At the moment we're using a bowl of those glass bead/marble things usually used for interior decorating by filling glass bowls etc.  They are functional and attractive enough but I'd like to design alternatives which I can print out on our new 3D printer (whenever we finally get one).

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