[SH] Ecorium terrain for 3d printing

[Islacrusez]

I'll take a look. Just pray it doesn't become a threesome

Also, still waiting on your thoughts on my side projects in your RA thread on robots; looking forward to your response!

[Malika]

There are plenty of peeps out there trying to make this kinda stuff. I think the main challenge for us would be: what will set us apart from all the others? I like the modularity of a lot of stuff that's out there, but the aesthetic quality often leaves much to be desired. My ambition is that I can combine that modular character with an aesthetic quality similar to companies such as ForgeWorld, but with superior casting (the ForgeWorld Mortalis kit has some serious casting errors).

In the meantime I've changed the rackfarm slightly to be a two part kit. Still not fully happy with it. I'm very tempted to take it apart slightly, tweak the standard floor panels in such a way that other components such as rackfarms, generators, etc. can be placed on top of it.

At the moment the rackfarm unit looks like this:



Very clunky, for some reason kinda reminds me of those armored refrigerators that are used to grow marijuana in. The clunkiness (and lead inside) protect it from infrared detection.

I could add 5 drawers in there, as in that you can only see the front panel of the drawer, very much like a server rack or guitar rig. The buttons/etc on those rigs enable inhabitants to control moist/temperature/etc of each tray.

Another possibility, and a personal preference of mine, is that each rackfarm unit contains its own tiny ecosystem. Large plants are the main crop inside, but there are other plants inside as well and also insects, fish, etc. Aquaponics combined with growing plants and a Lepsis.

[Islacrusez]

I think it'd be a good idea to have a "base" tile with points you can slot things into. Then you just need a bunch of base tiles and you can put most components on them. I'm oh so very tempted to try my hand at this... Bah!

[Malika]

I'm thinking of that now, probably make a sort of a 'reversed Lego' like system on the surface on the tiles, that way you can easily click in rackfarms, generators, etc.

But erm...why don't you give it a shot at making these? I'm very curious to see what you'll come up with. The 'threesome thing' (that sounds very odd btw...) might not even occur, the thing between me and Philip is that we both aspire towards the same goal, at the end we'll most likely adapt our systems to one another, either him doing my way, me doing his way, or the two of us agreeing to a mutual connector design/system.

[Islacrusez]

Mostly because I've got way too much other stuff on atm. For example there's the 50 Imperial Guardsmen, 2 Manticore missile launchers, a Leman Russ battle tank, and Valkyrie gunship. Which have to be painted by the second of January for a tournament... Humm. Even my dad's helping me paint xD

I'll get to it when I have time, just not in the immediate future.

[Malika]

Been working on another means of connecting the rack farms to the floors: basically a come back of the floor variant:


Note that the separate tile on the left is just a working model, but it could be a variant for the grill, not a replacement for the standard tile.

This means of building the rack farm unit also enabled me to tweak it a bit:


The standard rack farm will probably get some sort of frontplate showing the five different trays/rigs, very much like a guitar rig. However, other frontplates would enable me to add more interior detail, and maybe even have somebody sculpt plants in it.

I'm also pondering a bit if the connecting system I've got now is the best. I'd like to have something that would easily enable me to build higher walls as well, and even include multiple levels in the same structure. Kinda need to play with it, or else design some components which will enable me to do this easily.

In the meantime, a bit of inspiration.

[Malika]

I had an engineer friend drop by at my place yesterday who was very curious what I was up to regarding 3d printing. I showed him our Ecoria projects, he dug the idea a lot, but his main concern was the connectability of the components. He suggested we should go for a system that would allow you to click in the models.

So I started thinking... Another method to connect the panels might be to create holes in the sides of the floor boards and sides/bottoms/tops of the wall panels, and then use connector pins to connect the walls, floors, etc. Very much like how Lego Technic works, like these.

Made a quick test:

I think I'll move the horizontal connectors (the only ones on the picture) to the sides of the floor and wall panels. This will then also make it possible to do the same to the floor panels which can be used for variants (floor grids, rackfarms, etc), basically the floors that have the detail underneath.

In the middle of the wall panels I can add vertical connector holes (both on bottom and top of the panel), that way it will become very easy to also build multiple levels on top of each other.

I can of course design the pin in such a way that it becomes an official pin or whatever, or keep that very simply so that users can also use just small pipes of plasticcard/wood/brass instead.

But all in all, it has simplified production quite a bit, you only need the panels and a single type of connector.

[Malika]

Quick update on experimenting with the pin system and multiple floors:



The floor plates for levels higher than ground floor are still very WIP, the holes of the grid will be made bigger so you can see better through them.

[Stormwind]

It certainly looks like it's coming along nicely =)

[Malika]

Thanks!

Another test with the multilevel stuff. This is what I mainly have in mind for the multilevel rooms, very much to what you have in factories and workshops. Note that the grid is still WIP!



Corridors that run above each other might need a bit of tweaking in order to make them playable as well.

I've been thinking the tweak the design of the wall panel a bit, the little boxes on the top and bottom of the panel (two rows of four boxes next to one another) start to bug me, will probably remove them and add something more subtle in there.

[Stormwind]

Ok I hadn't even considered the possibility of a playing area with a walkway section.  That would be amazing for some Space Hulk missions.

[Islacrusez]

Perhaps some inspiration could be taken from the existing systems that have such capabilities? There was a kickstarter one posted around here somewhere that had awesome platform systems.

[Malika]

Quickly finished the new grid, and also tweaked the wall design a bit:



Expect a rail/support pillar component soon!

@Islacrusez: There have been many Kickstarters for this sort of terrain lately, was it the cardboard one of the CNC/laser cut version?

[Islacrusez]

I do believe so; it looked top-notch and the build system looked very good.

[Malika]

I've encountered this one and that one.