[SH] Ecorium terrain for 3d printing

[Malika]

Actually yeah, it'd work seeing as your walls don't connect to each other. So if you design your dovetail connectors to slide vertically, any wall could slot into any tile, and any tile+wall combo would simply slot in without interfering with the other walls. A connection between the wall pieces would be useful to avoid damage to the connectors if the walls are knocked or during construction, but what form this would take I don't know. Perhaps a vertical connector sliding into notches on walls? But then the notches would likely cause issues in casting (especially if also dovetailed) and the connectors would be useless on corners. Probably not worth the hassle for the time being, I don't foresee it being too useful.

Let me experiment a bit with some variants. I'll come back to you in the coming days!

For the grate (just the grate), would photo-etch or laser-cut not be a better option for it? Remember that it will not cast in one piece without the grate going all the way down (not liking that option myself) even if you can get it to print. 2 pieces all the way. Plus it'll mean one can mix and match grates if desired, and have them missing or damaged, to provide difficult terrain / environmental hazards...

Why wouldn't it cast the floor in one piece if the grate doesn't go all the way down?

[Islacrusez]

Because the inner cavity is larger than any hole leading to it, and you'd never get the mould material out. Unless I'm completely misunderstanding how you want to cast it in one piece.

[Malika]

If I take the bottom part and grill apart for example, there would be not extra cavity between the grill and bottom part, as you can see on the picture. The cavity is 1.5mm, the grill is 1mm, when the grill is placed on the bottom of the plate, there would be 0.5mm between the plate and edges. No cavity.

[Islacrusez]

I was under the impression that you wanted to have detail underneath the grate as in the previous pics ^^

[Islacrusez]

Also there's this to consider:

Code: [Select]

XIOIOIOIOIX
XOOOOOOOOOX
XXXXXXXXXXX
If X represents your floor, and I represents your grate, then O is the mould on the inside of the grate, and this must then be removed as a single piece.

[Malika]

I was under the impression that you wanted to have detail underneath the grate as in the previous pics ^^

The one with the details underneath the grill is only possible as a two piece set. I think that one might go into production as a variant, the rest will be pretty straightforward single piece models. Thing is that the details underneath is will be not too easy to see anyways, so having them for every single tile would make the kit a lot more expensive, and also be a lot more labour intensive for modelers. Having the two piece one as an extra is cool if you want to have specific spots on the terrain where units want to investigate something underneath the grill.

[Islacrusez]

Fair fair; at any rate if you want to cast it as a single piece, you need to have no "space" under the grate - the grate will meet the backing plate and be attached to it. If you want actual space under it, it will need to be cast as 2 parts. A photo-etch grate would be soooo nice, but probably not cheap...

[Malika]

Hmm, well...I do have some connections with people who have both CNC and laser cutting machines... 

However, to do this as a mass production thing, and casting them, would probably be a tad on the expensive side, which would seriously influence its accessibility. I mean, I know many people go for third party stuff because it's cheaper, but if prices are as high or higher than ForgeWorld, I would imagine people would be quicker to buy the Mortalis terrain than this and not because of quality or anything (the casts of the Mortalis kit are/were horrible!!!), but namely the fact that the FW stuff would be 'officially approved' and all that.

Food for thought.

But a variant kit could be doable, so it would contain a few extra bits, including a floor plate with removable grill, but then still a grill of 1mm thick, which should be castable. The etching of brass or something would simply be too expensive to do at this time. However, if the product/setting becomes popular enough...

[Malika]

Ok, decided to drop the grilled floor as a basic version. Too much hassle trying to make it printable as a single piece. Also, without a detailed subfloor it wouldn't do the model enough justice. So I think it would be cooler to have the grill bit as an extra.

This means that I had to adjust the basic tiles...



As you can see I've also removed the round vent like things on the ends of each plate, this will enable me to use the floor plate for a lot more stuff without having to redesign each other component to have those round venting thingies. This will especially come in handy when I want to design large hangar doors which will stretch over multiple floor plates.

In the meantime I started working on the first, more simple, door component. As you can see it's just a variant of the wall design, but it will have a removable door, just need to figure out how to do that...

[Malika]

In the meantime though, a little experiment. Many moons ago, Philip Sibbering designed the layout of a Rack Farm room for the Ecorium. Since the terrain I'm working on it also meant for that project, I thought it a nice tribute to put the tiles I've got now together and see how close I could get to that vision...

Original schematic by Philip:


SketchUp version by yours truly:

[Malika]

Ok, I started experimenting a bit!

I increased the walls' height to match the specifications of the Ecorium (4.5 meter ceilings):

The wall is now 7.5cm high, the human standing represents a 30mm model. One thing I really like about this is that the feeling of claustrophobia is back, something I was kinda missing from the original Ecorium design!

I also started working on a first version of the rack farm unit:

it consists of 4 components, matching the floor tiles and should be rather easy to produce. Now need to figure out how to include the trays and such in there without causing undercuts.

[Islacrusez]

As awesome as the feeling of claustrophobia might seem, there's 2 problems: 1, it won't really matter much from the human's perspective, as they have an RTS view and it's pretty much impossible to feel claustrophobic - and in first person view if there were one then the tall ceilings would work against you; 2, it's going to make moving the miniatures even more difficult, and increase the lever effect of knocking the top (as well as the probability of doing so) and cause more strain on the bottom edges.

[Malika]

Thanks for the feedback!

1, it won't really matter much from the human's perspective, as they have an RTS view and it's pretty much impossible to feel claustrophobic - and in first person view if there were one then the tall ceilings would work against you;

I agree with you on the third person view. Maybe also from the first person view. Thinking of it, the way the hall is set up might not even be that claustrophobic. Normally houses have a ceiling of 3m high, and offices/schools/etc have ceilings of around 4.5m. That would fit the scale of the model, nothing too weird actually. It's just because the hallway will feel more narrow due to the higher walls when looking through it, but it's not that bad actually.

2, it's going to make moving the miniatures even more difficult, and increase the lever effect of knocking the top (as well as the probability of doing so) and cause more strain on the bottom edges.

This is my main concern. I don't think that moving the miniatures would be that much more difficult, it's only 2.5 cm added there. The main challenge is keeping the walls stable, which would mean I'd have to make the connectors bigger, and definitely move towards some sort of horizontal dovetail like structure for them, which wouldn't be too difficult.

It's a bit of a bummer that I don't have a 3d printed of my own, that way I could have quickly (and cheaply) made some test models to see what works and what won't...

[Islacrusez]

I don't think that moving the miniatures would be that much more difficult, it's only 2.5 cm added there.

You have to remember that "only" 2.5cm is almost the height of your miniature again on top of the wall. You'll have to reach in between the walls and manipulate the figures with your fingertips, which is far from fun ^^ If you have some lego, mock up a short section of corridors with these dimensions, and see what it's like to move the figures accurately.

As for the dovetails, personally I view this as crucial.

[Malika]

Good point! I've been getting similar feedback elsewhere as well. Perhaps it would be best to stick to the 50mm height for gaming and then do 75mm for those who want to make dioramas. By the way, Philip started a parallel project, which you can view here. We're both kinda experimenting on the possibilities. Now lets hope it won't become some sort of race between us.