Helm's deep table complete

Ok, so this table is sort of a compromise. I have the official resin GW walls of Helm's deep and I wanted to use that in a 4x4 table. I also didn't want to do a dedicated detailed layout but rather something that would be easy to take apart and store. I also wanted the hill the hornburg stands on to be something I can use with other tables.

 

 

 

In the end this project ended up including bought pieces, 3D printed stuff, foamcrafting, plaster casting and all manner of terrain building techniques.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amon Hen table complete

My Amon Hen table is now complete with a hill and some scatter terrain. I might tinker with it some more but I'll call it done at this point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

28mm Winter War trench section

No Winter War set is complete without a trench. Soviets making WW1 style charges against prepared Finnish positions is one of the iconic images of the war, even if in practice it makes for dull wargaming. I actually pretty much completed this during the summer, but it took me quite a while to find a suitable snow product. I was looking at several cheap alternatives, but ended up getting some Woodland Scenics soft flake snow in the end. It worked like a charm for that freshly fallen powdery snow look. I just hope it doesn't become dirty with dust and stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using photogrammetry and 3D-printing to bring real life buildings to the wargaming table

Have you ever looked at a building or terrain feature and thought: "That would make a cool piece on a wargaming table"? Well, it's quite doable using the marvels of modern technology.

Ok, so I bought a drone. I already have a 3D printer. I wondered if there's some synergy there and having seen some articles on photogrammetry, using the power of computer science to build 3D models out of a series of photographs that is, I decided to give it a go myself. Turns out it's much easier to do than you'd think thanks to some excellent products out there, and it's not expensive, either!

First off, you'll need some photos to work with. Photogrammetry algorithms work by detecting keypoints and features in a photo, and linking those to the same points in other photos, taken from different angles. The result will be more accurate the more photos you have and the better your image quality is, obviously.

The drone I have is a Mavic Mini, a small drone that costs about 400 Euros. It has these handy flight macros where the drone takes a video while flying a certain flight pattern. I grabbed a video where the drone did a loop around my subject: an old, collapsing barn in the middle of a field. Just one loop is enough, although later on I realized it would have been handy to get some additional imagery way up close too.

The software I used to build the 3D-model is called RealityCapture. The software is free, but you have to pay for the models you export from it. That means you can freely tinker around with the software and see if you get good results before committing your hard earned coin. The model I created ended up costing a couple of Euros, which is reasonable considering how advanced the stuff happening under the hood is.

RealityCapture uses images instead of a video, so I had to export those from my drone video. With VLC Player, I could do that pretty easily, and I took 10 frames for each second of video. I don't know if that was overkill or not. The price of the exported model depends on the number of frames you use for the model, so you might save on the cost by reducing the frame count.
The photogrammetry process was amazing easy. I just told RealityCapture which directory the images were located in and pressed a button. Boom. I had a model of the barn. Now, I just needed to do a bit of tinkering on the quality settings, doing a noise reduction filter and export the model. That model can then be used as an asset in a 3D project, you can look at it in virtual reality (I have VR goggles too, I'm into gadgets, all right?) and yes, run it through your 3D printer.

To print the model, I first cleaned it up a bit with Blender and Meshmixer. This probably took the most time in the project as I have zero experience in 3D modeling or sculpting and had to learn everything from scratch. There are some unwanted extrusions and a mass on the inside of the model where the camera couldn't reach. Also, the surface texture is pretty subtle, so I tried my hand at enhancing it in some places. I'll discuss the surface textures in a bit after I show you the end result.

I sait it is collapsing. That's why the walls are all wonky!

I used Anycubic Photon to print the barn in 6mm scale. I think the level of detail in this model would probably be enough for 15mm, but larger scales would probably be a stretch until I make models with better surface texture. A quick paintjob later and you can see the results:

I'm really happy with how it turned out and after you know your way around 3D sculpting software, I think you can do a building in an hour. once you grab the footage. As you can see from the greyscale 3D model, the surface texture is thwere, but it's in "true scale" as opposed to the exaggerated detail you see in wargaming. This means buildings built this way rely on you to bring out the surface texture with your brush and paint some on, instead of just letting the wash settle in the recesses.  Still, they'll blend in with my regular stuff easy enough.

The barn next to a Total Battle miniatures cabin and a 3D printed tank. I think I made the model a touch too small, but big buildings tend to get in the way anyway :P

So where to next? This method will be nice to get models of some of the famous surviving buildings of period battles. Also, this method can be used to capture other landmarks too. Say.. you wanted an accurate model of the Devil's Den at Gettysburg, which is something very recognizable and maybe difficult to reproduce using traditional means? Just have someone buzz around with their drone there (when permitted to do so) for a while and you can upload the model to the 'net for all to use. Speaking of which, I tried uploading this to sketchfab, but the project size was too big for their free account, so I'll need to work on the level of detail or something. Stuff to learn! If you have any tips on how to make stuff like cleaning the models or enhancing the surface texture, let me know!

"Smoke and fire" -markers using Led candles and cotton wool

I've seen some nice smoke & fire -markers made using led candles in the net and thought I'd give it a try. What do you think?



MVI 6405 from Mikko Asikainen on Vimeo.

- Take a small Led candle and remove the top if possible
- Take a bunch of cotton wool and knead it long enough that it becomes stiff and looks appropriate
- Attach the wool to the candle base using hot glue. You can add small bits of wool to any areas that need more.
-Give the marker a few puffs of black spray
-All done!

6mm scifi Mars/Dune terrain project

I wanted my Epic Space Marines based on a rust brown desert theme to look like they are fighting on a planet like Mars or Arrakis, and I think I did quite ok. Now of course, I need terrain for them to fight on as well. Here's what I have gotten together so far:

The table itself. I reused an old foldable gaming table I have by painting on a couple of layers of paint mixed with sand. I tried to eyeball the tone of the paint to be as close to the color on my space marine bases as possible.

Lava rocks. I just bought some of these today, as they're sold as rocks for gas barbecues and not available during our BBQ-unfriendly winter. I think they look great, but the color wasn't just right.

I gave a couple of them a wash of watered down paint. Perfect! The color is just right and they pass off as big boulders, blocking line of sight and breaking the monotony of the field. I think I might attempt to do bigger rock formations with them or try to find big ones from aquarium shops.

A set of low hills

And some bigger rocky hills. The paint is still wet so the color is a bit off (like I could get it to reproduce naturally in this light anyway)

Terrain pieces from Xmarx models. The radar tower has a bit missing at the bottom but my friend who made the order neglected to send it with the rest.

These SAM turrets, gun emplacements and supply trucks should make nice objectives

This Geo dome set is missing a couple of smaller housings, the Xmarx man didn't send them and my friend didn't check the contents of the package so I suppose I'll have to do without. I think these will make a nice habitat instead of your regular Epic 40k houses. Maybe I'll find a clear plastic ball to make a "bio dome" for the set.

Getting the end result to look anything like my inspiration will be next to impossible though. But I have to try! What do you think I should add?

Some Musket & Pike and a side project

I got a chance to play a game of the excellent Musket & Pike Battle Series again. This time it was the Battle of Nyborg, 1659. The Danes and the Swedes are at each others throats again. The Swedes were on defence with good morale troops, but the Danes had the numbers.

The opening setup. The Danes outnumber the Swedes but are restricted by some quarreling in the command chain. The Swedes have good ground and superior morale.

The Danes move closer but the hedges make retaining formations difficult. The cavalry wings on the left clash, leaving the usual chaos in their wake (Two equal cavalry wings tend to erase each other off the field in this game).

The Danes attack the Swedish line but are repulsed at every turn. The terrain makes it difficult to exploit numerical superiority, and the Swedish combination of superior morale and advantageous ground makes for a too hard a nut to crack this time.

I didn't remember to take more photos as the game ended up being rather quick. I played the Danes and was unable to find a weakness in the Swedish defense. Even though my troops were recovering their shaken formation in easy charge range of the Swedish cavalry, he would not be baited from his position. It really is a tough puzzle to solve for the Danes. Better luck next time, I suppose.

Next, here's a picture of the hill system I'm working on at the moment:

I've successfully used.. whatsitsname.. the mattress foam thing for hills before. Until now, I've had to cut each hill according to scenario design every time, but now I thought of a better idea. I've started to replace the pre-cut hills with foam hexes, 6 inces across. I lay them out to form a mass closely resembling the hill needed, tape them down using painters tape, and then just lay the gaming mat on top. It worked just fine, and I doubt you noticed any unsightly hex angles poking out of the terrain in the Antietam report!

Last, I've begun building a 1/700 scale Airfix Titanic. My sister usually gets me something rather uninspired like cologne or a pair of boxers as birthday or christmas gifts. This time she let my 7 year old nephew choose a gift for me for my birthday last summer, and I'm quite pleased. He understands!

Anyway, I better finish the model before my nephew forgets he ever got it for me. I haven't done models such as this in ages, and the smell of the poly cement gives me flashbacks to my teenage days and badly painted Spitfire kits.

Total Battle Miniatures' Narrow River System Review for 6mm

Ok, one more terrain component ready for my collection in time for our Antietam action next weekend. I've lamented a lack of a proper river system on my table since the 90's and now I finally decided the time is ripe to just buy one.

I ended up ordering the narrow river system from Total Battle Miniatures as it looked fine and the price was right. After ordering, the company contacted me and told me they now do a brown version as well as the default black one. I thought it surely would look more realistic and said ok. Having straight black for a river was the only thing I hesitated on this product and thought I'd paint over the black.

The mental image I had in my head of a brown river was something like this:

Which I pretty successfully modeled in my training terrain piece here:

That's what streams and lakes look like here in Finland. Well, when I opened the package I found these:

The color on these pieces is spot on for a rapid stream or river in flood or with soil mixed in the water. Like here:

So, I may not have gotten exactly what I thought I would, but the color is still very good for portraying the kind of river it wants to. BTW, I lifted the pictures of the real rivers from a blog here. Check it out, there's good stuff about modeling rivers there. Anyway, back to the set. The material is made of flexible resin and is very flexible and rubbery like so:

The material seems strong and durable, and I think you have to punish them hard to break or tear them. The sections are 4 centimeters wide, and the water portion is 25 millimeters wide. Perfect for games like Fire & Fury, that is. The water portion of the pieces is glossy and you're not actually supposed to paint them. The gloss has been achieved in the molding without any varnish or the like. It's quite good considering there's no "water products" involved.

I did some experimenting on painting the sections by working on the backside of a section. No paint nor ink would stick on the glossy part, but after roughing it up a bit with sand paper, I could get paint to stick. I painted the section brown with your standard Citadel paints and then tried two water products. Vallejo's Still Water and Woodland Scenics' Water Effects.

Still Water cracks when bent, so it was a bad call. Water Effects however bends quite nicely and I didn't do any damage while bending and twisting the section for a while. In the end I decided to go with the original colour, but I think you can get a nice result with Water Effects, if you don't subject the pieces to too much mechanical strain.

I washed the pieces in soap water, painted the banks and added some flock and shrubs:

The end result is very good for a flexible, modular set, and I'm sure it'll do a fine job at slowing down troops on my field, even if the water is a bit muddy.

An isolated farm overlooks a stream in the north-American wilderness.

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