Modular Malifaux Terrain Tiles

[The Green Git]

Those canals really look nice Greenbull. I'm going to steal the idea for curbs for my roads.

Thanks both Sholto and Greenbull for inspiration.

[oozeboss]

The quality of your work - as high as it is - is almost as admirable as your generosity of spirit in sharing your visions & processes, and providing guidance to all who seek it.

I have nothing to add except to pay due tribute to you, as this thread will very much be the template for my own scenic creations throughout the majority of 2011.

[Sholto]

@oozeboss - thanks! I look forward to seeing what you make

I made the second of my three canal pieces last week, and here it is:-

This one doesn't have the blue foam 'legs' added yet, or the columns inside the canal. It does not need the internal columns, however, as the bridge keeps the structure rigid. I am pretty sure I will add them, however, just to keep everything looking consistent.

A word of warning - I have found that after a few days the Vallejo Still Water has contracted slightly and the first canal piece I made now does not sit perfectly flat on its blue foam 'legs'. There is just a few mms of wobble, but it's enough to notice. It is making me rethink applying Vallejo Still Water to the 2nd and 3rd pieces. I understand that 2-part resins do not shrink as they dry, so I might try some Envirotex Lite.

I also made the first of two harbour/ port pieces:-

These are really pretty basic, and are quick and easy to make. The baseboard is 5mm foamcore rather than a cork tile (I have run out of cork tiles). I just cut around another cork tile to ensure it was exactly the right size. Then I applied 4 open water texture PDFs to it. After that I cut out the quayside PDFs, mounted them on foamcore and glued them onto the baseboard. To lift them off the water, I added 10mm risers underneath, made of little squares of foamcore doubled-up. You cannot see them unless you get right down and have a look.

The wooden quay posts are not holding the quay up at all thanks to the hidden risers. I made them using 5mm diameter wooden dowel, and cut 1" lengths. I will stain them with brown ink (which, incidentally, is how I make Harry Potter wands, but that's another story )

I added the sewer outflow just for some visual interest, making sure to cut a notch in the quay planking (otherwise the sewage would spill over the walkway - urgh!)

The harbour/ port pieces are intended to be used without being raised up 2" like all the other ground tiles. This ensures that the water levels of the canal and harbour pieces are at the same level across the gaming table. I will make a short set of steps (probably two) to allow models to move up and down.

(EDIT 1: The sweetcorn and other items are holding the foamcore bay walls in place while the glue sets up. Just in case you're wondering!)

(EDIT 2: One of my regular email commenters has asked if the sweetcorn and nutella are used in texturing my sewer pieces. No comment )

Edited December 20, 2010 by Sholto

[greenbull]

Outstanding work Sholto! The visual aspect you achieve with your way of work is very realistic, at the expense of a lot more work of course.

Regarding Vallejo Still water ( which I used as well) :applying spray varnish before coating with still water helped a lot in prevention of bubbles. But like you mention, there's other problems: warping, which I prevent by placing heavy objects on the corners of my tiles.

A recent problem that now is coming up: edges of the tile curve up because of the tension the drying water gives on the self-adhesive printing paper.... Seems like using the still water is like opening a can of worms!

One more thing: do you mind if I keep posting my pictures in your thread, or do you prefer that I start another one?

[Sholto]

Happy for you to keep posting them here, but you might want to do your own thread just to showcase your own work a bit - it deserves it.

I have ordered an 8oz bottle of the Envirotex Lite, and I will try that on my port tile. Given how much Still Water shrinks on a tile 6" wide with supporting walls I hate to think how much it would warp a 12" tile with no support. I will paint the Envirotex on, rather than pour it, and see how that goes at first.

Another possibility is using clear adhesive film, and attaching that to the water texture PDFs. It certainly fits the theme of self-adhesive parts, and might give a much glossier texture than printing on gloss paper. I found some in my local art shop for £2 (1m x 50cm roll). They also have lots of that foamed PVC, so I might pick some of that up and see how it works. It is much more flexible than foamcore, but foamcore creases if you bend it too much. Foamcore also takes dents and dings easily, whereas the foamed PVC felt much stronger.

[Veskit]

I have to say props to both of you, keep posting, you guys are inspiring me to go ahead and do my own set. Thanks for not only your creativity but for sharing with so many great pics!

[The Green Git]

Have you guys considered Future floor wax for your water effects? It's thin, brushes on and leaves no brush marks and is shiny! I use it all the time for water and glass effects in other modeling projects. It's not really wax, btw, but liquid acrylic that dries crystal clear.

The only unknown is how it will take to porous materials. If you are using sealed glossy label paper it shouldn't be an issue. Water soluable ink might be though... dunno. Maybe I'll experiment with a little.

[Sholto]

@GreenGit - I have it, but it is not as glossy as Water Effects or even gloss varnish for that matter. Still, need to try everything

[The Green Git]

Ah, Gloss Varnish. They sell this clear glossy stuff in spray cans for crafting and what not... that's another option.

I just printed out a test sheet with my near-dead Deskjet cartridge and spread a bit of Future on it to see how it looks when dry.

[greenbull]

You never get a good gloss effect with those spray cans on poreus paper... Trust me, I tried!

[dahli.llama]

Inspired by all this, I just picked up the Thoumonts TLX set from WorldWorks. I'm not sure if I'll use the TerraLinx stuff, of if I'll just build individual buildings. One thing I need to check is the scale. I'm pretty sure the buildings will need to be scaled up to work with the Malifaux models.

Regardless, I've go my supplies ready and I have a week off from work for the holidays. Hopefully I'll be able to spend some time and get some nice stuff put together.

[greenbull]

By upscaling you mean: making smaller buildings? I can confirm that the buildings are a bit big as they are, but to be honest, this is nit-picking.

[dahli.llama]

By upscaling you mean: making smaller buildings? I can confirm that the buildings are a bit big as they are, but to be honest, this is nit-picking.

I actually meant, making bigger buildings. Or at least bigger textures on the walls.

I printed off two copies of one of the wall sections with doors to test. One was printed at the normal scale and the other was printed at 150%.

The door on the 100% wall is about 3mm shorter than my gun-Viktoria model if measured from her feet. If measuring from her base, then the door is about 10mm too short.

The door on the 150% wall is about 10mm taller than Viktoria if measured from the bottom of her base.

So it looks like the Thoumont's building should be scaled up 125% to really fit the characters.

Everything I've read suggests that the WorldWorks stuff is done in a 1 inch = 6 feet scale. And since Malifaux models are at about a 1.5 inch = 6 feet scale it made sense to go up 150%. I tried that with one of their Village Works buildings and it looks pretty good.

I don't plan on making a single large building with this either. I want to make a cohesive looking town with multiple buildings and this looks to be a good way to do it.

[Ratty]

Started using the Gimp to combine together and scale the images. It's going well I've got the raw files to print out 3 Towers, 2 bridge Segments and 3 Ramps. Which will be our target to complete tomorrow, starting with the ramps and bridges to get our eye in.

[greenbull]

@dahli-ilama: I prefer buildings on the smaller side. But this is of course very subjective.

@ratty: speaking about Gimp: I have used it a lot now to add pieces to the blank corners since I don't use the tlx-system from WWG. Lately I discovered that most walls are now 2 mm's short... Could it be that importing a pdf in Gimp, and saving as a Jpeg file alters sizes? ( I have always printed the files on 100 %...)

[Ratty]

I've been printing directly from Gimp and the sizes seem good once you have set them up.

Day 1. After having issues last night with the Gimp crashing while saving (I mean what modern program doesn't save to a tmp file and then copies over the original file once it's saved succesfully, Stupid Stupid Stupid). Today went off without many hitches. Managed to make a large 1' raised area a tower with removable roof, a ramp and a bridge. I'm not doing base tiles as 1. we couldn't get cork tiles due to Snow. 2. I might run the raised areas with my ash board as I already have a lot of steampunk scenery to go with it. If I go with this I may some free standing roads. Though I love the look of the canals so maybe once I have my main set of pieces I will go back to the base board and rework it.

[Sholto]

Good job, Ratty - more fast work, and the quality looks superb. I see you're using pins to hold the foamcore in place. I still haven't tried that, and it's probably a whole lot easier than using tin cans

Try using the 3" railings instead of the 6". They are the same size, but you get far fewer notches to cut out, and I found cutting out notches took up a lot of time. Make sure and ink over the green line on the 3" railings where you're supposed to cut them in half.

[Ratty]

I would just remove the green line on the image in the GIMP before printing, but I'm really not having any issues at all cutting out the railings, it's actually really fast. But I've had a lot of practice with a scalpel if you know what I mean. Are you using a steel rule when your doing it or doing it by eye?

[tadaka]

Any one else have an issue where one way prints out 6 inch and the other is just over 6 inch for the tiles. Printed a ton of them and they are useless as they dont fit right.

[Sholto]

Not personally, but this guy on the WWG forum had what sounds like exactly the same issue.

[Ratty]

Proof that it's genetic. This is my parents papercraft Christmas village.

BTW it wasn't me that added the giant rodents.

[Shinigami]

awesome,

but i miss the amry tanks and helicopters battling the giant rampaging rodents

[Ratty]

awesome,

but i miss the amry tanks and helicopters battling the giant rampaging rodents

This is England, in that amount of snow all the tanks are stuck somewhere on the M25 and the helicopters are grounded.

[Ratty]

Day 2

So far printed all the parts to make 2 more towers, a bridge, another 1" x 1" section and 2 more ramps. Attached most of it to a A1 sheet of foam card so far, The little pile on the right is the bits for 2 ramps which I managed to fit on the first board.

I still have 20 of the 50 label sheets I brought so I'm putting together the GIMP files for them tonight, so I can get them printed tomorrow morning. I want to get all the printing out of the way before the shops close for christmas as I don't want to find myself out of printer ink while all the shops are closed.

The plan for the next 20 sheets is to make 1 of the higher bridges like Sholtos and to make at least 3 pieces with stairs leading down to the ground level. This will give me 3 Ramps and 3 Stairs so it should be easy enough to get between levels. I will probably also use so GW Cities of death bits to make some ladders that can be hooked onto walls to give extra ways of moving between levels.

[Shinigami]

looking good,

curious to see it all completed and put together,

now get of your arse and go help dig out the tanks on the M25 to fight the giant rampaging rodents!