TJM

I use QCAD, it is very cheap for a lifetime license, I find it very easy and intuitive to use with no prior CAD experience and there is a free trial you can just download to evaluate if this is for you. The downside is that it is strictly 2D, so all the spacial considerations will have to happen in your head! It's like doing it on paper, but with digital precision and layers. It is very easy to import an image, scale it, and then start to draw your design on top of that reference. I have designed several PoB hulls from original construction drawings like this over past year. Have a look here: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/37190-historical-plans-via-cad-to-laser-cut-parts-practicum/ You can also use Onshape, which is online and completely free AND full 3D. But the learning curve is steeper and I have not progressed very far on mine yet!

Hi Manning, It is not permitted to re-sell files or figures made from files obtained through Heroforge. This thread is to showcase the viability of making your own figures with Heroforge (which is very easy through their user interface, it runs in the browser). You are all welcome to post your tests from Heroforge in this thread - playing with the app is completely free, so you can just give it a go 🙂. BR TJM

Thanks, @Thukydides! I totally agree, I need a little more, especially on the reds. I will try it out 😃

I have tried again with my new brushes and a few new paints and a wet pallette to keep the paints thin and flowing. These are the steps I took: 1. Base coat yellow areas with a light brown: 2. main colour layer with yellow ochre. 3. Bace colour on the red areas: 4: wash all areas with brown wash. 5: go over with main yellow colour again. 6. Dark red wash on red areas 7. Highlights with a yellow/beige mix and a light red 8. final highlights with beige: I am ok with this result and from normal viewing distance it looks totally fine. A little unhappy about the monogram details though. I am considering re-printing this but with the z-axis scaled to 150% or so. It should make it much easier to paint when the relief is not as shallow and it may still be ok in terms of overall thickness. It is very thin as it is. But I would probably be ok with this one if it is the best I can get 🙂. BR TJM

I have printed some of the figures in twice the size, that is 1:32. They hold up quite well, even at this scale! Here you see the whole crew along with a 24 pdr cannon: A few close-ups: While the 1:64 are tiny, these in 1:32 are really huge! Twice the linear size, 8 time the volume. The math is clear, but the reality when comparing one to the other is still striking. Here they are with their 1:64 counterparts: BR TJM

These are amazing! Absolutely fantastic design.

I am doing it myself! It's just that I am not allowed to sell the figures made from Heroforge files that I have bought to anyone else, according to their terms. But there are many people who offer 3D printing services, so it may be viable to create your own Heroforge files and have them printed by someone. I am sorry, I don't know any US sellers of scale figures - I only know that Vanguard Models in the UK sells very nice resin figures.

Thank you @manning16, @capnharv2, @CDR_Ret and @Chuck for your comments and to all of you for the likes. Much appreciated! @manning16, apart from unfortunately not having the time for such a venture, selling Heroforge prints are forbidden in their terms - it would undermine their business, I guess. You can print the minis for others, but they need to own the stl from Heroforge - that also means that you can use print services to have your own Heroforge files printed, but you have to ensure that they don't get sold to anyone else. But if you have access to a resin 3D printer, a one year subscription for Heroforge costs 168$. That sounds steep, but with 60 credits for stl downloads included, it is a, to me at least, very reasonable 2.80$ per model - and you can of course print as many of them as you could wish for. I think that is good value!

Alright, that went much better than I had hoped! Except for two figures with insufficient supports in one spot, they all printed perfectly! Even with all the ridiculously thin elements like the saber hand guards etc. This technology is some real Sci-Fi. Remember, these are at 1:64 scale, so around 26 mm for man-height. Here's a bunch of pictures: And then I made a copy paste error in the slicer and got two figures in the same spot.. 🤣 But I am very happy with these results. With a few tweeks of the few misprints, they should all be good to go. BR TJM

Really great explanation and it looks very good. I love your choice of blue colour!

Hi All, I have splunged on a one year Heroforge membership which, apart from their full customization functionality ('kitbashing'), comes with 60 credits for STL downloads. I have plans to use it for designing parts of ship ornaments like figureheads (see my Christiania build), but also for crew figures. With the full customization options unlocked, it is possible to control hand and feet size (along with all other body proportions) - I mention this as I have seen several comments on the cartoonish looks of Heroforge minis. This is definately true for the stardard proportions, but it is possible to get quite nice proportions with a bit of tweaking. Another note - it is difficult to get anything close to historically accurate in terms of clothing (except for very simple clothes). The site is meant for creating Fantasy and Sci-Fi miniatures for tabletop games like D&D. So the designs will not hold up to historical scrutiny or large scale models. But for my use, which is scale figures at 1:64, very little detail will be actually visible when printed, despite the very high resolution of modern resin 3D printers. And my paint job is likely to cover anything that is left to be scrutinized anyways... But this should enable me to create more crew figures for ships at a reasonably low cost. Here are a few images from the slicing software: I have prepared a supported set and filled my little build plate: Now I have to try to print them, hopefully I will get a chance to try tomorrow. They are only about 26 mm tall (plus/minus, depending on hats and posture) and I have no idea if I have supported them sufficiently. Lets see how it goes! BR TJM

Thank you! I remember all of these techniques when you mention them, but I am so rusty! So thanks for the great description here. I am at least encouraged to try again and really try my best, keeping these points in mind - I think the postman has delivered my new brushes today, so....

Thanks Ronald 🙂

Thank you for that, I really appreciate it. And yes I know we are all our own worst critics, but I just know I could do better once 😄.

Log entry 25 - stern colour tests While planking snails on, I have been trying a few options for the stern decorations on some mis-prints (I had a few, as I had a hole in the release film on my printer...). The upper test uses non-metalics and I started with a medium brown, followed by yellow ocre with a few beige highlights. The second is using Vallejo Liquid Gold with a brown shade. I would do highlights as well jere, but decided at this point that I will be going the non metallic route. Now for a few observations: - I am woefully out of practice when it comes to painting miniatures. I did this for many, many years and while I never achieved mastery, I was a solid painter. Not so anymore! - I really need new brushes. I don't have a detail brush that will keep a point or let the paint flow smoothly (I hope this is a big part of my bad performance here). Order placed. - I need to start with a lighter tone of brown/yellow and use more colours in between. I have gotten away with this combo before, but on small parts. - these were quick tests, just around an hour of work. I will spend more time on the final piece. - on a side note, the liquid metal paints from Vallejo absolutely destroys brushes and while coverage and finish is great, it cannot be applied to fine details (like the tiny poles on my friese) as it is super runny! I am still waiting for new brushes, but I tried again with lighter colours on another scrap piece: Better, but still not satisfied. It looks fine from a distance and the macro shots reveal all the nasty stuff, but I would still like to do a little better than this. And I have only base coated the red flags for now. I would like the white cross of the Danish flag on the big one on the right, but I am not sure I can make it work. Let's see what new paints and more time will do. BR TJM

That is really fantastic! Can I ask what your process looks like and what digital tools you are using to get such a stunning result?

Very nice!

They really look fantastic! If it is feasible to do them in 1:64 scale, I would definitely buy a bunch!

This looks like a good balance to me! Fantastic looking model!

Thanks for the likes 😃. Thanks Ronald, much appreciated! They are a bit cartoony by default, but you can just make the body size larger without changing hands, feet and head until the proportions look more realistic. I have done that for all the tests I have made. This is the only example where I have purchased the STL and printed it, but there will be more coming 😉. Here's a few examples:

Log entry 25 - 3D printing and designing the figurehead I had a lot of mis-prints trying ro get everything dialed in, but fortunately it mostly wastes time, as the material consumption is very small for these 1:67 scale parts. In the end, I got a nice print of the stern friese: And a few detail shots: I am very pleased with the detail level. It is finer than my painting skills will support I am afraid, but I have a bunch of almost perfect mis-prints to practice on first! This is how it goes together with the sten parts: The fit is very good, though the back of the print is quite uneven. I will sand it a bit and then I will use some filler at the edges when I have glued it on - it will be a while before I reach that stage, but now it is ready. You have to forge while the iron is hot, so while I was 'at it' I tried to design the figurehead. Now, back in the first post, i showed the two designs from the archive: a lion as proposed by the original architect Krabbe, and a lady in Greek dress as proposed by his successor H. Gerner in 1794. However, the War Museum in Copenhagen has an original model of a figurehead for this exact ship! And it looks like none of the drawings: I don't know how many different figureheads the ship had, but I am confident one of them at least looked like the model in the museum, and I will therefor go for that design. I believe the building she is holding is the Oslo Cathedral (then called the Christiania Cathedral), showing the provenance and namesake of the ship. Now for the tricky part: how to get a reasonable resemblance to this original model? Enter heroforge.com, where you can design your own figures meant for tabletop fantasy role playing games like D&D. With a subscription, you get full poseability of the models and credits to download stl files. I did my best to recreate the model, though there are many discrepancies. I then added the Cathedral and other ornamental elements in the slicing software. The most difficult part technically was to remove a section that fits the stern. This was done by drawing the shape in QCAD, making a 3D extrusion of this, importing it and the figurehead model into Onshape (free online 3D design programme - thanks for pointing me in this direction a while back in another thread @Thukydides!), and then subtracting the prow shape from the figurehead. This is what I got: Overall I am happy with the resemblance despite the differences - I am a bit constrained by the clothing options on heroforge. A few mis-prints later and I got an actual figurehead: Yay! The fit is abit too tight, I will sand the prow a bit. And I broke the top of the Cathedral spire... Sigh. I will glue on a replacement or just re-print the next time I print something. A few reflections to end this very long post: Heroforge looks very promising also for creating crew models. It will never be as good as hand modelled figures by real 3D artists like the stuff you can get from Vanguard Models, but it allows for an infinite variability. Some may notice that this figurehead is a bit larger and especially taller than the Sphinx figurehead I am replacing: This fits with the Christiania drawings, but it could seem like I might get into trouble with the bowsprit! Fortunately, the angle of the bowsprit on the sailplan for Christiania is significantly steeper than on Sphinx, so I think it will be all fine. Now I need to get on with that planking job! Thanks for looking and following along! BR TJM

They look great, I really like your dark wood paint scheme for the insides. Perhaps a bit of contrast by painting the wale black? Or a yellow, red or blue trim somewhere? But they look great already!

Thanks for the comment and complement! It makes sense that carved designs were more or less balanced for weight, but I actually think frieses like this one were painted on, perhaps with the exception of the central monogram design, but I am not sure. I know I would not be successful if I tried to freehand paint it, so I went for a 3D design. As for symmetry, none of the Danish ships from 1700's are completely symmetrical in their ornamentation. Here are a few more or less random examples from the archive: These are definitely closely balanced, but not quite symmetrical - the last example looks almost symmetrical but that is not too common.

Log entry 24 - 3D 'modelling' the stern friese It has been a long while since my last update, and planking is moving forwards, but slowly - I am spending time on Elben and other projects instead of just getting the planking done. Anyways, since the beginning of this build, and actually well before I started it, I have been wondering how exactly to do the decorations. I have moved from the idea of using a vinyl cutter to engraving the actual original sketc with the laser, but now I have the small 3D printer and I feel printing the friese and other ornaments is the perfect use of this tool. Only problem: I have absolutely zero 3D modelling skills! And I don't have access to fancy 3D modelling programs (or the patience to lear how to use them...). So this is what I have come up with: I can draw simple shapes to scale in QCAD, export them as PNG and then use imagetostl.com to 'extrude' the design. By using shades of gray, I can get some depth structure. The internet is full of free and paid-for 3D assets in STL format. With a few of these, and a lot of copy pasting, tweaking and, cutting rotating, etc, I can 'compose' a scene in the slicer hardware (I use Lychee). I am sure expericed 3D modellers will cringe at this workflow, but I won't do this very much and there is almost no learning curve. So for now, this is how I do it. Here is the original drawing that I am woking from out of the three available sketches: Even though this is as simple as it gets for this period, there is alot going on when each element is added individually. Most of the elements are simple: flags, cannon, swords, a drum, a wreatch, etc. The fase to right. gave me some issues - I am not sure what else is depicted around it. It may be a hat of sorts (which is what I wnet with), but it is difficult to decipher. Anyways, here is the current state of my 3D 'hacking': And with blue background to better see the individual elements: I used a smoke-element to give texture around the other stuff. I think that works quite well. Here is a few zoom-ins: It looks a bit rough at this scale, but remember how small it really is; around 120 mm for the full width at the bottom or the arch - the oval around the CVII monogram is 8 mm tall. The squares on the background are 1x1 cm. I think the few edge imperfections will be fine after I print it. I will make a test print when I return home from the Easter hollyday I am currently on, and look forward to seeing if this is viable at all! Now I am thinking about the colour: black background, mainly gold or yellow details, perhaps with a few coloured flags? The face should pehaps be white? Hmm.... BR TJM

They are soooo small! Looking great!