There seams to be more and more products becoming available where they are only selling Stl files for customers with the capability of 3D printing and not even offering the option of printed figures . Is this the future of our hobby ?

I don(t think so
A high quality printer ( without any perceptible stairway effect ) is over the 10.000£

I think so, but the printer has to be cheaper.
Maybe in 5 years or so on.
I have bought many printed figures in the last year and where surprised what quality it is.
Very good very funny details.

Don’t know that much about the process but was shown a bust done that was made buying a stl file from a producer and it did have great detail and was told it was printed in a start up set that was $799 . But what does this mean for the traditional sculptor ?

It really isn't that price. Under £500 will get you a good resin printer and supplies.

The stepping/print lines is more caused by people being impatient and not setting the layer micron to a low number and then not finishing it up properly after printing.

The sort of printers that professional master makers use are much finer and often larger so yes, much more expensive.

Personally, for me there is room for both. Home printing hasn't proven to me (yet) to be top end quality like you would find from the likes of Alexandros Miniatures. Many cheap STL files are not up to the quality of a traditional sculpt by the likes of Ebroin. But compared to printing of a few years ago it has really improved and reduced in price.

However; I'm also a suckered for presentation and like to open up a product that someone has taken the time to put together and has used others experience to reproduce (casting) and often sculpt.

There are some good quality printers available under £300 nowadays, but you've got to be into the nerdy side of 3D printing to get the best out of them. I'm sure they will get better and cheaper over the next couple of years, and there are new technologies coming along as well.
I would say yes it is part of the future of our hobby, without doubt.

Yes I agree something about getting a piece where it has went thru someone’s hand of making to the point of you yourself painting your vision of it .

I would have to agree I believe at some point this will be a big part of our hobby . Like it or not

Likely to be a gaming thing more though.

Gents -
During this period of being at home, I had occasion to paint some 3D printed busts.

Advantages from my point of view: 1) Relatively inexpensive to purchase from the creator 3DPrintedDebris through the website Etsy.com. A 5 inch tall bust was about 13 or 14 USD. 2) There faces of people that one does not usually find from the typical vendor (No SS Officers or armored knights, but lots of scientists, political figures, literary notables, etc) 3) The increased size made it easier for me to see to paint their faces.
Disadvantages: 1) Most (but not all) are of a printing spec that would eliminate them from competitions such as the MMSI. One can see the swirls of the printing layers, usually under the chin. 2) I have found one or two that the provided name plate was misspelled. The vendor, in that case, sent me a replacement at no charge.

Samples found at:


Hemingway https://www.etsy.com/listing/716133303/ernest-hemingway-american-journalist?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=bust+hemingway&ref=sr_gallery-1-1&organic_search_click=1&col=1

Tubman https://www.etsy.com/listing/716130...allery-1-1&organic_search_click=1&cns=1&col=1

Enjoy
NR

No. At least, not in the sense of future as, "3D-printed figures will replace figures produced in the traditional method of sculpting a master, making molds and casting it in metal or resin". I don't see this happening generally with miniature figures. Resin didn't replace metal, for example. And there will still be people who want to sculpt a figure, or kitbash one, and there will be people who will want to pay for those figures.

Will it become more common, as the technology improves and gets cheaper? Yes. Same as it will for scale modeling. I've said that we can get to a time in which model companies don't sell kits, they sell the file to print out the kit, which the modeler prints out himself. The technology is already at a point where more and more modelers are buying themselves printers and 3D drafting apps, and producing their own "aftermarket" detail parts for models they build. In the case of injection-molded styrene kits, it could provide a huge savings on overhead for the model company. And I can see building some kind of security into the process, such as some kind of license, to reduce the otherwise obvious issues with copying files.


And I can see some figure modelers and painters who will just print their own. As others have mentioned, I think we'll see this more frequently with fantasy wargamers and painters, than with historical figure painters. But I don't think 3D-printing will replace traditional production.

Prost!
Brad

I think it's degrading to the talent of the real sculptors who do sculpting with vision and talent. 3D printed figures is nothing more than a 3D coloring book. It looks impressive when well painted but then so does a well painted and presented plastic model kit. For my taste there's just something more when you're painting an original made by a human hand, in particular when it comes to sculpting the human figure which takes some serious dedication and talent to do well.

Buns up,
Wayne

https://3dwithus.com/3d-printed-bust-sculptures-ancient-classics-superheroes-villains

and in general
https://www.google.com/search?sourc...gQIARAB&biw=1154&bih=489#imgrc=dSyuW4f7vFDh3M

Too early to tell yet.
I don't see 3D printing as a passing fad, it is here to stay. The only questions are whether manufacturers will go all 3D printing or, as Brad wisely says, the files can be licensed out somehow. I can see figures being an amalgam of traditional sculpting and printing. Eg, man-made aspects such as kit/weapons etc being printed and the rest sculpted.

We live in interesting times.

Better a demo on our field of possible application ; A figurine
after seing it, I must admit it's tempting, I'm almost like Tantalus

Making a digital model is easy but making a GOOD digital model is every bit as hard as making a traditional one, or at least, that's what I believe. Ultimately, it's about what the sculptor wants his creation to look like. If there are now professionals who have established themselves for decades with traditional scuplts then a comparison to a starting amateur-with-an-etsy shop is not entirely fair.

There are professionals picking up digital sculpting, some on this forum. Most of the time I think I can notice a difference but that may be just style. Maybe my imagination but mostly too perfect, too smooth, too symmetric to look perfectly natural. But in smaller scales, Mithril for example has gone fully digital (casting from the printed master, not selling stl files) and the style matches the older models amazingly well. Then the warhammer stuff. I think that style is very suitable for digital modelling. Most of the available stl's are in that style anyway.
Business-wise, I don't believe that selling stl's will ever be big. If we have concerns about recasts then just think how much easier it is to copy a file ...

personal note: started on crafting a wagon from scratch. I wish I had a nice resin printer (or even a not so nice one). CADding a round wheel must be so much easier than trying to spoke bits of carton with match sticks ...

Sculpting, no matter the medium used, show the talent of the actual sculptor and their knowledge of anatomy and how materials interact.

A couple of highly respected and know sculptors are either dabbling or have completely moved over to digital. Raul Latorre, Romain Van den Bogaert, Ebroin, and Joaquin Palacios (sorry if any of those are spelt wrong) all can work in both mediums and Latorre completely moved over to digital.

Things like broken symmetry, especially in areas like faces are happening and I've often commented on sculptors social media post to point out when symmetry looks off because it is too perfect.

There are also a couple of WWII German busts available from FeR Miniatures released in 2020 that used both methods. The hard forms like binoculars, helmets, gas mask cases, etc were sculpted digitally and the printed parts were incorporated into traditional sculpting. The result was excellent natural cloth and solid symmetry on machined equipment. A great combo.

The other area where digital sculptors make traditional look bad is in cuts and connections. I've had digital sculpts go together so well that it's almost insulting to the modeller in me that wants to gap fill. Plus it is easier to create additional or alternative parts.

Keep an open mind as sculptors learn new tools.