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April 14 2020
So…Fractured Empire, the expansion for Legends of Kalidasia that introduces the Colayth Guard back into Heroes of the Heragul, was planned for a release about 18 months ago. However, I didn’t set aside the required amount of time to complete the expansion until several months ago.
The good news is that Fractured Empire has been sent over to the printers for its initial production run. The bad news is that we are in the middle of a global pandemic which is affecting much of the economy.
For the Legends of Kalidasia product line, I generally use The Game Crafter for most of the print products. In accordance with an order from the Governor of Wisconsin that applies to the whole state and consideration of the safety of their employees, The Game Crafter has shut down until April 24th 2020. April 24th was the expected end date of the Governor’s order.
Considering how things are going around here in Michigan, April 24th is probably an ambitious date, but at the time of this article, no later date has been posted. As a result, I am not sure when production of Fractured Empire will occur, but that is kind of how things are going in general these days.
How does the current situation otherwise affect Kalidasia Media Productions, LLC? Given I alone handle the day to day operations and sales of this company, I should be able to fulfill orders as long as the stock is available. Given the situation with The Game Crafter, I am limited to the stock on hand for printed materials, but I have the resources for making more Kalidasia Miniatures and I should be able to release several new resin printed miniatures later this year.
That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more updates, but like most people, the current situation is out of their hands for the time being.
January 28 2020
In the previous article in this series, I was able to successfully print a Surakari warship with my Prusa SL1, but I had to crank up the support settings. This left the bottom of the miniature visibly scarred.
One thought was to split the miniature in half and print the top and bottom halves as independent parts. Since Kalidasia warships are designed to be cast in two part molds, each one has a line on which the miniature can be split into printable halves. The first challenge is that while the model can be split in two, the 3D model was not built with this in mind. I had to make quite a few adjustments to the Blender model to allow for this setup.
Next, by default, Prusa Slicer likes to support the miniature off the base. This is a setting that can be overridden, but the software strongly recommends it. With the models setup, I printed them out.
One advantage with this style is that it reduces the overall height of the print. Given how these LCD Masking printers work, This means a significant reduction in the print time and less wear on the consumable parts of the printer. However, none of that matters if the print does not work.
With this process, the print did complete successfully. Both halves of the warship cured as expected and since the bottom of each piece did not require any detail, plenty of strong supports could be used to prevent the piece from detaching from supports. However, curing plastic, no matter which method is used, has a nasty tendency to curl up. As plastic solidifies, forces can pull on parts of the model at different rates. This can cause the edges of a model to deform slightly. This is probably most famous with FFF 3D printers and bed adhesion. As layers are added to a FFF print, the cooling plastic can cause the corners of a print to peel off the print bed. This results in the bottom of the print to not be flat.
Something similar happened here. Neither half of the miniature had a flat base. This means it was not possible to glue the two halves together in a way which looked decent. Well, its back to figuring out how to print the miniature in one piece. More on that in the third part of this series.
January 5 2020
For some time, I have wanted to add a resin 3D printer to my small collection of printers. After some deliberation and comparing of specs, I settled on the Prusa SL1. With choosing one of the more expensive resin based printers, I was hoping I would be able to integrate the 3D printer into the Legends of Kalidasia Workflow. Over the next few posts in this series, I will explore exactly where the printer will fit in.
Resin 3D printers have a vat of liquid resin that is cured one layer at a time. The bottom of the vat is generally a plastic film and each layer of the miniature is cured attached to this film. The printer must than remove the layer from the film without causing the miniature to detach from the build plate or break away from existing layers.
Larger miniatures can have a real problem with breaking away from its supports and for resin printers, large is a relative term. A Surakari Frigate, which measures a little under 2″ long is considered a large miniature. At the time I’m writing this post, I have been having lots of problems with a Surakari Frigate breaking away from its supports.
This is not an impossible problem to solve. It is just a process of trying different alignments and support options. The image shown at the top of the post is the one successful print I have had at this time. That one was oriented parallel to the build surface. While the quality of the top of miniature is excellent and is even better than the pewter production miniatures, the bottom of the miniature is in rough shape because of all the supports.
If you want to try out that particular print, here is the SL1 file for the Prusa SL1.
Anyway, that’s it for now. More updates on this process will be out soon.
September 7 2019
In a recent Youtbue video on my other channel, The Tabletop Battlefield I posted a behind the scenes tutorial for the Legends of Kalidasia Fractured Empire Trailer.
In this tutorial, I sued Hitfilm Pro to add the weapon effects to a scene where Colayth Guard Dryden Heavy Destroyers attack with their main weapons.
January 16 2019
