3D Printing and At-Home Fabrication Tips

In Part 1 of this New Thing post, I wrote about how I made the  whirlwind for my Gloomhaven Wind Demon model .  This time, I want to write about how I made that creepy demon hand. I used the same basic technique that I wrote about for the Forest Imp model , but I think that I improved it a lot here.  Like with the imp, the first thing that I did was to add the basic armature so that I could build my model over it.  In this case, I only wanted an arm and hand, so I just deleted the rest of the armature until those were the only bones that I had left.  Then, I added a mesh and drew edges over each bone, so that I could apply the Skin  and Subdivision Surface  modifiers to give me some basic geometry again. And it really didn't work very well.  As I saw while working on the Living Bones model , the Skin modifier really doesn't like it when you have a bunch of complex intersections... and the bones of a hand are nothing if not complex.  I...

I just got a 3D printer (I ended up choosing a Prusa MK3 kit because I'm a nerd), mainly to make upgraded components for my tabletop games.  As such, it was pretty important to me that I be able to print minis, so I was a little hesitant to go the FDM printer route.  In the end, I decided to go that way because I didn't want to mess around with the resin from an SLA printer (I've got young kids in the house), and the Printed Minis subreddit had some pretty good looking FDM prints, so I figured that I'd give it a try. How do you get started with 3D printed minis?  Well, firstly, there's some software that you need to know about.  I'd say that there are two general categories of software that you'll use in 3D printing: software for making 3D models, and software for getting ready to print 3D models.  Of course, there is some overlap where a piece of software can do both, but 3D printing generally requires software to do those two things.  Today, I'm go...