How will 3D printing affect wargames and table top gaming?

well, I don't wargame, but I can go to a website like GrabCAD or Thingiverse and make tokens or models for tabletop gaming.

I made a few model houses and tokens with my laser-cutter at work in spare time. I will embrace the tech as it comes.

I lived in a house in the 90s that always had an automatic vector-plotter, tractor printer, standard paper printer, and flatbed scanner. I have watched the tech roll by...(dad was an engineer)

>Not many people can 3D-model
enough people can that you can basically get anything modeled by suggesting that someone "doesn't have the chops" to model something.(this is how you get an engineer to do lots of things)

and some clever dude might just design some freeware programs for modeling custom miniatures.

as the tech rises so does the laymans level of skill.

>There's a bit of initial investment, but the Oracle of Google tells me the cost of filament is about 19 dollars per kilogram. That seems like a much better value by weight than Games Workshop's models, especially when you can print them hollow to get more out of it.
He was talking about a corporate scale. Injection molding is objectively better than 3D printing and likely will pretty much forever. The only real advantage of 3D printing is you don't need moulds which means you can turn a profit even if the production run is very limited, ie. you can make custom miniatures.

Outside of custom miniatures there is no real advantage. If you want to personally make miniatures you are still better off recasting than making your own 3D models, buying a 3D printer, and printing them off.

I just bought a new (honestly brand-new manufactured in 2016) dot matrix printer to replace our 35-year-old dot matrix printer.

You know how hospitals require medical records to be sent via fax, not email? Same sort of situation.

bureaucracies man, they have some WEIRD BONERS for keeping old style equipment...

Are you retarded? I work with hobby level 3D printers and they can produce some seriously sturdy and accurate stuff.

WRONG.

He saw a post about it on Veeky Forums so he knows more about it than you.

>3D-printing can and most likely will become consumer-friendly, but it's at the very least 10 years away, and realistically, it's more like 15.

That wasn't even a realistic assessment of the industry five years ago. Consumer-friendly 3d printing is already present in the market and competitively priced with high-end shops like Forge World, the only limitation is the quality of your render - but that's no more a limitation than the difference between the quality of any sculpt. Crappy 3d prints are over-represented in the marketplace because it's easier for crappy sculptors to bring them to market.

The only question is whether or not the community will embrace open source principles, and whether or not the companies will be scummy enough to target them for it. I'm sure you'll be allowed to get away with modeling & printing WH40k minis, the question is if you'll be allowed to share it online for everyone else. And whether or not you'll be short sighted scum enough to charge people for it, which will only make the community DOA.

It's a lot more like 5 - 10 years

A 3D scanner already exists and the software is there.
I am excited to have a Monster manual with files that allow you to print minis for each encounter. It beats using a model that is sort of correct.

Anyone else a fan of this book?

>I am excited to have a Monster manual with files that allow you to print minis for each encounter.
...I'd pay an extra $20 or $30 for a CD packed with these with a monster manual...

now imagine an armory book where every piece of equipment is in a software add-on that pre-builds a series of snap-able weapons that coincide with the programs that come in the player handbook.

for EXTRA CRAZY SUPER GM FUN
a 3D printer that recycles it's creations...

so once you're done with the printed miniature you can dump it in the bin and re-use it later for other minis

The numbers are with you!
I hope your vision becomes truth!

No need to store hundreds of put modes metal models

I've never read a bad book by Cory Doctorow.

Well, if you haven't read it, it's a slightly outdated but still extremely fun read about THE COMING AGE OF 3D PRINTING.

They deal with the hassle so you don't have to. Seriously how much more consumer friendly can you get.

Personally I think this is better than needing a big and bulky 3d printer at home.

Don't let me dream...

I work at a 3D printer manufacturer. Current tech is nowhere near the fidelity of injection-molded minis, but this is changing. Traditional-technique 3D prints are becoming better and better all the time, especially if you sand them down. In the future we hope to make a machine that can automatically sand the print for you.

For something like Warhams this is vastly cheaper. You're already going to prime and paint, so why not sand? It won't be quite as good but there's no packaging, no shipping, no GW markup. It's very very cheap.

>not many people can 3D model
The software is only going to get easier.

>The price of 3D-printing
Use your local library's printer and pay a few cents for PLA and a few dollars for print time. You don't need to own a 3D printer to use one.

digital tabletop is a much bigger threat to previously existing games than 3D printing. this is coming from someone who 3D prints all of his gaming pieces, too.

once someone makes a truly great digital roleplaying engine, traditional tabletop will take a huge blow.

Idk dude, the table top aspect of the game seems to be the draw for a lot of players. People like painting, building and showing off. The physical presence is important.

Magic online didn't kill card collecting.

it didn't yet. it's in the process of doing so. wotc is in trouble if they don't digitize. blockbuster vs netflix.

>The physical presence is important.
THIS

I regularly play online and in person tabletop games (MtG, Warhammer (on vassal and roll20), and a shit ton of RPGs) and i prefer in person hands down.

The kinaesthetic element is a huge part of the satisfaction for card, board, and war games and it is essential for the full immersion around a tabletop RPG.