Editing Casting (section)

== 2021 3D Printing Update: Death Comes For The Archbishop == 

What was once a dream in 2016 is now a passionate, lustful reality that fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls of all flavours can get in on and enjoy. We've had quite a wild ride the last few years, starting with access to higher resolution print services like Shapeways, which was and remains a great option to get your hands on conversion parts. Everything from shoulder pads for [[your dudes]] or iconography you can attach to existing pauldrons, to special weapons and helmets. From complete minis all the way up to customization parts to make your [[Imperial Knight]] more [[Space Wolves|Space Yiffs]] friendly in one notably awesome example. 

That however was just the beginning. Enter Stereolithography (SLA) printing. A form of 3D printing technology that uses light reactive resin to produce high quality prints in a reasonable amount of time. This method coming to the home printing market signaled rise of even cheaper home 3D printing. Several companies make SLA and MSLA machines specifically targeted at the wargammer/hobbyist market that are fairly affordable by hobby standards. The Elegoo Mars series and Anycubic Photon family all start in the 200-300 USD range. With that massive drop in price, and concurrent increase in resolution, the time has come, the Bell of Terra has tolled.

We have also seen a rise <s>in our trousers</s> {{BLAM}} Ahem. A rise in services to provide STL files (the file you need to 3D print something) to the masses. Between direct sale options like myminifactory, various kickstarters, subscription services, patreons and so on there's essentially a galaxy of forge worlds worth of artists churning out high quality, sometimes even pre supported STL files with a galaxy's worth of range, options and other assorted cool stuff for your hobby enjoyment. You name it, there's probably at least two versions out there from different artists.

Any game you might want high quality, good looking minis for, you can generally find these days, and either get the STLs to print them yourself or get other people to print them for you. Be it war games, board games, RPGs or anything in between. Or just get some giant statue or bust to show off your painting skills. Prices and your mileage in terms of looks may vary, but generally you'll see pretty steep discounts compared to official products, and in many cases you'll be able to get quality as good as or better than official minis. Assuming official minis for what you want even exist. Want corrupted [[Solar Auxilia]] for counts as cultists? 3D printing has you covered where even Forge World fails to go the distance and you don't even have to sell some of your organs for the privilege. 

Just as an example, <s>the official GW [[Blood Knights]] kit is listed on their site for 100 USD, it's also no longer available on said website as of time of writing.</s> Psych, there's a new [[Blood Knights]] kit coming. The example's still valid though. The original resin Blood Knight kit was $100 at the end there, and gods only know how much the new plastic kit will cost. If you don't want to give GDubs your money or just can't afford their prices, 3D printing is still there for you. You can find some excellent vampire knights on horse back that would work perfectly as counts as Blood Knights from at least one artist, and several places will do a print of a unit of five of that unit with all the options for less than 40 USD shipped. Still not cheap... but a 60 USD discount is nothing to sneeze at if you just want the mini goodness without having to purchase and learn how to go through the process of 3D printing minis yourself. 

While GW's current price trajectory continues to rocket skywards, the over all market trend for 3D printing is downwards. Some models of Anycubic Photon can go for as little as 200 USD at regular pricing, so 30 USD more than the new [[Necron]] [[Monolith]], and at one point you could catch a Photon on sale for 169 USD. The numbers and the minis now available speak for themselves. How long it takes for this changing reality to start putting pressure on GW and the main stream manufacturers is another story. For GW in particular they have the benefit of still being in plastic, which is much nicer to work with than resin for a lot of people purposes, and their sculpts are still generally pretty good for your average person's general purposes. However, that doesn't change the fact that 3D printing is giving hobbyists new options on an incredible scale. 

Honestly the mind boggles at the possible implications for the industry that 3D printing can entail. As noted above, for big manufacturers one of the big costs is molds. Let's take [[Flames of War]] for example. Battlefront maintains a ludicrous range of specific sub types of various vehicles, many of which are still in resin, white metal, or some combination of the two. It makes sense to invest in plastic manufacturing for high production run vehicles like say the more common marks of Panzer IV tank. Making an expensive plastic mold for the Sd.Kfz. 251/3, a radio half track that many players won't even need one of on the other hand, doesn't make sense.  Perhaps it would make sense for Battlefront to cease production of these more specialist items at their primary production facility and give some of their distribution facilities 3D printers so they can produce items like that directly. Once they're going that route, it's only a short walk up the road to offering STL files to hobbyists so they can produce the Battlefront sculpts themselves and cut out S&H and production costs (for Battlefront) entirely.  STL files for fictitious SPESS MEHREENS may be legally dubious, but public domain STLs of actual historical vehicles are completely kosher.

As an amusing side-note, the previous version of the '3D Printing' subsection made a observation how it is expected for GDubs to get more and more into [[Video Games]] in the ''near future''. Well, as of 2021, there are 11 games that are coming out or already out in this year alone, for comparison in the entire 00s there were about 14 games - make of that what you will.