Free Papercraft Buildings
Peppin Kishore
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Can't agreee more, I have been using fold flat since about 1996. I have never understood why it never caught on big time. Why stop at builidings? I do hills in module form as well. Its supprising what can be done. I started out using cerial boxes as they had long term built in creases and cheap peinters were still dot matrix.
I did more hills than above and even a cargo ship. There is a whole world out there from old bridges to Motorway bridges to industrial complexes, even a missile launch pad with missiles to be built and you can have them all as the space requirement is minimal.
I am working on 54mm 60mm buildings, for Army Men games. I am using MDF walls, with windows cut out, by laser (nephew owns a 50W laser cutter for his business). My design will require small, 2" segments of plastic drinking straws to be Hot Glued along the wall edges. The concept is to put the wall section edges against each other, so that they line up; then insert a wooden dowel through the straws, to hold the walls together. This will allow them to be taken apart, when not in use, for better storage options.
Need to prototype one still. Planning on painting the MDF, decorating it with printed label paper signs, and attaching removeable catwalks, inside, behind the windows, to allow figures to mount the different levels. Internal floor area combats will be resolved per the rules, but in an abstract manner, without a physical representation of each floor's battle.
Sgt Slag,I have though of going your halfway house, but using cheap neodymium magnets to secure the parts together. I have never persued it, as in the end card works for me. After regular use some of my semi detached houses that were printed on a dot matrix printer are being replaced being a bit tired but thats with 10+years of playing. You do need to restrict who sets them up. Some mates are fine and some though great to play against are just too hamfisted. I just stress to folk that terrain needs to be treated with the same respect as figures. Strahgely some wargamets cannot relatl to that in may experience. The 6ft lob of a house into a box is not unknown at my club, unfortunately.
I'm not sure about papercraft, specifically; but, I've seen a lot of people at conventions transport a variety of model terrain using large plastic buckets or tubs (with lids). I think this would probably work well, as long as you avoid mixing large, heavy items with structures that are very light and fragile.
I would sort out the items according to size, weight, and sturdiness. If things don't fit in neatly, it might be helpful to have a little bit of padding material, like foam. Use a separate box or bucket for collections of smaller items, like the barrels there. I use a fishing tackle box for my Shadowrun minis. I've found that it's helpful to have an extra small box around to carry broken bits of things, if any parts fall off and I don't have any non-dried glue.
World Works Games: I love WorldWorks, and have bought them for years. They have REALLY great modern stuff, great sci-fi stuff, and pretty good medieval stuff as well. The image at the top of the post is from Himmelveil, which is a great set, which looks a lot like the Terraclips (see below) they designed, so they integrate well. The TerrainlinX stuff is complicated, so I prefer the earlier stuff, but the TerrainlinX stuff is higher quality art, so your miles may vary.
I love papercrafting and even design my own models from time to time. (Modeled in 3d and converted to templates via Pepakura.) It saved me a ton of money back when my son was playing WH40K. I even created a full 3D set for playing Space Hulk inspired missions. ?
Hey guys I'm always learning cool new stuff and this is one I think is valuable honestly because very few people have a 3d printer but most people have access to paper , a printer , scissors and glue. While I was at the Dragoncon convention I saw all kinds of costumes , robotic animation of characters for sci do stuff , and more. I had to ask them how they did it and most use the Pepakuru or Papercraft method. Pepakuru is a Japanese word for papercraft but many people call it that because it's origin is Japanese.
Pepakuru was one of the first things I thought about using when I started building robots, I mentioned it in one of my first topics. And there is a very good reason why I have not used it to build any robots to date... because it is very time consuming.
There are a lot of replica props and costumes discussed on www.TheRPF.com, I am part way through making a full Iron Man suit, I have been since around this time last year, so far I have got the helmet done but still not satisfied with the results.
Not only do you need to cut out and stick hundreds or thousands of small paper/card/foam pieces together but you also need to strengthen them with fibre glass, smooth them with filler, sand, rinse and repeat.
James over at xrobot.co.uk uses (or did use) pep to make his ironman armour but it took a long time and has since been improved using other methods (side note, check his site, he has some really awesome projects).
Your right it's time consuming but when we are talking about building a custom robot outside of just clicking some premade parts together there is no way to avoid work. It's not for everyone that's why ezbits exist but for those like me who love to add detail and personality fabrication is always useful.
The way to avoid the work is to 3D print. Pep is great if you have the time and lack the funds to 3D print, I will give it that, I just don't have the time (and am too much of a perfectionist to accept a lot of what others seem to believe is good enough - as can be seen by Melvin's arms taking 4 attempts so far and I'm still not satisfied with them).
Some things are awesome to 3d print don't get me wrong but there are size limitations. Its possible but very difficult to create smaller pieces and then glue them all together from seperate 3d prints but if they all are not just right now they are glued together and you gotta start over or try to rip them apart to figure out which piece is slightly off. This is for things possibly s little bigger than a consumer 3d print can handle.
I have the full version but to be honest the viewer would have done what I needed it for just fine. If you are going to use it to make your own designs then go for the full version, if you only want to use what's readily available at places like The RPF have a play with the viewer only
These ones I just posted the wheels are paper but I imagine you could cast them and use them as a mold to make foamy wheels or run by a hobby shop they have wheels for cars or planes with preformed plastic hubs that are easy to attach to motors or servos. Again something fun and easy for those who don't have access to a 3d printer. Plus if you destroy the body playing against friends it's cool , it's just paper that had been soaked with white glue or resin. Like a paper mache robot I will post more as I find them.
You can also use foam to make them if you want something more flexible and longer lasting. Those foam floor tiles that click together that they use in childrens play areas are ideal, or yoga mats, the thin ones, they work great (they are what my full size IronMan robot is being made from). Coat it in a 50/50 mix of PVA glue and water and it'll be ready for fibreglass resin and filler or even painting without the strengthening of fibreglass.
Thanks guys. Very cool info. Sorry to wander the topic a little but while looking at the battle bots the first thought I had was "Put a light frame in it and it would be a little more durable." I never thought if it before but I guess one could use chicken wire and make frames of parts and then dress them and stick them together. Kind of like paper mache or something.
Although I've made many papercraft models already, I never posted any them here on Instructables yet so here it is! ;o) The parts you need (and these instructions) are available in the LEGO section on my papercraft webpage:
PaperTerrain is a company which sells scale models made from paper and cardstock. The models are primarily miniature buildings used in table top war games. We also sell other types of models and accessories.
There are now nearly 130 million buildings in OSM. Many of these have been entered by hand, traced from satellite imagery, but recent large-scale imports of open-source municipal and national databases have added many more, including a million from the NYC Building Footprints dataset, 18 million+ from the Dutch national Registry of Addresses and Buildings, and at least 35 million from the French equivalent of the IRS.
Tangram, in its quest for expediency, ignores all of this semantic intricacy and blithely redraws any duplicated parts; adjacent pieces are drawn with their various tiles, buildings spring forth apparently solid and unharmed, and no one is the wiser.
Not coincidentally, when Tangram extrapolates 3D geometry from the OSM data, the result includes a list of points. In the current Tangram scheme, these lists are stored in JavaScript objects, one object per layer per tile.
The process for converting these objects to 3D files (and indeed, from one 3D format to another) is mostly regexes and string shuffling. (You can check out the details in this github repo: -map/vbo-export/.) This process produces files which can be used in a variety of 3D apps, depending on the file type.
Luckily, in a past life I was a professional 3D model pesterer, so I poked and tweaked and simplified the model until Pepakura accepted it as its own, and worked its mysterious magic, which is the true papercraft.
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