Bracing onto something really is much better, thanks all.

Not sold on the skin coloured upper legs. I'd keep them the same colours as the rest of the armour.

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I was going to do all gray but wanted to try something different, it should be easier to paint lighter gray over these.
Going to do all gray for the male version.

Are you using a digital camera? The thing I found most useful for taking pictures of 6mm figures is a light tent. I got the "LimoStudio 16" x 16" Table Top Photo Photography Studio Lighting Light Tent Kit in a Box" from Amazon. It makes it much easier for the camera to autofocus on the minis.

The ogres on the end are a little out of focus because I was filling the viewfinder with the minis. Keep the minis in the middle of the viewfinder and crop the picture to fit and they are all in focus. (With a good enough camera/lens this is less of an issue.)

Yeah, the camera is a digital camera but the focus box when in super macro mode is really small about the size of the base in your attached image. Anything outside that box is blurry.

For now I am quite happy with bracing my hands on a stack of books. But I have also been thinking about a light box tbut I wonder if it'll get enough use to be worth getting/making.

The light box made focusing so much easier for the camera. You can try making a temporary one with thin sheets or tissue or something and see if it helps your camera. (Most digital cameras use the light/dark difference to focus, so the light tent helps with that aspect.)

You might try the camera on your phone--those are often pretty good at this and also helped by the light tent.

I have questions and a suggestion.

The question is: what are you using for 3D sculpting and what are you using for printing? (This is something I'm interested in trying.)

The suggestion is, if you haven't tried it yet, as someone else suggested in part, take the picture with no zoom, with the minis filling the middle 1/3 of the screen. Then crop the picture to fit. It supposedly works best if after cropping, you don't need to resize the photo.

Regarding photography, check this out: https://www.warhammer-community.com/201 ... r-display/

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Thanks for the suggestions and the link.

The images in the original post were taken using the crop method. I feel they're not as sharp as super macro.
I should do a proper experiment and compare super focus and cropping.
That's a lot of things I'll have to explore.
Also sounds like I need to study how digital camera works to use it right.

I used 3DS MAX, it's what I'm familiar with but I think any program will do, UI familiarity is more important.
Blender is popular and free, I would use it too but the UI and workflow is too different from MAX.

I print through Shapeways. These were HDA material test. Mainly I would print in FUD it gives better detail but are brittle so couldn't do some of the arms. Non dynamic pose (like standard GW SM) should work fine in FUD as long as the ankles and knees are strong enough.
Shapeways can get expensive without optimizing the model and their shipping outside the US is... prohibitive.

Hmm, go for fxd instead of fud, pr what about that hyper detailed black material? As for delivery, where are you located?

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FXD is as brittle as FUD and the slight increase in detail isn't worth the price in crease.
for 6mm or maybe up to 15mm FUD is good enough.

HDA is Black High Definition Acrylate.
It's almost as good as FUD in details, a little more flexible, much more suited to humanoids but takes a lot more to optimize/arrange than FUD.
Not as much cleaning needed but more careful prepping (removing sprue, filing, filling).

For photos, I highly recommend investing in a tripod - a cheap gorillapod will do. This will give you the option of decreasing shutter speed, letting more light into the lense. Camera distance from miniature is very important and will depend on your camera, light, and the miniature. Super macro isn't necessarily better - as seen the area of focus can be too small, and sometimes not enough light gets into the lense. This is why cropping (mentioned previously) works well.

A dark background will bring out the colours better than a white background using compact cameras.

Phones cameras are amazing considering the size, but only good for casual shots IMO.

If you have mediocre light / no light box you can easily correct the balance in Photoshop / Gimp.

Hopefully this all makes sense - inputting on phone!




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Echoco, thanks for the responses on the 3D modeling and printing. I'm in the US so Shapeways is good for me. We've used Shapeways twice--for the same shape. Little lab vial racks with places for magnets for doing work with DNA and RNA are silly expensive, like $200-300 each. We printing a couple at Shapeways and, including the rare earth magnets, they were $30-40 each, IIRC.

Some of the difference on the pictures may be the scene setup--your setup for your original pictures is deep, 3 or more minis deep and from above-ish. Try setting up one base (or a short line) and take the picture more from the front than from above. That is part of the reason your later photos came out so much better--a single layer to focus.

The light tent seems silly, until you have one. If you're having any sort of focus issue, the tent takes care of it. It also gives you more control over shadows and the one I have came with 3-5 different background colors to use.

I have a point and shoot superzoom camera with image stabilization, so tripod or books don't seem needed. If I leave the camera on "intelligent Assistant", the camera seems to switch to macro mode. I'm going to try playing with the background color, the exposure (making the image brighter), and use Aperture-priority mode (to change the f-stop, I think, to make the depth of focus shorter, so it focuses even more on the minis and less on the background) this weekend. The f-stop should make the image brighter too, so the camera is looking at the brightness and colors for the minis and not the background.

I usually take wildlife pictures in the field and do not have time to mess with any settings and just use outdoor sport mode with a small focus area, so this is all new to me too.

OK. I had the f-stop stuff backwards. I need a deeper field (focusing wider front to back) which is a higher f-stop. I used aperture priority mode for this (f-stop around 6) and tweaked the exposure to fit the minis. I played around a bit without my light tent and got really good results, but such a high f-stop requires a bipod, even with anti-shake technology. The cheapo bipod from the light tent is adequate--using the timer is also good, since the timer keeps the camera from shaking during the button release.

I posted a couple of pictures here:
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=137&t=32392&p=611902#p611902

My first attempt using lightbox.
Same lights setup, 2 lights from the sides.
Black and white background Super Macro mode + cropped.
Normal mode was very grainy, not enough light? Taken at night, maybe I should wait for daytime.

Black background looks too bright.