WIP

Oh Yeah, I’ll Totally Start a Blog

i’Ll cErTaInLy aCtuAlLy pOsT tHiNgS iN a TiMeLy FaShIon, DeFiNiTeLy.

Ahem.

I have a bad case of projectitis. It started with stacking far too many grey mechs, and expanded with the Mercenaries kickstarter. It was enhanced by discovering HexTech terrain and printing out a bunch of buildings. It got far worse when I picked up a Bambu Labs A1 (m a g n i f i c e n t, by the way) and decided to print out a city’s worth of roads. It arrived at full-blown insanity when I decided that buying gradient rock PLA and printing out a bunch of hills was a great idea.

Stir in a great deal of non-hobby concerns, and yeaaaah.

Anyhow, have some WIP:

HexTech Hills and Overture Rock PLA

Whilst doing some research on PVB, I came across Overture’s Rock PLA, and on a lark, decided it might be a good thing to use for, well… Rocks. It is in fact pretty okay for rocks. These are unpainted, and while I still need to clean up some stringing (and paint a tiny mine entrance on one of them), the only real work involved was flocking the top surfaces. Trying to color match was a bit of a pain, but it came out well enough I think.

The goal was to quickly pump out a good number of absolute low-effort hills while maintaining reasonable visual interest, and I dare say it succeeded.

HexTech Roads

Upon arrival, my A1 was immediately put to work printing out HexTech; a variety of buildings, and the aforementioned city worth of roads. I managed to eat my way through my collection of years-old filament, some of it of rather dubious quality, and I completely forgot ironing was a thing - my Ender V3 was an absolute disaster where ironing was concerned. This resulted in surface and other minor defects on various sections of road, none of which are really a concern, since flocking will happen and the rest fits the concrete-and-asphault feel.

Here, only the road surface has been prepped for detailing. I would have rather gone in for some light texture, base black, and drybrush dark greys for interest, but I feared attempting texture would have been painstakingly annoying given the little built-in road markings. I therefore went with a great deal of sponging and stippling and washing. The result looks road-like enough at a distance while still maintaining some definition. The markings still need to happen; the roadway borders need concreting; and the roadside needs flocking.

Almost every instance I’ve seen of HexTech’s roads has the roadsides grey and boring and I don’t quite understand why. Let’s face it, we’re putting together giant grey cities. Do we need more grey? I want some color all up in this battlefield. Anyway, our tax C-bills clearly aren’t going to streetsweeping, so they may as well go toward landscaping.

So here’s a fat stack of road, the giant Trinity Tower centerpiece…pieces, a few liquid towers, some pipeline, some stuff not quite in view, and… Yeah, there’s more not pictured.

Soon(tm).