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The Baldur's Gate 3 cast got a new set of pre-painted minis and—oh, oh no, oh no no no
(www.pcgamer.com)
Downvoted for shitty headline
this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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I know nothing about the miniatures space, but I heard that Wizards of the Coast put more effort into paying their lawyers than paying their artists
Honesty they are pretty average for prepainted miniatures. Painted miniatures at this scale is just not something that's easy to do or cheap.
The quality wouldn't have been an issue I'd imagine if the pre release images hasn't shown high quality minifigs. This is now typical WotC fuckery.
Painting them yourself is easier than ever though! Contrast paints and washes alone can accomplish amazing things. Trust me, if you've thought about trying, do it. You can absolutely do a better job than that in no time.
And everyone's hands shake, you work around it :)
Which is surprising in this day and age.
Laser scanning is possible, 6-axis milling machines exist and on a subminiature scale.
Why is there no 6-axis painting machine? I understand there are 3D printers that can do this, but 3D printing costs more than just making a die (or reusing a similar die from another model) at a certain scale.
They don't care, same reason they still use casting and resin and don't move to 3D printing.
Money. 6-axis isn't cheap to run or maintain, especially at this scale with the desired precision. Add in the inherent issues of working with a variety of paint colors (especially aerosolized), subtract the ability to mask features from over spray. Their prices would have to make Warhammer look bargain bin in order to recoup the costs of the machine, maintenance and consumables.
Archon Studios recently introduced a mayor new technology into the hobby with Prismcast. This "printer" basically paints curved 2,5 D surfaces which you glue together to make a fully 3D model. AFAIK there is no way to make this technology in 3D
Reminds me of when people share pictures of fast food ads versus the actual food you get served.
As someone who has had to paint mini faces before, this isn't aweful, not great by any means but could have been much worse. They definitely need to thin their paints, probably use a smaller brush, and go slower. But in the person would painted this' defense, faces are so hard to do well, and even harder to fix if you fuck it up.
"Thin your paints"
"Or I shall thin your ranks"
Those are ok-ish for your own stuff if you don't care too much. If you want to sell a product you have to do better.
Also, paintjob aside, those mold lines are insulting.
This has got to be machine printed right? They're no worse than Wizard's usual minis, but yeah they always suck. The biggest problem IMO is the sculpt, they look like they're made out of mud. I assume it has to do with the rubber they use. I don't know, I'm way too spoiled by printing my own to consider buying something that looks this bad.
Their plastic/resin is garbage, and you're right that the sculpts are flawed, especially in the finder details. I bet if they tried this in metal it would have worked out better.
I think about half of them are pretty awful. And painting aside, I wouldn't have recognized Gale (guy with the beard) if not for the context
I’ve seen worse.
But I don’t mean that as a compliment.
reminds me of that ecce homo restoration
Didn't realise the village had cashed in on that incredible fuckup, fair play.
Is that supposed to be Shart? Wow, they did her dirty, holy shit.
Judero lookin' asses
(Judero is actually an amazing game and a work of art. Go play it, if you like the idea of a game made fully in clay + spare pieces laying around the creator's house)
This is exactly what I was reminded of. It looks like a clay doll.
Oh, these are like, an industrial product. I thought everyone was just shitting on something a fan sent in.
As an aside, how hard would it be to extract the games 3d assets and make my own STLs of the characters to print?
Someone has probably already done that.
But regular PLA printing doesn't work well at this scale, I've tried.
Thats why I have a resin printer for my minis
I can't tell (and didn't read the article lol), is the first one supposed to be Shart, and the second one Withers?
The only one that actually looks bad is the one at the top of the article. The others look fine.
The one of the red woman (I haven't played the game so no idea who is who, edit: karlach, the tiefling) looks like it might be bad, but the pictures are also terrible so it's impossible to say.