The triangulation (or poly count) of a surface will cause faceting of the 3D model. STL is a triangulated representation of a 3D CAD model (Figure 1). This is amazing progress! Discuss further in the 3D Printed Dungeons & Dragons forum over at is the standard file type used by most additive manufacturing systems. And you can download the STL files, or have Shapeways 3D print the minis for you, using Zavala’s Shapeways Store. You can see all of the NPCs from the Monster Manual Appendix B here (Make sure you keep an eye out for the hilarious Spy mini!).

You can see all of the creatures from the Monster Manual Appendix A here. You can see all of the monsters from the Monster Manual from A to Z here. PLA is really easy to paint using standard acrylic modeling paints, but I would suggest that if you’re planning on using them a lot that you give the minis a nice sanding and use a black primer spray paint before you start adding the details.Īs for Zavala, he’s now decided to move on to designing and 3D printing the Demon Princes, and maybe even redesigning his Chromatic dragons, so this is not the last that we’ve seen of him. He printed using a heated bed, so some of the figures are probably going to be a bit tricky to print. He suggests printing the figures with a 0.05 to 0.1 layer resolution, 100% infill and a ton of supports. The minis are available on Shapeways with the approval of Wizards of the Coast thanks to their existing deal with Hasbro.Īll of Zavala’s D&D figures were designed in Blender and then 3D printed in PLA using his Printrbot Simple Metal. The last of his project, the NPCs, were just uploaded to Zavala’s Shapeways store, which brings his project to an end. That is a remarkable resource for D&D Dungeon Masters, who can now put their players up against any creature that they can imagine. His project included creating 3D printable models of the entire Monster Manual, as well as the miscellaneous creatures from Appendix A and the Non-Player Characters (NPCs) from Appendix B. Now, thanks to Zavala, there are other options for DM’s looking to get the most out of the game rules. Many DM’s ended up turning to places like eBay just to get the basic mini’s that they would need to actually play the game properly.

Of course things got even worse when Wizards of the Coast stopped producing as many miniatures, choosing instead to focus on starter sets and random booster packs, while letting many of the popular and commonly used figures go out of print. While it became easier for players to understand distances and scale, it ended up making it kind of difficult to play the RPG without the grid maps and miniatures. The miniatures were so popular that when the game mechanics were redesigned, Wizards of the Coast actually incorporated the miniatures into the game rules.

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