Hero Forge at Home
So, one of the newer faces at my table has really been enjoying the game. So much so that he bought an STL file from Hero Forge to represent his Elven Thief/Magic-User.
This was printed out on the Ender-3 with a .2 nozel on very fine and it took quite a few tries to print it at this quality. I'm responsible for the paint job and it was not super nice to paint. Plus there was a lot of clean up and some stuff that I gave up on cleaning. If you look closely at the boots you can see the printer lines, though at a distance of 12 inches they are invisible.
$10+ dollars for the customized STL file and several days worth of fiddling with the printer (and a bunch of scrapped jobs that went haywire at various stages) tell me that I don't want to print characters. Terrain and large monsters are a different matter.
I printed and painted this giant slug (because giant slug minis are hard to find and expensive when you do). Again, if you look closely you can see the print lines.
Still, it's a serviceable alternative and this slug model was free on Thingiverse. It also printed perfectly on the first try.
I think if you are a stickler for quality you're going to be disappointed, but if you can put up with some extra work and turn a blind eye to other matters, printing minis at home is pretty mind-blowing.
Now, just need the Giant Slug to spit acid all over the Thief/M-U and nullify one paint job with another.
