Some more 3d printed terrain today. We have another trio of Tyranid Capillary Towers, though much smaller than the Forge World ones I completed recently. These ones are, as the post title states, 3d Prints from Axotle Gaming – free STLs from Thingiverse. Our Space Marine for scale shows how these ones are significantly smaller.

These were one of the earliest prints that I erm, printed, and as such suffered pretty badly from print lines as you can see in the pictures here, which resulted in me just leaving them to sit for months. After finishing the above-noted Capilary Towers, I decided it was time to either paint these or just give them away, so I decided to paint them and then give them away if I wasn’t happy with the result. Several thick coats of filler primer helped the print lines quite a lot, and while they still look pretty awful when viewed “flat” as in the picture above, they kind of look almost naturalistic when viewed from above – similar to the “growth lines” you see on some animals’ horns.

The print lines were disguised a little better on the “meaty” section of the prints, as you can see here. I added some putty on the pointy tips to smooth them out a little more. It would probably have worked a little better if I’d done it before starting to paint them, but you live and learn.

Amusingly enough, these smaller towers are the right size to be properly Kaiju-sized when placed next to the Battletech/Epic scale sized terrain I’ve been working on as of late. Kind of amusing.

In the end, I decided to keep them. They’re not amazing, but they’re fine. I am tempted to go back and print another set of them and see how they turn out now that I know how to print a fair bit smoother, though even those will still have softer lines. On the other hand, there’s also lots of other designs out there of similar Tyranid terrain, including a 2.0 of these from the very same sculptor.