There’s plenty of stuff you can print that’s practical but not so fiddly that it requires serious CAD skills. See Bambu Lab’s MakerLab for a boatload of mostly free AI tools.
I got the well-concealed free license for Fusion 360 but I still haven’t used it because there’s a lot you can do in your slicer and/or TinkerCad. That’s also a learning curve because nothing is well documented nowadays, but you can always ask an AI how to do something.
I like the collecting and painting personally, it's the rest of the process I don't have time for.
And what's even cooler is you can take a super basic untextured rendering of your model, or literally just a photo of it unpainted, and most image generators can spit out nice paint schemes.
For me, all I want to do when painting is turn off the rest of my brain and focus on the fine motor work. I understand others might enjoy spending time carefully thinking through this or that aspect of the hobby - I don't, and having to do that keeps me from painting as much as I'd like.
There’s plenty of stuff you can print that’s practical but not so fiddly that it requires serious CAD skills. See Bambu Lab’s MakerLab for a boatload of mostly free AI tools.
I got the well-concealed free license for Fusion 360 but I still haven’t used it because there’s a lot you can do in your slicer and/or TinkerCad. That’s also a learning curve because nothing is well documented nowadays, but you can always ask an AI how to do something.
Say the game designer wants builds for a board game or mini figs to complement a stretch goal for a digital one: Is this new service cost-effective?
And if yes, how will it hit indy gamers getting hammered by Corporate on one side, and the no-AI zealots on the other?
It all depends on what you're after.
I'm into Warhammer Fantasy myself; it's certainly more cost-effective than buying GW plastic.
As for zealots of all kinds, the only way to handle them is the only way that's ever worked: Stick. To. Your. Guns.
Nobody has any right whatsoever to tell anyone else how to produce their games and you don't want to deal with "customers" like that anyway.
Now we just need an ai program with a robot arm that can paint the miniatures so they are ready to play!
I like the collecting and painting personally, it's the rest of the process I don't have time for.
And what's even cooler is you can take a super basic untextured rendering of your model, or literally just a photo of it unpainted, and most image generators can spit out nice paint schemes.
For me, all I want to do when painting is turn off the rest of my brain and focus on the fine motor work. I understand others might enjoy spending time carefully thinking through this or that aspect of the hobby - I don't, and having to do that keeps me from painting as much as I'd like.