Welcome to Scopperloit! 3D-printing a 28mm Fantasy town... Pt. I

"It may not look like much, but to us, it's home..." Gertrude, servant at the local tavern

So, welcome to Scopperloit! The inhabitants of this small but ever growing town are called Scobberlotchers and fill their days with typical NPC stuff. This town could be situated just about anywhere, and it probably will be... For the forseeable future I can see these buildings being used in our current D&D campaign and in my first adventures as a DM...

A couple of months ago I purchased a FDM 3D-printer, so now I am the proud owner/user of a Creality CR-10S Pro V2! Apart from adding a magnetic and flexible build plate the machine is still stock. I did have to replace my heat block, but that's because I am an incompetent fool...

One of the reasons I wanted a FDM printer was the ability to print larger buildings and terrain in 28mm scale. So far I have focussed on printing scatter terrain for D&D and Warhammer 40K. 

For a larger and more complex project, I want to build (part of) a Fantasy town...

There is a huge quantity of different designs available. I have found several designers that had some buildings I liked, but I really wanted a comlete range of buildings in a good Medieval/Fantasy style so I would be able to print several buildings for a small town, ideally without spending my entire hobby budget... 

To be able to compare designers, I mainly looked at Taverns/Inns because, whatever the setting, every range worth it's salt at least includes a tavern of sorts... The buildings needed to be modular and have detailed interiors, but preferably without having fixed furniture as I have plenty of that already. Besides, smaller details print better in resin and are easier to paint when not fused to the inside of a building. 

While browsing, I found 3Dlayeredscenery and decided to check out their Leichheim set. I originally found them through their free sample on MMF, you should totally check that out...

The set is, simply put, vast and represents incredible value for your money... There are several more or less generic dwellings/houses and numerous specialist buildings, most of these are quite large. Some of the buildings can be combined into larger structures and feature some customization options.

The smallmarket shop...

To get started I opted for one of the smaller designs (as can be seen above). While relatively small, printing this shop already took me almost six whole days (I might have to look into the printing speed). However, that time was well worth it! The level of detail is just great; the texture of the wood and the stones will make this little shop very easy to paint. The fit of the different parts is also very good.

This building comes split in three different parts (ground floor, first floor and roof). The model printed with only minimal supports. I think the website even advertises with 'supportless', but I used a few anyway...

This particular building allows for a bit of customization; there are several different chimneys and doors to choose from. This feature can be found in almost all of the ohter designs, too.

I think I will thoroughly enjoy painting this building! The detail is very crisp and the quality of the print ensured a pretty smooth finish.

Now that my first building is printed, I want to get to work on the Tavern. 

Quite a beautiful and imposing structure... I think you can see why I chose this particular set of designs...

I just sliced all the different parts for the main structure: 18 pieces in total, split over three levels. If I am to believe Cura, the total printing time exceeds 600 hours... I still need some time to let that number sink in... The shortest print will take only 5 hours while the longest takes almost 70 hours to complete.

The building's itself (meaning all the structural parts) will be completely printed on my CR-10S. All the smaller parts, like the doors, will be printed on one of my resin printers.