Pretty much the title: Do you use software (from MS Paint to garden planner to D&D setting generators) to plan your table beforehand? What's the best tool you found?

Never made terrain before but I am ordering some to scale barbed wire and sandbags. I plan to use some mud stuff from citadel to make them look real cold and miserable, also trying to incorporate snow to add to the atmosphere. (28mm mini for scale)

WiP scratch built underground missile silo and fluid tank. Kinda my first dive into making terrain that isn't just cardboard ruins for 40k

Hey, I've been working on bases and terrain for my AoS armies, taking a lot of inspiration from the Dark Souls games.

In many areas you can find tons of swords and spears sticking up out of the ground, like in the concept art attached.

If I wanted to recreate that look, what would be the best way to do it? I have previously sculpted a lot of stuff for my bases like trees and gravestones with oven baked clay and miliput, but my attempts to make little weapons have proven too small to get a good result with the sculpt, and too fragile to avoid snapping. I also tried carving with sprue, but again too hard to get good detail.

I'm thinking my best bet is probably 3d prints, but I haven't found any good bulk kits that don't have hands and arms attached. I also don't have access to my own printer which makes it more difficult

Any suggestions? And have you seen anyone else make stuff like this?

Hi fellow modelers! I recently started adding some LEDs to my model in order to achieve the characteristic nighttime look of a refinery. The question is: how can I calculate the power needed to light up all the LEDs on my terrain? At the moment I have a 12v and 2Ah power supply which, divided by the consumption of a LED (~2mA), makes me assume that I can power about 100 LEDs. Is this a reliable calculation? Is there by any chance a basic program to calculate this kind of thing? Thanks to everyone in advance!

Here are some examples of twisted floral wire to make cables or wires or whatever. Take different amounts of floral wire and clamp them into the chuck of a drill and grip the other end with a pair of pliers and let it rip. The top one is three wires twisted, then 3 of those twisted together. The middle is a pair of 3-strands twisted together, the bottom is just 3 twisted together.

I mentioned this in a previous post about using guitar string for wires and cables, wanted to show how these turn out too since guitar string can be annoying to work with.

Haven’t figured out what to use these for yet but it’s a good proof of concept, easy to make, and not too fragile.

I bought the foam earlier today and have been working on carving for about a half hour so far but at least it's started

Hello, I have access to a garbage bag of the pluck style foam from a pelican case. Is there any use for that in terrain making?

The frame is card from a game with punch out card. The pics are just print outs and glued in then slathered with super glue.

The back, not shown has been painted bronze.

Hi folks, I picked up a 150g package of Tamiya Diorama Texture Clay (https://www.tamiya.com/english/products/87221/index.html) and am thinking about what to do with it to put together some 40k terrain.

My first thought is an earthworks gun emplacement sort of thing, putting this down on top of styrofoam with a cut-out for 50mm bases, with the end result being a larger version of something like this: https://www.pippd.com/products/blood-plunder-gun-emplacement-accessory-pack

Anybody have experience using this stuff? Is it suited to purpose? Does it look realistic? How much additional work or painting does it need once it's put down? Any insights appreciated!

Snagged a snapshot of the lava scatter terrain I made a few months back, this time in action during tonight’s session.

Hello all! Pleeease read and help if you can! I am working on my second custom reptile tank and the back drop is carved, and painted expanding foam. On my first tank I had no issues with the epoxy curing over the spray foam, but that is not the case this time): I used the same brand both times; a high UV, non toxic 1:1 epoxy and it’s not cured in over a week now. I have put UV lamp over it, I’ve set it outside in sun, I’ve left it at room temp. I don’t know what to do! Everything I look up says to scrape away the uncured layers, but with it not being an even surface I don’t know how well I can do that. Can I remove any possible excess and pour over? Will it be toxic at 100°F with a cured top layer and possible uncured epoxy underneath? Did I ruin a tank?

Regular mist spray bottles seem to have a hard time vaporizing the solution. Is there a special spray bottle that can handle PVA?

https://preview.redd.it/4qlxv9l8xpxd1.jpg?width=2519&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f2321e086947c7b6a136c46dc61de8f524e187bc

Made this for a local competition. I had 1 day to paint all the figures and 1 to do the rest of the diorama, so there's definitely a lack of detail and some of the glue was still wet when I started painting. I learned a good bit in the process and would definitely take a different approach next time...especially in the planning stage.