3D printed building from Printable Scenery

Hello everyone and welcome to another review /r/PrintedWWII review. As I dive into 3D printing, the lack of extensive documentation and reviews of what is good, what is bad, and what works with care, has been vexing to me, so my hope is to provide a little bit of what I wish was readily available for me when I started!

Today's focus is on Printable Scenery, a 3D design group which does what is on the tin, focusing on terrain pieces suitable for 3D printing. They operate primarily through their own storefront site, as well as periodic Kickstarters, most recently The Gloaming Swamps & Wilderness, and before that Country and King. For the purpose of this review, I backed the Country & King Kickstarter, and previously had purchased several pieces a la carte.

Printing

Selection of small buildings/barns

I printed all of the models in PLA, on a Prusa Mk3S FDM machine. Most models were printed using Hatchbox PLA, although several were done with Prusament. Printing was done with a .4mm Nozzle, using default settings for either .1mm or .2mm layer heights. All slicing was done in Prusaslicer, and what supports were added were done manually applying organic supports.

Trees in three different sizes. Branches all print without supports.

'What supports were added' is indeed a pretty marginal amount though. These models are incredibly well optimized for 3D printing and supports are essentially unneeded for any of the models I printed out. I almost exclusively used supports for the doors, not because the model itself required them, but because given the small area of plate contact (printing the door upright) it seemed like a good idea to provide better stability. In one or two other cases I added some supports as an over abundance of caution for bridging areas, but I don't think any of those were actually necessary.

Building broken down into its constituent parts for printing

The folks designing these models know what they are doing, and are great at it. You'll be hard pressed to find easier prints then these, which are basically the definition of fire-and-forget. As long as you are confident that your printer is working right, you can just sick them in there and be pretty confident you'll have a great looking print when you wake up tomorrow.

The Models

Example of building all painted up

Even if these models are optimized for FDM printing, that does nothing to detract from the quality of the models. They are very nicely detailed, and the care taken to minimize excess overhangs and complicated bridging is done very mindfully, by which I mean that they really work to make you not even notice how things are blocked and structured with that regard, and pieces still feel 'right'. This is particularly seen with the ruined pieces where there is the most chance for overhangs, where they never are done excessively, but still look really good.

Breakdown of multi-level building

It also serves double duty of course. Multi-level structures being split out into each individual level, and removable roofs, makes for much easier printing, but it also makes for much better terrain pieces in general! Buildings all have removable roofs, and removable floors if there are multiple stories, to allow for easy placement of figures inside. The insides are generally detailed nicely, but not cluttered, which ensures that figures won't be competing with chairs and beds or the like. Floors attach with a basic notch system present (although one model I got seems to have forgotten them... easy enough to add your own in that case), and this keeps them both secure, and easy to remove.

Modular ruin set walls. Note the slots for OpenLock.

For modular pieces, the some of them are done using the OpenLock system which is pretty effective in my (limited) experience. The connections are sturdy if knocked about but easy to remove with minimal force. The modular sets do lead to two of my very few gripes, and one is nit-picky at that, as some pieces do have singular detailing that doesn't really make sense to have on every piece. The example which vexes me in particular is the mushroom present at the base of a wall segment. Why would you want that repeated over and over!?

Modular wall system utilizing open lock

My bigger complaint, which is nevertheless kind of minor in the gig scheme of things, is that not everything modular has OpenLock or some other connection system. Walls and modular buildings seem to mostly use it (or at least the ones I've gotten do), but some roads, for instance, do not. I realize that OpenLock does necessitate a certain level of raise to a terrain piece, but for me personally, I strongly prefer connections, so it has kept me away from several sets they have which otherwise look fantastic.

Come on... I don't want that little mushroom on nearly every damn wall section!

Offerings

Printed tree - no supports needed! - and same tree painted up and flocked.

Printable Scenery has an absolutely massive back catalog of terrain pieces on offer, but unfortunately for the purposes here, only a segment is really appropriate for WWII gaming—at least if you want a plausibly historical looking table. Quite a lot of what they have is sci-fi, or fantasy, which just doesn't really have the right vibe, although there are some exceptions, such as the Hobbit 'Hafling' themed sets, some of which look quite good for some quaint little village about to be pulverized under the treads of a tank. There also are of course the very general models such as rivers, or trees, which can fit in just about anywhere.

Some small gardens for your quaint little village that doesn't know what is about to hit them.

For the WWII-minded gamer though, their best strength is definitely if you are focused on Europe, and the northwestern part at that. The recent Country & King Kickstarter in particular, although nominally medieval, is still packed full of scenery that would be quite at home for some out of the way French town in Normandy, or perhaps some alt-history Sea Lion campaign in England. They also have a smaller, but respectable, offering of files specifically billed for World War II, although again a large number of them are geared towards Normandy as a setting. There are a few Stalingrad pieces, but they are mostly offered as native 15mm compared to the 28mm most of their terrain defaults to.

Ruined building, themed towards a French town style

One of my favorite things though is how, especially with the recent Country & King, but also some older models, buildings are offered with both the 'built' option and the 'ruined' option. It not only means that you have both options when putting a table together to really fine tune the layout while maintaining thematic consistency, but for the particularly anal retentive among us, it means that you will always have the perfect ruined model on hand to replace the original if it gets destroyed during the game.

Complete building and ruined building of the same design. Ruin prints as all one piece with no supports (except a small gable to glue over the front door)

Conclusions

Small cow pen painted and finished

I've been using Printable Scenery for awhile now, and have yet to find a model of theirs I was disappointed with the results of. When I have a particular need for a particular model, they have consistently been one of the first places I look. The designs are great quality, and well detailed. The printability is off the charts, and I don't think I've found another designer out there for FDM terrain who so well balances the level of detail with the sheer ease of printing. If you have just gotten an FDM machine, these are great starting points, and if you are an old hand, you will still be impressed.

Overhead view of ruined model. Prints as one piece with no supports.

The only negatives that can really be offered in the end is what they have for selection. While you could fill have a dozen tables, easily for a Normandy-centered campaign and not reuse a single piece, that isn't merely their strength, but basically their thing. It isn't a bad thing, but it is tragically limiting in their scope. I would absolutely love to see a future Kickstarter campaign that brings in some useful terrain for North Africa or the Pacific, or else expands their European-themed offerings to make Stalingrad more than a pittance, or really capture the essence of, perhaps, Central Europe or maybe Italy. The day I see that notification from Kickstarter in my inbox is very much a 'shut up and take my money' kind of day.

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If you like these reviews and want to help me keep doing them, you can toss a buck via Ko-Fi page and a Buymecoffee page. I promise to waste it either on stls, or my crippling drug addiction, and nothing else. And a big thanks to a few folks who already have, and helped make this review possible!

For Previous Reviews and other 3D printing topics related to WWII gaming, head over to r/PrintedWWII

Also be sure to check out:

• The Printed Vehicles Reference Guide
• The Printed Infantry Reference Guide