Making your own terrain and leaves

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BVoodoo
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Making your own terrain and leaves

Post by BVoodoo »

AY all. I've been thinking about making some trees and hills and was wondering what was the best way to go about it.

For trees I was thinking a medium-light gauge wire that I would cover with some modeling material, but what should I use? Green stuff from the store or is there something better? Then I suppose I would flock it and put it on a round base or perhaps a titan base.

For hills I'm not to certain about. What are the best materials? Also, what are some height specifications I should be looking? For instance if the hills are terraced so models can stand on them, what should be the dimensions of each riser and runner (height and depth of each terrace).

Lastly, I've been trying to find leaf litter, but GW doesn't sell it. I've looked around on the web and a easy way to make your own is to crush up some birch seed pods and use a latex based paint on them (so they last). Sadly I can't find any birches.

Any help would be great and much appreciated. Thanks all.
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Beithir Seun
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Re: Making your own terrain and leaves

Post by Beithir Seun »

For trees, you could always go out and buy a pack of ready-made trees from a modelling shop (not GW ;)) They're reasonably cheap and very realistic.

If you really want to make your own, using a wire frame and armature is the first place to start. Try wrapping the wire with papier-mâché and painting it in suitable colours. From there, you can just use clump foliage (again available from most modelling shops) and stick it to the painted frame, before sticking the tree to a base or the terrain piece (personally, I put all my trees on 40K bases so that they are easier to store).

Hills can be made a variety of ways. Personally, I tend to make them from several card layers, each smaller than the last. Once the card layers are stuck together, I use filler to create the slope before sanding it smooth. Once that's done, either paint it or flock it (or both). Alternatively, you can buy polystyrene hills very cheaply from modelling shops. So long as you don't make the peak too high, there is no need to terrace them because the slope is not that steep. Stepped hills are unrealistic anyway :p

The scale is completely up to you. Terrain in Warhammer is an abstraction anyway so all hills block line of sight, no matter how big or small they are.

Leaf litter can be made several ways as well. Birch seeds is a good one but (as you already know) it's reliant on the availability of birch seeds! One really easy way is to pick some leaves (any ones will do) and bake them in the oven until they're crisp (but not burnt). Once they've crisped, you can crumble them up and apply the paint in a similar way to how the Birch Seed litter is made.

Probably the easiest way of all is just to use kitchen herbs! Stuff like Oregano, Herbes de Provence, Thyme, Parsley and crushed Bay Leaves are all great to use for bases. You can paint them in a similar way to the Birch seeds if necessary but you can just as easily get hold of a collection of herbs to suit your colour scheme/season without painting.

Hope that helps :) Feel free to PM me if you want more help ;)
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JRGumby
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Re: Making your own terrain and leaves

Post by JRGumby »

I've made a couple trees, and the best way I've found is petty close to what Beith said, with a few exceptions.

I use a small gauge floral wire: I've decided that the smaller the wie is, the more effort you have to put into it but the better the tree will look (as it willturn out with more branhes, roots, fewer thick gaps to fill). Basically you twist a bunch together, and keep twisting until you break some off for a branch, repeat all the way up the tree. The roots are the foldedend (easier than all loose, trust me!) you cut at the end and form into "up-side down branches". Of course, roots are more optional than branches :P.

I'd avoid using GS for trees, it's too expensive and you really don't need that fine of detail. IInstead of paper mache (which I find messy) I've been using a wall spackling compound mixed with some white PVA glue (elmer's). It's thick and gloppy, and I'm still getting better at getting even smooth-ish coats, but it turns out fairly well, is pretty stable, and pretty quick. GRanted, it will bascally destroy a brush. You can also sand and file the spackle after it dries all the way, which means you can smooth the trunk out more, and sometimes the lumps add a lot of character to the tree. Then I spray it, paint it, and (as soon as I get some) stick clump foliage on it! They look pretty good so far, and I've used a fraction of the materials I bought, made... 4 trees, and spent about... 5 bucks? (Thatis without the foliage but those bags are insanely huge).

As for hills, I use my favorite terrain material: Foam Insulation sheets. It's very tight-celled, so there aren't big chunks or bubbles like in some foam, and it's very carvable with a sharp(important!) knife. It's great for rocks, hills, stone buildings, I've even used it to make some smaller terrain and flavor pieces (I made a table for D&D for example) with the stuff since it's so easy to work with. I use th 1" size, since it's very versatile and it's about the height of the models (I think that adds to the blocks LOS effect if they literally can't see over it). You can get a massive sheet of the stuff (like 8'x4' or something) fo about 12-15 dollars at home improvement stores. IT will literally last you ages. Just don't spray on it... you'll need to get some latex paint or seal it with glue before spraying it.

I'd also suggest you pick up some MDF (Medium density fiberboard?) as it's a great base material. It's good for putting trees on to make forests, hills on to protect them (foam is not the toughest stuff around), and so on. Makes it a wee bit more durable, and who wants their hard work to get busted?
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BVoodoo
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Re: Making your own terrain and leaves

Post by BVoodoo »

All solid ideas. Much appreciated. The only thing with the leaves though is that I'm concerned about the frailness of using crushed up leaves; I'd like them to last as long as the model itself. Would you recommend coating the leaf litter with a latex base paint or some white glue before painting them?
God Slayer
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Re: Making your own terrain and leaves

Post by God Slayer »

well if you really want to go tree crazy... you can make trees by twisting wire as said above but the easiest thing to do after that is twist masking tape around it. place more tape at the bottem of the trees (twist it around more), because if you notice most trees are larger at the base then the top. after that there are a few ways to paint them... if you want the bark to have texture you can use StoneTouch... it is spraypaint of a sort that has chunks... after that you can just slap on a few coats of applebarrel [(i mixed brown/grey/afew other earth tones)(if you are cheap like me)]. as for leaves you can use moss (like deer moss), lichen... anything like that.. you can find it outside or you can buy it at most model shops it is like a dollar for a bag most places.

once i figure out how to do it i will post pictures.

http://s302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/godslayer777/

hopefully this works...

yey it does...

anyways, these trees are not done yet, when using the moss you have to pick and choose what parts you like, so on some of the trees you will notice that they are backwards and so on and so forth. The longer you spend on them the better it looks, i will try to find pictures of everything when i finished it.

insulation foam is good for hills, it is anywhere from 1/2 inch to like 6 inches thick. you can cut through the 1/2 inch easily... you can sand it to shape it (this takes forever). Just don't use superglue or spraypaint on it because it creates a cloud of deadly gasses. and you can get a 4x8 sheet for under $10 which equals lots of hills and bases.
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BVoodoo
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Re: Making your own terrain and leaves

Post by BVoodoo »

Okay. So I think I'm going to go with oregano for my "leaf litter." Should I bake it first, possibly 250 degrees, but for how long though? Then I guess I'll just glue them down and paint them (or should I paint them first). My big worry, as I believe I've said before, is that real leaves or herbs will deteriorate over time. Is there something I can do to prevent that? I understand that some people spray their models once they are finished painting with some sort of sealant to preserve the whole model and their paint job. Would this keep the base material from rotting as well? Also, what if I were to just give the oregano a coat of white glue, then base coat it, then paint it? I know my mum brushes glue onto her sand dollars and sea biscuits to help them keep.
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Re: Making your own terrain and leaves

Post by JRGumby »

I would just spray your base with a matt sealant. Should help protect and strengthen your herbage as well as prevent decay. I think I've seen similar concerns over at coolmini and the general consensus seems to be that with a olid coat of sealant there usually isn't much falling apart/decaying that dried herbs will do even over several years.

If you were to use fresh ones on the other hand... ew.
The only teacher is the enemy.
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