Anyone Here Make Their Own Terrain?

[Slacker]

I was thinking about creating my own. I've seen a lot of quality premade terrain available from various places, but it's a little too expensive for as much terrain I want to have. Any tips or websites for a newbie terrain maker?

 

[LostSoul]

A really cheap solution is to pick up cool looking rocks (especially ones with flat surfaces) and use them. Really small sticks work pretty well, too.

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

And you can't go wrong with styrofoam. Well, not that I've tried. But in principle, you can't go wrong with styrofoam.


Unless, of course, you ate it. That would be going wrong with styrofoam.

 

[Capellan]

I was thinking about creating my own. I've seen a lot of quality premade terrain available from various places, but it's a little too expensive for as much terrain I want to have. Any tips or websites for a newbie terrain maker?

I recommend giving www.hirstarts.com a look. They sell molds that allow you to build a lot of your own terrain. Principally it is for buildings and such like, rather than natural features ... so if you want the latter it might not help too much.

I haven't tried their product myself (I don't even paint minis, let alone get this creative), but the feedback seems good and some of my friends are very keen to try them out.

 

[Horacio]

Re: Re: Anyone Here Make Their Own Terrain?

I recommend giving www.hirstarts.com a look. They sell molds that allow you to build a lot of your own terrain. Principally it is for buildings and such like, rather than natural features ... so if you want the latter it might not help too much.

I haven't tried their product myself (I don't even paint minis, let alone get this creative), but the feedback seems good and some of my friends are very keen to try them out.

Hirst-Arts is WONDERFUL!
Bruce Hirst is one of the most helpful guys I've found, his molds are top quality, and building beautiful buildings and dungeons with it is easy and very amusing. Truely, try it and you will thank me

 

[LcKedovan]

As usual, I have to back Horacio up on this one. I use the Hirst Arts stuff too, and it rocks.

-W.

 

[Horacio]

What do you do here a Saturday morning, Will?

 

[Gospog]

I will also second Horacio on Hirst Arts. really cool stuff!

If you're dead-set on making your own, use foam board to make hills. You can find it in arts & crafts stores, in different thicknesses. Don't try to spray-paint styrofoam, though, it will disintegrate. If you cut the foam to use as hills, seal the open edges with spackle before spraypainting.

Then visit a model train store and stock up on little plastic trees and green flock.

When my D&D campaign was going full-steam, I made a new terrain piece for every game...for ten months.

It worked out great, everyone had fun playing on them, and now I've seriously expanded my terrain selection for both wargames and RPGs.

Have fun, and good luck!

 

[kengar]

GW puts out a book on scenery building that can give you a lot of good basic info on things like hills & trees etc. Slightly more of a wargaming slant, but still useful.

Check out WotC's site for the Folding Scenery on the Chainmail pages. You can download the images to print for free and they have several cool buildings, etc.

Another good site is http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/ Again, more geared to wargamers, but many posted articles and a place to post questions.

 

[Henrix]

Here are some good wargaming terrain sites. I won't mention Terragenesis, as Kengar just did.

War Factory has mostly Vietnam era terrain, but many good ideas.

Major general Tremorden Rederring's Colonial-era Wargames Page is a wonderful page, with a lot of nice terrain! take a look, even if you're not intereested in terrain building. Flashman in the avocado jungle of death, sort of.

GW has a page about terrain for theirWarhammer Skirmish game.

Net Terrain is a rather good german site (albeit in english).

Most of the pages above have lots of links to other places.