Stringbug

I was a teenager less than ten years ago and the world is a completely different place to me too, so its acceleration in the wrong direction is definitely exponential.

let me pre-emptively save you some money That kind of shows it is doomed then, because like you say people want pilot figures but don't like their figure painting skills, so instead of persevering and sweating and putting in all that effort to learn that skill, they'll buy the pre coloured figures. Now compare that to a kid looking at modelling now, its exact same situation but for EVERY skill, so if theyre starting now do you think they are going to elect to voluntarily put in countless hours learning everything and failing and restarting etc etc. to maybe one day after 1000s of hours end up with all the skills to make something that isnt even as good as the printed one? When veteran modellers cant even resist buying pre painted figures, pre done cockpits, pre done wheels (and in actuality completely pre done builds in many cases)? Right now just messing around with 3D printing this and that is a bigger hobby than scale modelling, and thats without the photo realistic replica element that is now here. Really the skill of the hobby is in painting, thats the part the was irreplaceable, as someone pointed out earlier, construction was somewhat impoverished when injection moulding came out in the 50s, everything can be made obsolete as long as the painting part is still there, but now thats gone too. In terms of keeping traditional stuff going, the lack of a reason to tool new kits isn't even going to the biggest problem, there's no way the golden era of paints and consumables were in now can continue, its doubly confounded by the fact that weve benefitted by accident by warhammer and tabletop gaming/figure painting absolute skyrocketing in recent years, and the gundam kits, which is floating alot of the paints and consumable manufacturers. With this coming in, both those are taken out the equation, I guarantee almost everyone that does warhammer will switch over to selecting colours on the computer and sending them to print, people have been wishing for that since I was a little kid, and for a lot of people painting is just a chore you have to get through in service of playing the game, so thats a bigger proportion of model paint buyers than us taken out of the market. Thats not going to be a world that has one boutique tier Spanish expert paint manufacturer let alone three competing with each other in one country.

As far as I know it's 20nm, the same as the formlabs resin printers, but you have to think that the SLS technology is quite mature, whereas this UV ink material jetting technology is starting here with this quality, so in a couple of years Id expect it will be an order of magnitude better, I've been pouring over pictures aswell, I suppose its hard to tell unless its infront of you and in different lighting, but looking at this for example I cant see any flaw, as much as I wish there was - I remember at work a client using the stratasys printers a few years back and looking at the results and thinking, its alright, but itll never replace sculptors and painters in our thing because the quality isnt high enough, this time though I think it will. Another depressing aspect is the creation of textures files themselves, its just a case of going with the photogrammetry camera and pressing a button, its not a case of, well in the old days I used to work with the paintbrush/airbrush, now I'm doing the same thing with a wacom tablet. the design costs from this are a tiny fraction compared to injection, the design costs involved in injection come from working out how to get it to functionally work with the steel tool, splitting up assembly in the most optimal way etc. no one has to bother with that using this method. You just cad (or even cheaper, go to a museum and scan the original) the model as it is in real life with no splitting or parts breakdown and print it in one go, you dont even have to figure out the supports like on a resin printer. Not to mention you also don't have to spend tens or hundreds of thousands on the steel tool. Trust me, no one will be tooling new injection kits unless they want to throw a fortune away for no return. This is exactly it, people get too hung up on the price of machines and whether they'll be in your home or not, it doesnt matter, like I say shapeways are offering this printer in the next month or so. Positivity is good though even if I don't share it, I think it comes down to what you get from the hobby, for me it was the aspect of having a nice display piece around, that would genuinely make someone think, wow, how on earth was that made? After this, in a world where the exact same quality of piece is shipped to anyones door from a print farm, and photoreal miniatures are buyable from any shop, that bit of magic and amazement gets taken away, of putting something into the world that could never be automated away. It just puts artisan level builds on the same level as any disposable tat like funko pop toys or something. Maybe the positive way to look at it is this, we never lived at the time where you could experience the sheer amazement of seeing a painting in a world before photography. But we did get a bit of time where browsing telford and gawping at peoples builds was analogous to that, people that come after now will never get that, they'll see the a build with the most master level paint job and think, oh yeah, you press and a button and a machine prints that. So maybe weve been lucky in that respect.

Even the concept of a "kit" is rendered obsolete by this tech, the only reason for assembly kits is getting things out of a two part mold, internal volumes, the problems of support frameworks surrounding 3d printed parts, painting inside internal volumes etc. this gets printed in full colour within a mass of pva shell which then washes away, no supports, no need for anything to get assembled. They've solved that, unfortunately, seriously have a look, a week ago I would have said the same thing, it'll never happen, its decades off etc. If the only obstacle is making the files then that's what the industry will be, making the files and messing about in photoshop making the colours, and then selling those for people to print. I'm not sure that, as niche as we are as an industry already, when the ONLY way of getting an exact 1 to 1 replica which perfect colour and weathering etc is to do it manually, that there will be any more kits being tooled up after everyone who would rather save their time and effort by just getting the exact same thing instantly is taken out of the market, obviously that's not a lot of people in this thread, but it is a lot of people who make kits. This machine can print the entire aircraft full photoreal colour with the pilot standing next to it, and the ground in one go. So what would we be adding these aftermarket products to?

Oh I forgot to mention in OP Shapeways is offering this printer as an option now, don't know the exact date its going live but its soon.

Good way to look at it, hope you're right, I suppose a funny thought is that, yes people do still paint after the advent of the camera, but people don't bother with "old masters" skills of painting absolute photoreal oil paintings, that end of up just looking like a photograph that someone could make with no effort. Painting became less realistic and more expressionistic as a consequence of photography. Don't know if I could even start on what an expressionistic scale model would be, haha.

You don't need to own a printer to use it though, and I'm talking about the general projection of where things are going to go, look at how SLA printing went from being prohibitively expensive to cheap and widely adopted in only a few years, extrapolate out what the means for the traditional paint skills of the hobby a few years from now, a lot of the passion and magic of doing this stuff comes from the fact it couldn't be made any other way than with pure skill, when photoreal scale models become a commonplace item that's just being printed off like we would print off a jpeg?...I don't know maybe it's just me but I think its really sad. I'm sure portrait painters felt the same way when colour film was being introduced. As for the first post, I don't talk on any forums but after seeing this its been depressing me for a few days, I just wondered if anyone here has any different take on this thing or something a I hadn't thought of. Maybe I shouldn't care but scale modelling is one of the only things I find enjoyable and I'm not that old, so its a sad feeling that this is the way things are going to go from now on.

Mimaki (the company which prints those pre made instrument panels by Quinta studios) has a new printer can do large scale full colour resin 3D printing with photographic accuracy, much bigger build volume then anything we need in our hobby, and without the need for cutting away support material either, so internal and external volumes can be done in full colour, it even prints clear resin as well for transparent areas . Been looking at some of the pictures and to be honest its unbelievable, but actually I'm really depressed over this. I think finally they have us beat, I hope I'm wrong but it looks like all the craft and ingenuity that everyone has honed and appreciated is going to be replaced by pressing a button a receiving the pre made model. Cant help but feel a little bit of magic has been taken out of the world, sad. Please tell me I'm wrong.🙁