Working on Ultimate Dungeon Terrain & A Whole Day of Hobbying

Morning: Processing 3D Prints

Starting the day off with processing 3D prints. Everything turned out pretty good. There’s a little bit of a missing part, but I’m not sweating it.

The top of this colossal has already failed for me twice. I’ve literally used the whole bottle of resin just trying to print it—a little frustrating, but it’s been my fault, not a problem with the sculpt. I think it’s just been too cold down here. I have a heater going now and I think we’re good.

A Breakthrough Moment

Today is the dawn of a new day for the Hobby Nomicon—and I’ve felt like that every day for the last week. I keep having breakthrough after breakthrough lately and it feels really good.

I think maybe the last couple of years I was burnt out. There’s no maybe about it—I was definitely burnt out. But I didn’t realize just how badly. That burnout is finally starting to lift and I’m going back to feeling normal again.

I have so much clarity, so much creative energy. It’s all coming back to me. I need to really maintain a creative space because I think part of what’s causing my constant project hopping is that I don’t have a space to be consistent.

The Ultimate Dungeon Terrain Board

I’ve got my Ultimate Dungeon Terrain board. I’m really happy with how the dungeon side turned out. I made this right before I decided to start the channel.

The first time I played on it, somebody got fireballed. So this is the scorch marker for where they exploded—a memory of the very first inaugural run on it. Sometimes I look at it and I hate it, but the story behind it is pretty cool. I think I did a good job making it look scorched and burned.

But the back half—the outdoor half—got stepped on by the dog and it’s not done yet. Time to fix that today.

Texturing the Outdoor Side

We want to slam this full of as much texture as possible. We still have our basing texture that we made so many months ago—crazy to think about—that’s just been sitting. I’m never going to use this on bases ever again, but I think it’ll be perfect for this.

I went at it with a palette knife, got it pretty sliced up. After the basing incident of 2025, I don’t want to have to worry about it being too thin.

I’m taking the palette knife and smoothing it out, trying to make organic shapes. I don’t want any obvious palette knife strokes. I’m pushing this down pretty thin because a lot of the time we’re going to be in dungeons, so it has to rest flat still.

Adding More Texture

I’ve been saving this rock—maybe that’s a terrible idea, but let’s roll it through these pink areas to get more texture. Then I’m using an old ripped-up bath sponge from the dollar store, wet so it doesn’t stick as bad, just lightly tapping it. This adds more texture but also breaks up any palette knife lines.

For the remaining pink areas, I’m using old baking soda I’ve had for honestly 10 years. I just want a fine texture without having to go buy sand. Anywhere we see pink, we cover up with this.

Learning to Sculpt

While waiting for the board to dry, I started figuring out sculpting for the first time in my life beyond just basic gap filling.

I took this busted part off the misprinted arm. It looks gnarly because of the super glue, but I’m going to make some liquid green stuff and smooth over this gap. Again, this is not a tutorial—this is just me recording myself stumbling through it.

What I’m thinking is I’m just trying to smooth out his robot booty. I’m using isopropyl alcohol to try and thin out the green stuff. Just trying to reestablish what looks like a block—it’s all just circles and squares that give the illusion something is there.

This guy is always going to be special because he’ll be our benchmark. From the back, I think that’s pretty solid. The side is questionable, but from where I’ll be seeing it when I’m playing, I’m pretty happy.

Sealing the Board

On the garage floor now. I knocked all the loose stuff off and already sprayed it down once. This is our glue mixture—25% water, 10% isopropyl alcohol, and remaining Elmer’s glue. But now it’s 50% that mixture, 50% water. Pretty fine mist.

When this hardens, this is going to be hard as a rock. This is what used to be called scenic glue—very similar concept.

The Vulcan Finally Printed!

I finally printed this damn Vulcan on my fourth attempt. Look at how close we still came to failing! I had 750ml of resin and printed the top half of the Vulcan, the arms, the head, and a light warjack. According to the slicer I should have had plenty, but we almost failed because we ran out of resin in the tank.

That colossal misprinted four times for me—literally $40-50 in resin. Still way cheaper than buying it direct. Looks like we’re sticking with Crucible Guard!

End of Day

A whole day of hobbying. Doesn’t happen that much. Didn’t get any painting done, but got a whole lot of fun hobby stuff done. Thanks for watching and joining me today!