Hero System Mod for Tabletop Simulator

[Brennall]

Oh it is possible to learn. Depending on your time and budget.

 

Simple answer .. use hero forge (pay the £8 for each figure) .. make a model you want .. and then "colour" it yourself and import to game. That simplifies it somewhat but is basically the procedure.

 

More complex answer, learn to sculpt yourself .. blender is free, with a zillion tutorials. But it takes a lot of time and skill to sculpt characters.

 

Here are a couple of examples of my work.

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

Animation for figures is cool but not necessary. Yes you can learn it, but good figures require artistic talent. I had been working in the video game industry for 30 years, as a character artist/animator and I still have things to learn.  Making a poseable character is the same procedure to make an animated character. Blender can do it all, and quite well.  But then it is up to your artistic talent to make the character to look good. That you can also improve through learning, but the speed of that depends on your affinity with anatomy and proportion. Scenery is much easier, and you can use blueprints. 

[bluesguy]

10 hours ago, Brennall said:

Oh it is possible to learn. Depending on your time and budget.

 

Simple answer .. use hero forge (pay the £8 for each figure) .. make a model you want .. and then "colour" it yourself and import to game. That simplifies it somewhat but is basically the procedure.

 

More complex answer, learn to sculpt yourself .. blender is free, with a zillion tutorials. But it takes a lot of time and skill to sculpt characters.

 

Here are a couple of examples of my work.

 

 

Nice work.

 

So when you buy the figure and download the model does it come in a format (.obj) that TTS wants?  Or do you have to convert the file?  And last but not least what kind of program do you use to 'color' the figure?  Gimp?

[BadTodd]

When you buy the figure from Heroforge, it comes as an .stl file.   You can very easily convert that to an .obj file in most 3D programs.

[bluesguy]

Here are a set of instructions that I found when doing a search on the net.  I tried this with a sample character that Hero Forge lets anyone download and it seems to work.  Still need to learn how to paint the mini 😉.  As a reminder these are not my instructions.

Quote

 

So for context a friend was making an original game and he tested his own minis from hero forge before making his own personal ones and when I introduced him in TTS for easier play testing we tried using those files he had but it was honestly very difficult to get them in but after some time and research I found a way. Because I could not find it easily online and I imagine that other newer players may want to use Hero Forge for their own personal games I figured I would share how you can upload into TTS and make them easier to use from what I learned. And if anyone has better suggestions for minis or a easier way of doing this please feel free to share I just know that some people may be looking for help.

So the first thing after getting the .STL from Hero Forge I recommend then downloading Blender its free and make the minis usable. The main problem with Hero Forge is that the minis come with an extremely high poly count and the size of the minis are also very large so I will leave the steps for you to fix this.

1. Import the STL file into Blender and make sure that there is no other objects inside. (Blender normally starts new project with a basic cube you can delete this to make it a clear space.)

2. Blender allows you to do a lot of crazy things so the controls and layout may look intimating but do not worry we will only use two features for this to work. Object and Modifiers.

3. After you import your file it will most likely take up most of the screen because of how large it is. What you want to do is scale it down using the object tool found to the right of the screen.(It'll look like a cube among the other tools) I use the scale of 0.25 from the original 1.0 on all axis and I found this was the best result. Also you may want to rotate the mini for the base to match the grid in Blender this will make it have the correct orientation when playing. I found rotating it to 62 degrees on the Z axis gave the best result.

4. Now once that is done you mini will look much better on screen. Now you will go to the Modifiers tool. (It will look like a wrench) and you will add the modifier "Decimate" under the "Generate" column. You will then change the ratio from 1.0 to a lower amount to fix the poly count or "faces" of the mini. I found using 0.25 gave the best results.

5. After that is done export the project as a .OBJ and name it, You should then be able to upload it as a custom model into TTS and use it for your games. (If any errors display on screen try using the decimate tool again because the number of faces may still be too high and this will normally cause the mini to not upload to TTS)

That is they way I found out how to use Hero Forge. If you use any other website to use for minis and may have similar issue with uploads this might work for you too but I only ever used the one. If anyone has any other suggestions that might help please feel free to comment and leave them for players it might make it easier for them in the future.

 

 

 

[Brennall]

Some important things to note in relation to the above. 

 

1. The number of triangular faces on any OBJ model for TTS should be less than 30,000. For ideal performance the lower the better whilst remaining acceptable.

 

2. The above process will not produce a coloured model. If you wish to "paint" the model you can use this tutorial to learn how: - 

 

 

3: Then you will need to export the texture you have created and apply it to the model you have in Tabletop simulator. 

 

For those who seek further help I should explain I use a different painting tool called 3dcoat which is not free (around $100 for the basic version and $300 for the full product).

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Brennall]

Distance and Movement in the Beta ... current work