At some point I'm going to start designing my own minis for 3D printing. I know a lot of folks are into the 28mm-32mm scale, myself included. However I'm very tempted to design mine at a 51mm scale. I think at that scale even the FDM prints could really shine! I feel like most the dwarfs modeled these days are practically in this scale anyways.
I am tempted for a number of reasons. The level of printable detail even on FDM would be awesome. The ability to print up the smaller races and creatures with decent detail would be nice as well! I also feel the the gaming scale has been on the rise for the reasons of cost and the fact that many sculptors are digital sculptors. That the tech has limited them to producing something smaller commercially until the last few years.
I am not convinced that the standard gaming scale is done growing either. When I first started painting minis in the early 90's. We were firmly in the 20-25mm scale with Ral Partha. Reaper and other companies took us to the 28mm scale and as their catalogs grew so did their scale. Today the standard seems to be 32mm. This change came gradually over the last 3 years. After 32mm, I suppose the next stop is 35-40mm?
So why skip all that and go straight to a 51mm standard for MGStudio? Other than the reasons mentioned above, for me it boils down to this. A one inch square or hex in many major systems still typically represents 5 feet, while the scale of the minis produced today is much larger than that. Lay one down on its side on a grid and see for yourself! I feel like a 1 inch square scales better to 3 feet to match today's gaming mini scale. If that's the case then doesn't 2 inches (or 50.8mm) scale to 6 feet?
I feel like the only real downside to printing a larger scale would be having to print buildings almost twice as big to compensate! That and all of our libraries of gaming resources are already made for smaller scales. Seeing as I never get to keep all those wonderful figures I get to paint for commission, I am not actually constrained by my pathetic excuse for a gaming resource library lol.
This is clearly an unfinished model of mine. It was also one of my first experiences with zbrush. I can't wait to revisit this concept. First, I got bigger fish to fry!