I'm just getting started with Croc Games products. Picked up my first Spartan stuff a few weeks ago. Since the rules aren't release for them yet I've got a bit of time to work on scenery for the table. Decided I'd start big with a Doric temple.

First step of course the outer temple column master. Designed in metaseq and printed on an invision rapid prototype printer at 1:60th. I chose that scale because Doric temples really are massive! If you've ever stood next to a colum drum at the Parthenon or Temple of Zeus in Athens you know how small a man really is next to them. The column master was hollow when printed to save material so I filled it with 3 or 4 types of Silicon+poly resin whatever was left in the mixing cups after I poured other molds.

Next step, create a heavy duty mold that will last over 50 casts. Sealed the master with SuperSeal, created the mold frame with legos and a sheet of Plexiglass, sprayed the entire thing with universal mold release very liberally. Cast it in Vytaflex40 as a two part mold. I wanted to have the ability to cast this mold in both Excalibur and White Portland Cement with a Co-Polymer so no silicon molds.

The column apparently shaded the plexi from getting enough mold release in a small spot. I had to apply a fillet knife to free it from the plexi, mold looks fine though.

This looks promising. Keep us updated.

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http://minismithsforge.blogspot.com/ http://shefdumabuki.blogspot.com/

Slow going atm, I'm still waiting on my delivery of casting materials, spending time doing 3d layout work on the temple as well as prototyping a new resin command counter set.

I did have one person ask why I started with the column and not the base of the temple. Well I started with the column because it was easiest to scale next to a 28mm model and I had several examples of people next to other doric temples in RL. Once I'd decided on the scale for the column a majority of the other measurements could be calculated from the column dimensions.
Classic Hexastyle Doric Order Temple

Due to the expected size and weight of the temple I will be building it in 2 main building halves with removable roof sections. Since I am not building with stone I won't have the structural limitations to consider the ancients did. With the total size of this model roughly a yard in length and without the need to hold a stone+wood roof up I've decided to execute the Pronao, Cella, Opisthodomos, and Adyton as a removable central piece. Possible second central section being a long reflecting pool similar to the one seen in the movie Troy(@Troy) This should allow the temple to be less of a solid mass and allow some units to pass through the building entirely from side to side. This will also allow the temple to be placed as a single piece on a large board as a solid building. Used as half a temple against a table edge, or as two temples against table edges.

Front Half
Foundation:
Stylobate 440mm x 520mm (378 smooth stone hirst floor blocks to cover 100%! Full temple is 1:2.3 ratio same ratio as Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion & Thisseon)
Stereobates A 490mm x 545mm, B 540mm x 570mm (Stereobate steps are 1x 25mm hirst floor block wide around the exterior with a cement backer board under the Stylobate.)
Column layout pattern Hexastyle
Column Height 175mm
Column width @base 30mm
Column plinth 35mm sqr
Column Flutes 24 (Parthenon exterior columns have 24 flutes)
Column Count 6 x 7 for 18 columns (corners counted only once)
Column Ratio 5.8 (Classic antiquity between 5.7 and 5.9. Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion is 5.83)
Space between columns 50mm (should allow a column formation of 20mm square bases to pass between columns. That's close to 2? per 2 columns but I decided an extra few mm for movement was worth breaking the golden ratio.
Entableture
Architrave 445mm x 525mm

Vandil said:
... as well as prototyping a new resin command counter set.

First off- WHAT? Resin command counters?!?!? You have got to show us those...

Secondly- Ra's Eye! This thing is going to be awesomely huge! I can't stop the exclamation points!!!! Where are you located so I can come and play on that when it's done?

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http://minismithsforge.blogspot.com/ http://shefdumabuki.blogspot.com/

CBP3 said:

Vandil said:
... as well as prototyping a new resin command counter set.

First off- WHAT? Resin command counters?!?!? You have got to show us those...

I'm not a cardboard fan and the command counters were just begging for an upgrade being one of the most touched items in the game. These should be run off the prototyping machine next week hopefully. Just need some minor tweaks yet. The rims, symbols, and words are 3mm. the cracked central section is between 1mm and 1.8mm in thickness depending on the area. The special markers are double sided with alternate text on each side like the paper versions I doubled them just to show the reverse side. The double Advance counter is a blank template not really there to be printed. There are also some lines on the render that wont print, arrows for example.

Those are skookum!!!

So will they be painted up or what?

I need a prototyping machine, dangit!

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http://minismithsforge.blogspot.com/ http://shefdumabuki.blogspot.com/

I was tempted to do an Olympus set using Athena's Owl instead of the eye or RA. Unfortunately the Ra set was borderline to expensive to print by itself! They'll come off the machine transparent and I'll try to recast them in a white poly resin. From there they could be dyed a solid color and over brushed with a metallic (Vallejo model color Old Gold?), or left clean to be painted up nicely by hand. I haven't really decided which I'll do with my set yet.

I'll start a separate thread when I get the prototype counters in.

On the temple front I received notice that my casting supplies are all finally in transit! Hopefully I can get some columns made soon. Just casting those is going to take forever. I'll also have to create a mold for a large section of the stylobate floor. I have a box full of loose hirst floor tiles that covers 2sq ft but no where near 400+ I'll need.

6 months between updates that temple should be totally done by now right!? Well not exactly but I did update before Croc Tales 7 came out! I have managed to make some progress despite some nagging health issues and maintaining the 24/40/.02 average dad kid/work/me schedule. So on with the temple progress already!

Stylobate Floor Section Mold Like I said 6 months ago the total number of floor tiles was going to be staggering to cast individually 370+ for the Stylobate. So I cast a mold for a larger floor tile section. With the larger floor sections it's 4 per half temple and they run the entire width of the Stylobate 440mmx65mm each. The mold was made using Mold Max 30 and I should be able to reuse the individual floor tiles used in the mold making process for the Stereobates.

Cast Stylobate Floor Sections I cast 9 floor sections in Excalibre giving me 1 spare. I was toying around with the idea of having the central portion of the Stylobate floor lift out. That way the temple could have a long reflecting pool circa Troy the movie, altar, and historic vault house. To do that I would have to cut or snap the floor sections after the inner columns. Anyone that's worked with Excalibre knows it's hard so I cast 4 floor section in Smooth-cast 305 which is both lighter and much easier to cut. If I end up not using them here they'll be easy to cut down to size for smaller Greek style buildings.

Cast Columns Busy casting the column mold over and over and over again. Most of the columns came out between 173-175mm due to Excalibre settling during the casting process. I should be able to level these all out to 173mm using a belt sander with right angle guard.

Casting the rest of the temple about half the blocks I ended up casting for the temple build. 85% of which are hirst with a couple rapid prototyped to bridge the column tops.

Cast Command Counters These got a bit of a back seat for a while. I had run the prototypes off the machine and then basically sat on them as I tried to use up a gallon unit of casting silicon with more priority casting. When I got to the bottom 1/6th of the bucket I started casting command counter molds. 1 mold per counter and I only had enough legos to cast 3 molds at a time so it took me about a week of mold making to get the basic slit molds ready. Then another week casting the command counters themselves. I tried smooth-cast 305, black 326, and clear EA690. The black 326 and clear EA690 both produced almost bubble free castings but were either to soft or took far to long to cast (72hrs). I settled on simply casting a huge pile of them in the much faster but more bubble prone 305 then sorted and tossed the junkers. I ended up with a pretty good pile of command counters roughly a double set using only a quart of 305 in the process. I'll probably run off another double set in the clear 690 but the molds will end up taking a real beating from the slower setting epoxy resin.

Paint Tests Finding a suitable paint mix for Pentelic marble, Parian marble and Mediterranean rock has proven difficult. I started out with 10x scenic 25mm bases, 10x scrap command counters, first hand photographs, and actual marble samples from the Marathi and Mount Pendeli marble quarries. (When asked why my luggage was so heavy I could honestly answer I had rocks in it.) I painted all 20 test pieces in with different color schemes. I found 2 color schemes that fit Pentelic marble very well and one that works for basic rock from the area but Parian marble has been a real task to recreate. The depth of light penetration and clarity of the marble is amazing, reproducing the effect in a flat paint scheme may very well be impossible.

These look great! Thanks for the update.

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http://minismithsforge.blogspot.com/ http://shefdumabuki.blogspot.com/

Wow!

I want a set of those counters! Those look amazing!

I'm really impressed with the quality and scale of this project - please keep posting updates (as events warrant!)
-Alex in Alaska

That's amazing work!

About the marble, note that there would be a scale effect, in at least two ways. First, the texture of the actual marble samples is 60 times the size of what it would be in your model. Secondly, and I forget the rationale, it is commonly held that models should be painted in somewhat lighter colours than the full-scale objects that they represent.

Wow Great work so far, will be really impressive to see on the battlefield when done, I'd love to see photos then.

Wow! Truly amazing work! Are you planning to sell any counter sets? Are the layouts in a Corel format suitable for lasercutting? Thanks for sharing, and pleas do keep us posted as your projects progress.

Holy Wow! looks great dude. Command counters look sweet too.

I don't have any plans to sell Command Counter sets unless Croc steps in and says it's OK to do so. Person use is one thing but I know of at least one game company that would sick the legal team on me. (looking at you Games Workshop) I uploaded the 3D Command Counters to the public Google 3D Warehouse if you'd like to download from there you can export to Collada's .dae and from that format convert the design to just about anything. http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=b1920e7553a9db4496ff7a951202b0e7

Here is the bit of marble I'm having trouble with recreating in paint. Sort of odd but the Greek government lists the Marathi marble quarry as a historic site reserving all marble from there for great public works. (I believe the last time it was quarried was for Napoleons tomb.) Anyway the hill a stones throw from the protected quarry is an active commercial quarry and the island uses rock from that hill all over the place. I picked this polished chunk up while snorkeling, they had back filled a sea wall with marble scrap sometime around 1985.

If anyone has any paint recipe suggestions for these source photo's I'd love to hear them!

Makes you wonder how many people have sat right here over the last 3,000 yrs. Made from Pentelic marble as far as I could tell. Wouldn't be odd as it was at the capital of the delian league.

Acropolis Rock base test #10

Sun Blasted Island base test #15

Found this villa interesting as it used both types or stone and had Pentelic marble columns too.

What's a good information source on all of these types of marble?

Also, which manufacturer is the red-robed priest or worshipper from? It would be ideal for Roman gaming, too...