Our friends at Hero Forge® (affiliate link) have been busy. Sure, they keep putting out great new content on a weekly basis, but this is even bigger.
As of today, Kitbashing has entered alpha playtesting.
The team at Hero Forge was kind enough to give me access, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it.
What is Kitbashing?
For traditional, physical miniatures, “kitbashing” is the art of using pieces from different miniatures or sets of miniatures to assemble more unique miniatures than you would get by following the standard assembly instructions. For example, you might get a miniature for Aragorn, do some sawing and some gluing, and put Gandalf’s staff into his hands.
Hero Forge’s version involves considerably less glue and “green stuff.” Kitbashing allows for even more in-depth character customization by freely placing, moving, and scaling items, as well as giving precise control of poses. Similar to traditional model kitbashing, where crafters could mix and match various parts of different miniatures or kits together to create something new and unique, Hero Forge’s Kitbashing brings that same power to our character creator.
Hero Forge is a user-friendly character creator tool that allows users to create custom miniatures right in your browser, with an extensive library of items, poses, and editing features at your disposal. From our innovative Color-Printed Plastic to our revolutionary Face Customizer, Hero Forge has continued to push the boundaries of technology in the field of custom, printable character design. And now, further elevating our character customization to a brand new level, we are excited to announce our latest addition, Kitbashing.
Kitbashing is a new feature that allows for even more in-depth character customization by freely placing, moving, and scaling additional items, as well as giving precise control of poses. Similar to traditional model kitbashing, where crafters could mix and match various parts of different miniatures or kits together to create something new and unique, Hero Forge’s Kitbashing brings that same power to their character creator.
How Hard is Kitbashing in Hero Forge?
Hero Forge’s character builder is easy to use. Pick options from a menu, maybe move some sliders to adjust poses and facial expressions, and, the vast majority of the time, your model looks fantastic.
Kitbashing is a bit more complicated. Depending on how complex your ideas are, you’ll need to position, scale, and orient objects on top of the basic steps for creating your model. There are a few hazards which you need to avoid if you plan to purchase a physical miniature, and Kitbashing asks you to take a brief quiz covering obvious hazards before you start. Hero Forge is great, but they can’t print levitating cheese.
Once you know the pitfalls, Kitbashing is surprisingly easy to get into. The point-and-click interface makes things very simple, and the ability to “undo” means that you can easily experiment and revert changes until you get the result you want. It certainly takes some practice to feel like you know how everything works, but I felt confident in what I was doing after dragging objects around and rotating joints for about 10 minutes.
What Can You Actually Do with Kitbashing?
Kitbashing allows you to add up to 20 parts onto the miniature outside of the existing item locations, as well as a variety of new tools to help perfect your kitbashed character.
Extra Bits
Items added with Kitbashing can be manipulated through scaling, rotation, and positioning tools, with additional options for grouping, duplicating, and mirroring. These can be any object from the Hero Forge collection, including weapons, heads, haircuts, rats, and whatever else you could want. The official marketing copy suggest making a cap out of mullets, and that is 100% achievable.
You can also place simple polygons, which is useful for sculpting custom objects, adding supports for an otherwise unstable miniature, or whatever creative nonsense you can come up with.
Twist My Arm
Kitbashing also introduces a new joint system within the miniatures themselves, enabling even more in-depth posing than ever before. This unlocks the ability to manipulate everything from ankles, knees, and hips to individual finger joints through scaling, positioning, and rotation. This gives you total control over your model’s pose, extending far beyond the collection of pre-built poses available.
How do I Get My Hands On This?
Kitbashing will be offered as a part of the Hero Forge Pro subscription, and is available now. If you’re not already a subscriber, it costs $4 a month ($15/month with STL/VTT downloads).
Okay, But is It Good?
Yes, absolutely. People are going to have a great time with this, and I can’t wait to see all of the cool stuff that folks build.
