Has anyone here built a Bolt Action army from these prints? If you have, how are they? Also are there any files you would recommend for Greeks in BA?

https://www.etsy.com/listing/4336145970/28mm-world-war-2-resin-printedwwii-greek?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_d-toys_and_games&utm_custom1=_k_EAIaIQobChMI8LXz6rq3lwMVbU5HAR11UTKOEAQYBSABEgLmr_D_BwE_k_&utm_content=go_21791667273_169566881958_716586690444_pla-314535279060_c__4336145970_12768591&utm_custom2=21791667273&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21791667273&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8LXz6rq3lwMVbU5HAR11UTKOEAQYBSABEgLmr_D_BwE)

I recently started printing off some tanks from Wargame3D which came out great. The only problem is I have no clue what size the magnets are for the turret. I am printing at the native 1:56.

They would be super handy for digital kitbashes as helmet files are quite readily available for most nations. Converting them using plastic heads is quite a task, especially for full armies

In my continued quest to provide guidance to creators about where to direct their energy, after seeing ANOTHER German infantry release, I figured I would launch this poll.

It specifically highlights five nations which based on my Infantry index are underserved with fewer than five options out there for printed infantry, if not ZERO.

Unfortunately Reddit limits me to six options, so I made some arbitrary cuts. If you feel passionate about printing options for:

• China (Do specify Nationalists, Communists, or Warlords though!)
• Denmark
• Italy (Eastern Front)
• Netherlands (Europe? KNIL?)
• Norway
• Romania

Then please choose 'Other' and leave it in the comments!

I have chosen a mid-to-late-war uniform to depict operations from 1943 to 1945 (such as Italy, Normandy, and the late Eastern Front). The soldiers are equipped with the M43 Feldbluse, an M42 helmet and ankle boots with gaiters.

All miniatures are supplied at 28mm scale (1/56) and are easy to scale. I opted for true-scale proportions to achieve maximum realism, making the models fully compatible with larger scales. 

Each miniature comes in two versions, unsupported and pre-supported, and has been individually test-printed to ensure a smooth printing experience. The raw Chitubox project files are also included for those who prefer to customize their supports.

AI Disclaimer

No disclaimer about AI usage is included in the campaign, and given Hartolia has been pretty long established I don't believe they use it for sculpting, but I do notice that the main banner looks to probably be an AI generated image.

Hello everyone and welcome to another review, part of my long-running campaign to provide documentation and guidance for the best (and worst) out there for the WWII wargamer and printer.

Today's review is focused on C.A. Lab Miniatures (sometimes simply rendered as CALAB). They have a prolific presence on Kickstarter with a number of campaigns under their belt at this point, as well as maintaining their own website with individual stls available. Aside from their own site, they also have storefront page via Wargaming3D. I would note that it does not seem like either storefronts feature all materials from the Kickstarters.

No models were provided by C.A. Labs for this review.

PRINTING

Test prints for figures were done as resin prints on an Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra, sliced in Chitubox and printed with Conjure Sculpt resin, using 2.7s exposure for .05mm layers. For the terrain pieces, I printed those as FDM prints, using a Prusa MKS4, a .6mm nozzle, and ANYCUBIC PLA+. Layers were set to .15, and slicing was done in Prusa Slicer.

For the resin printing, most figures are provided with both supported and unsupported of which I printed a mixture. Generally speaking, I did not notice a difference, with both printing without issue, although the pre-supported files I did find to generally be on the heavier side - not uncommon with pre-supports that go for security over ease. The only issue I had ties into a few models having very thin parts. None failed to print, but I ended up breaking several during post-processing despite what I feel was very delicate care. I'd be less perturbed if the intention was obviously true scale figures, but as the style mostly veers towards heroic, it feels like a poor choice.

With the terrain, the offerings are something of a mixed bag. In the case of the buildings and scatter that I did print, I admittedly chose them because they seemed like good files, and indeed they printed without issue. Some of the building files are decently well designed to require minimal, or no, supports, and in these cases they do print very well. A number of the files I previewed though seem to be a bit more ambitious, and clearly require more than minimal supports. That isn't a huge issue, to be sure, but something to keep in mind. Some pieces though seem just poorly thought out, such as a piece of urban scatter which is a war memorial, but modeled with incredibly thin walls for the hollow interior. My slicer wanted to print a large portion of it with only a single layer wall! While I admittedly chose my prints specifically for ones I knew would work, visual assessment shows that isn't the case for all of them, and I would suggest checking the comments section in their Kickstarters for some highlights of other issues.

So disappointed with the quality of the pieces. I may be able to salvage the odd one or two but I'm gutted that I opted for the commercial licence option. There's so many inconsistencies in this KS from the scaling of the buildings, to how they're actually designed. 

I have to say, ive only been printing for 5 years and back quite a lot of products put on my website and this lot has been the worst i have ever done.

Take that as you will...

MODELS

I previously reviewed C.A. Labs when they first started, and at that time had a cautious review. I saw some real positives, but also some negatives, and hoped that with more development they would really shine. I'm revisiting now because they have quite a collection under their belt now and have moved on from terrain to include vehicles and figures as well, which were not present originally. Unfortunately though, I must say that the hope was not well placed, as I have some notable issues on all several fronts, as well as one additional elephant in the room which I'l return to in its own section.

For the figures offered by C.A. Labs, I try to always start off by saying nice things, but honestly, I'm not sure how much I really can offer there. While there is some clear competence in a strict, technical sense, in that details are usually well executed, the figures fall short on almost all of the metrics I look at usually. When it comes to the poses, while some are well done, with a decent fluidity to them, and occasionally a rather charming sense of humor even, some are very stiff to the point of being off-putting.

The most frustrating to me though is the lack of consistency, so even when there are things I do like they aren't universally so, and the pluses are seriously hurt by that lack of consistency. If you told me that this was actually a half-dozen designers communicating through cans and string, I'd possibly believe you. While there are some stylistic hallmarks to be found, nevertheless the style is all over the place. Even in the same campaign you can find models which seem to be done at different scales and styles. While nothing is proper true scale, they run the gamut from a somewhat balanced approach to a very strongly heroic style. This doesn't only hold true for the designs across batches, either, with a German MP being very different from an American general, but two paratroopers have M1 Carbines that are vastly different in scale and style too (and while it is worth pointing out one is an M1 and one an M1A1... the visual difference is in parts which shouldn't be different).

And as noted, insofar as there is a stylistic hallmark, which I would say is for the models which are very heroic in design, I'm not sure how much I like them. In all of the style groups, some models are fine, and some aren't. For the heroics in particular the faces get kind of over done on some models (and again can feel inconsistent even in the same groups), and proportions are not well executed at times, most notable perhaps being a set of American infantry with M1 rifles that seem several sizes too big. I'd also add that while puddle bases are common, which is something I like usually, even this is a mixed bag as many of the figures aren't on puddle bases, but on full-sized 25mm bases. I do not like that as I want to use my own bases!

Due to variety in designs, it is hard to say anything about comparing to other 28mm figures out there. Ultimately some match ok, and some aren't quite as close, so might require some slight scaling to match properly.

As for the vehicles, bluntly I only printed one because I don't like the vehicle files. I've long ranted about vehicles which only are offered as a single file, and that is the case here, with most vehicle models only printing as one complete thing. I only printed the one because I wanted to be able to say it printed fine, which it does, and that it looks fine in a visual sense, which it does as well, but the fact that I had to print it with the wheels on is enough for me to put it on the back of the pile of shame shelf, and ensures I won't print any more of them.

Moving over to the terrain, I do like some of the buildings! At their best, the C.A. Lab buildings are decent looking, and each floor detaches and there are the peg and hole to keep them nice and secure on the table. Simple, straight forward, and easy to be happy with that. But this falls apart on two fronts.

First off, while some of the buildings have a 'good' peg and hole system which is well sized, I also noticed many files which seem to have abnormally tall pegs. I don't understand why that would be the case, as it just introduces possibility for problems, and doubly so as it doesn't look like they are even tapered, which is fairly important for ensuring ease of use! Beyond that though, other buildings don't have any sort of pegs or system to secure floors in place, which is a major demerit for me, and even worse, some buildings don't even seem to be provided as anything other than solid blocks (I say 'Seem' because files organization isn't always the best). Perhaps an ambitious end-user who likes a design can do their own edits to have removable floors, but why not provide that for everything from the start? It is also worth adding that as with the figures, there seems to be some inconsistency of scale with the buildings too, something that is always frustrating as it isn't necessarily easy to notice at a glance, but more obvious once it prints.

I think that really the most charitable thing that could be said here is that some things are good, and some things really aren't. While I know some of the models are tested since some campaigns seem to include actual, real photos of real printed models, I don't need them to tell me that they obviously don't test everything. but of course, they actually do tell us exactly that, as noted in one comment they left in a Kickstarter:

It's impossible for me to print all the models produced because it would take more than a month of work;

I have absolutely zero sympathy for them here of course. Doing these reviews, and running this sub, I've communicated with so many designers, and have been detailed just how much work and care some of them put into doing test after test of everything to make sure it prints great, so this comes off as nothing other than sheer laziness and disrespect for the consumer. If we look at the sheer pace of campaigns, as they have done a half-dozen this year to date alone, they could cut that number down, and do half the campaigns with (hopefully) twice the quality, but a quick buck seems to be what they would rather be making instead of consistently good quality products. Given that stls are a digital product, shovelware seems like an appropriate enough description, churning out a lot of half-baked stuff, and with some ends up being fine but it being basically impossible to ensure it all is at the pace of delivery. The only nice thing to say there is that at least they are honest when confronted about it, but clearly it has no impact on their production methods.

Selection

It certainly can't be said that there is a lack of selection from C.A. Labs, as they have had Kickstarters covering both Western and Eastern Europe, as well as North Africa. Every campaign includes several dozen buildings at least, and usually has hit a number of stretchgoals as well to keep that number very high.

There is quite a variety of figures as well - with the above caveat that they often are a mismatch of style, but even here I have reason to be disappointed. Generally speaking there are two demographics here, people doing dioramas and people doing wargaming. If you are doing heroic style figures, you are clearly courting the wargaming crowd... so why not make sure that your models are usable for wargamers? It is great that there are, for instance, American MP models, but they are not usable in Bolt Action since they don't correspond to the unit armaments in the Armies Of book (the models all have SMGs but are rifles only in the game!). That is only one example of a number to be found which just generally undermines the utility that might be present at first glance. It would be great if designers would do more research and try to make sure they are serving the actual use cases.

The AI Elephant

Finally though, we get to that elephant I mentioned, namely the usage of GenAI. It is quite clear that C.A. Labs has fully embraced AI at least when it comes to promotional materials. Their recent campaigns the page is riddled with that soulless AI slop art style that is infesting everything. That though is simply annoying.

They include disclosures that they use it to paint the renders they export from blender, but it is pretty clear - and I think anyone who understands how gen AI works this would happen - that it is changing the renders as well. I can pretty easily find examples where the uncolored render and the colored render are clearly not the same thing. This undermines faith in whether anything being shown is actually the real file as it is false advertising, and blatantly unethical.

It also gives one to wonder whether AI is being used for more than promotional materials. Several of the issues that I have highlighted, bluntly speaking, are the kind of things that I'm told are common tells for AI use. The multiple different styles, the differences in scales, the very strange mis-match in M1 carbine models... There are many things this can be chalked up to aside from AI, but it is a possible explanation. It also doesn't escape my notice that the style of the very heroic figures feels oddly similar to that 'AI slop style' for 2D art. Perhaps it is simply because of how the coloring they do so obviously does that to the promo images planting the seed, but it is hard not to see it all the same, and I have seen others opine that it is typical for faces done with AI for 3d models. It also ties back to the aforementioned pace of releases, and AI could help explain how they are releasing so much so fast.

I've checked through their various campaigns, and as Kickstarter either requires or strongly encourages AI disclosures, they have included that in most, but only ever something along the lines of "Some pictures, form blender renderings, are coloured with licensed ai software", with no mention of other uses, although I notice several comments in the Kickstarter campaigns asking if AI was used to model, without response. They have a presence here on reddit though, and going back through, I was able to find a very interesting comment they made in this thread here on the subreddit, where they joke (?) about using AI to sculpt, and when someone points out how it makes the renders look like shit, they respond:

Thank you for your suggestion, i realized that this actually penalizes my work, i decided to no longer use artificially generated images because they do not really show the quality of my work, thank you again and my best regards

The same thing happened a few months later and they again said to someone suggesting they stop:

You right, will do that

Clearly they didn't really listen, and if anything have just doubled down harder since. Ultimately, I am not able to say definitively that AI is used beyond the promotional materials, but I feel there are reasons to be suspicious. And to be honest, even if that isn't the case I find the use for coloring and promotional materials is bad enough in how it creates an obviously false impression about the actual models. Ultimately though that is for everyone to make their own personal decisions on, but it is hard not to think that where there is smoke there is fire.

Conclusions

It should be no surprise at this point that my final thoughts are hardly favorable. The figures from C.A. Labs are simply not good in my opinion. In the technical sense, their lack of consistency for both style and scale is a major knock against them, and even when the style is consistent, there is something I'm not really a fan of - in particular those overdone faces. The vehicles are barely worth mentioning, and while some of the buildings absolutely do deserve decent marks, even that is hard to praise highly since the quality ones are still part of a pretty high volume of varying quality, of which they admit they are just churning it out without thorough testing. And this of course doesn't even get into the issue of A.I. usage. I ultimately can't offer an answer as to whether it is used for the models themselves, but in all honestly the mere way in which it is openly used for colored renderings and promotional materials is off-putting enough for me as I find it to be unethical.

I simply cannot recommend much of what C.A. Labs has released previously, and would very much recommend against backing future Kickstarters, unless perhaps you enjoy long shot gambles on the chance there are a few gems in the pile of 'meh'. It they stop using AI for their false advertising, learn how to model more consistently, and start to respect their customers enough to thoroughly test every model, then maybe things will turn around, but given how they keep being called out, say they will change, and then don't, I'm not holding my breath.

-------------------

If you like these reviews and want to help me keep doing them, you can toss a buck via Ko-Fi page and a Buymecoffee page. I promise to waste it either on stls, or my crippling drug addiction, and nothing else. And a big thanks to a few folks who already have, and helped make these reviews possible!

Also be sure to check out:

• The Printed Vehicles Reference Guide
• The Printed Infantry Reference Guide

Core pledge is 10 buildings, with no mention of Stretch Goals.

There is obvious, heavy usage of AI in the promotional materials and the designer includes the following disclosure:

What parts of your project will use AI generated content? Please be as specific as possible.

AI-generated content is used only for auxiliary presentation purposes, including background imagery and visual preview composition for the project page. All core project deliverables, including the 3D models offered to backers, are created manually by the creator using professional 3D software. AI-generated content is not included in the downloadable files and does not affect the final rewards.

Do you have the consent of owners of the works that were (or will be) used to produce the AI generated portion of your projects? Please explain.

Yes. The AI-generated visual elements are created using tools that generate original imagery and do not rely on or reproduce specific copyrighted works. No third-party artists’ works are directly used, reproduced, or included in the final project deliverables. All AI-generated content is used solely for presentation purposes and does not form part of the rewards offered to backers.

Just like this Sherman Firefly, there's an entire collection of more than 50 highly detailed models, all test printed and ready for your next project.

For over a year I've been building this arsenal, adding new vehicles and refining existing ones every single week. From iconic World War II armor to rare Cold War prototypes and experimental "what-if" designs, there's always something new to discover.

Every model is created entirely from scratch in Blender, using real-world references, technical drawings, and historical documentation. No AI is used in the modeling process, and even the renders are produced without AI.

Whether you're a modeler, painter, or wargamer, you'll find unique vehicles designed to stand out in any collection.

Browse the collection, pick your next project, and start printing today. New models are added regularly, so there's always something new waiting for you.

https://cults3d.com/@vbertz

I’m starting a small business selling 28mm 1/56 scale models that are fully-painted. Would you all please give me some feedback on these three models I just listed? There are 2x Panzer III E’s and a Sdkfz 251 Thank you 🙏

A pretty extensive collection of 15mm models.

It is also fairly obvious they have used AI for the promotional material. A disclosure is provided by Eskice:

No AI is used to sculpt or generate the 3D models in this project. All miniatures and vehicles are sculpted traditionally by me using Medium VR, ZBrush and Blender. I only use AI-assisted tools to help create some of the promotional visuals for the campaign, such as presentation images featuring my own 3D models, backgrounds, titles and graphic elements. AI is therefore used as a presentation and communication tool, not to create the 3D models delivered to backers.

New kickstarter, explicit statement of no AI which is nice to see 8-)

• MACHINE GUN BUNKER
• FARM SETUP
• GOVERNORS MANSION
• GREAT WALL WATCHPOST
• JAPANESE AIR CONTROL TOWER
• JAPANESE AIRCRAFT HANGAR
• HEAVY GUN BUNKER
• SMALL FARM RUIN
• TEMPLE
• JUNGLE BARRACKS
• JUNGLE KITCHEN
• MEDICAL AID STATION
• JUNGLE PILLBOX
• JUNGLE TEMPLE
• JUNGLE VEHICLE DEPOT
• JUNGLE WAREHOUSE
• MARCO POLO BRIDGE (WHERE THE INDO CHINESE WAR STARTED)
• LARGE SCATTER TERRAIN
• SMALL SCATTER TERRAIN
• WANPING RAILWAY STATION
• WANPING RAILWAY BOX
• YANGTZE RAILWAY BRIDGE
• AIR RAID SHELTER
• BORMANS BUNKER
• CINEMA
• COMMS HUT
• CONFERENCE ROOM
• FLAK DEFENCE
• GARAGE COMPLEX
• GENERATOR BLOCK
• HITLERS BUNKER
• MAIN GATE
• SPEERS BUNKER
• TRAINYARD
• WATCH TOWER

WIP on 15mm tanks. This free KV-1 STL is from Panzer Ace (I think) it’s lovely!

0.08 layer lines Bambu A1

New poll! This time we're looking into how important a pre-hollowed version of a file is for you.

Saw this posted on a FB page Battle scene productions by Midgard 3D. Its a Destroyed Normandy building set.

Hello! Kyoushuneko Miniatures here — haven't posted in this sub before, so wanted to share some of what we've made.

Just wanted to share a few of our previous releases that might catch your interest. We're currently working on more Chindits infantry this month, and we've also included some of our IJN naval garrison units here — our take on what a garrisoned Japanese naval faction might look like on the tabletop.

If you're after anything for the tabletop and haven't seen our stuff, our full back catalog is here: https://kyoushuneko.github.io/gallery.html — might be something in there that fits what you're already running.

Also happens we've got a sale going on the MMF store until Sept 14 (code SUMMER26, 40% off) if you want to grab any of the older Weird War or Fantasy sets while it's up. No pressure either way — mostly just wanted to show off the Chindits.

Store, if curious: https://www.myminifactory.com/users/kyoushuneko?show=store

Thanks for having us here.