Back when I was role-playing this would have been something I would have killed for, though perhaps back then I would have baulked at the cost ($30 for a realistically paintable model, upto $99.99 for a bronze). It is, however, a really good tool to make a character portrait for free. If you have a really good home 3D printer (and having seen minis printed from home-3D-Printers, it really does need to be good to match cast models, the layer-lines are very visible when you're used to Games Workshop grade models...the best resoution these guys offer is 50 micron layers) you can download the STL files for a fairly nominal fee. There are a huge number of options to play with, especially around pose and scale.
I had a bit of play doing 2 of my favourite characters from very different settings. Lucas Newell was my ICAR character, and Bollax was a long-running AD&D 2nd Ed Dwarf Warrior/Priest (he had a much longer name and title listing his conquests, as modesty was his dump stat). In both cases I was really impressed at how quickly I could get very close to my mental image of both characters. The colour printing options look a little basic (though it might be possible to add some washes to bring some more depth, or dip the models...though given the cost that might be a high-risk strategy).
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Bloody hell, that does look like Lucas to me!
Also rather proud that you said Lucas was one of your favourites.
What a superb tool! Thanks for sharing.
hmmm just saw this might have some nasties in their t&c's not sure it's really a problem for hobby use but probably worth being aware of
Rather than watch a 20 minute video of someone waffling (gotta get that viewing time for YouTube revenue!) I went and looked at the Twitter thread.
The copyright pertains to the combination of 3D assets used to create the model, not the character themselves. That video could have been an awful lot shorter. Not that a t&c would hold up anyhow (for example, I make a likeness of Spiderman in Heroforge, pretty sure Marvel/Sony still owns the Spiderman IP)
yeah as I say probably not an issue if you are just using it for hobby stuff.
Normally the copyright in this sort of case would be shared they would own the underlying parts and you would have some ownership of the alterations the combination and customization of those parts and there would be some sort of licence to govern the reproduction. In their t&c they own all rights to any model you make and retain the rights to commercially exploit those specific models while restricting any commercial use by the user.
So in the marvel case you don't own spiderman so can't sign away marvels rights they would own that specific knock off spiderman model but couldn't exploit it. In the case of some character you did own the rights to they could then sell the model as they saw fit churning out their own line of merch using those models not paying you a penny.
Is that likely, probably not, but it is a little shady to include that sort of stuff in their t&C's.
that sort of overreaching unusual terms is always a red flag