One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about returning to tabletop terrain building is that every project seems to lead to another idea.
What started as making a few simple trees for my Wild West table quickly turned into something much more interesting. Rather than sculpting every tree trunk by hand with air-dry clay, I found myself opening ZBrush again after years away from it and asking a simple question:
Could I make a reusable tool instead?
Rediscovering Old Skills
I haven’t spent any serious time in ZBrush for years. Like so many creative tools, it’s amazing how much you forget when you stop using them. There was plenty of searching through tutorials and fumbling around trying to remember where everything lived, but before long I had a simple sculpt taking shape.
It wasn’t anything complicated—just a collection of tree roots wrapped around a socket designed to accept the cheap Aldi trees I’ve been using for my forests.
The goal wasn’t to create a perfect digital sculpture.
It was to solve a practical problem.
Working Smarter
My first prototype worked, but I still needed to drill every printed trunk by hand before inserting the tree.
That seemed unnecessary.
So I jumped back into ZBrush, used a simple Boolean operation to create the holes digitally, and printed a second version.
Watching those trees slide perfectly into place straight off the printer was incredibly satisfying.
Suddenly I had four different trunk sizes that all worked exactly as I’d hoped.
Instead of sculpting dozens—or eventually hundreds—of individual trunks, I now had a reusable system that would let me build forests whenever I needed them.
Prints Don’t Tell the Whole Story
One thing this little project reminded me is that digital models often look far worse on the computer than they do once they’re printed.
Years ago I’d abandoned a lot of sculpting because I’d compare my work to the incredible renders posted online and convince myself it simply wasn’t good enough.
Ironically, it wasn’t until I started scanning hand-sculpted miniatures that I realised just how misleading renders can be. A sculpt that looks rough on the screen often looks fantastic once it’s sitting in your hand.
That realisation has given me the confidence to start experimenting again.
Finding the Balance
The funny thing is that while I was building these tree trunks, I also found myself browsing MyMiniFactory looking at all the incredible terrain available to print.
It’s tempting to simply download everything.
But I’m also conscious that if I do that, I’ll miss the part of the hobby I enjoy most.
For me, building the world has always been just as rewarding—if not more rewarding—than playing games inside it.
The 3D printer isn’t replacing scratch building.
It’s becoming another tool that helps me scratch build more efficiently.
Sometimes that means printing a part that would take hours to make by hand.
Other times it means making a simple reusable component that lets me spend more time creating and less time repeating the same job over and over.
More Ideas Than Time
At the moment, the workshop is absolute chaos—in the best possible way.
There are rocky outcrops waiting for paint, fences under construction, crates and barrels fresh off the printer, carts ready for the table, and now an ever-growing forest of custom tree trunks.
Add in the laser cutter being temporarily out of action, and it’s forced me to explore different ways of building terrain that I might otherwise have ignored.
Sometimes the best creative breakthroughs come from working around the limitations you’ve been given.
And right now, that’s exactly what this hobby feels like.
Every small project seems to spark the next one, and I can’t wait to see where it all leads.