As over 35,000 gamers descend on Indianapolis this week for Gen Con, the largest gaming show in the world, Wyrd Miniatures will debut an entire new line of plastic miniatures for its hit character skirmish game “Malifaux." The designs’ intense detail typifies the value of digital sculpting that drives better quality products in an advanced all-digital manufacturing workflow using today’s 3D solutions from Geomagic.

Wyrd (pronounced “weird”) and its product design firm, Ghost Studio, relied on the Freeform 3D modeling solution from Geomagic, to digitally sculpt 40 miniatures for six new box sets, then used the digital designs as the basis of a streamlined digital manufacturing process that moves from art to production tooling via STL milling. The move to digital sculpting with Freeform allowed Wyrd to deliver exceptional detail that was previously not possible to achieve in metal figurines – detail that exactly reproduces and in some cases exceeds the detail in the original line art, even for intricately detailed miniatures such as Hungering Darkness and the windswept Miss Terious.

With an estimated $1B worldwide market for fantasy “war games” – where hobbyists assemble and paint miniatures and then play battle games with friends and in tournaments – character detail can make the difference between a game’s appeal alongside other boxed sets on the Gen Con floor or online.

"Characters are the soul of the game, which is why we call Malifaux a character-based game. Ghost Studio has helped us bring our characters to life, with detail and dynamic poses that weren't possible for us before," said Nathan Caroland, co-owner of Wyrd Miniatures, based in Kennesaw, Georgia. "The digital sculpting done with Freeform, when paired with the capabilities of plastic, lets us create miniatures that closely match the details and animation of the original artwork, making our miniatures stand out. Our customers are excited about the new poses and the intricacies of our new releases, and we hope that we're raising the bar for all miniatures by focusing on quality through Freeform."

Embracing digital sculpting with Freeform also allowed Wyrd to get to market at least one-third faster and produce miniatures in plastic, avoiding the approximately 80% increase in the cost of white metal over the past 2 years. The Freeform 3D design file now serves as the foundation of a streamlined and far more accurate plastic injection manufacturing process. Details are crisper, surface finishes are smoother, and the plastic allows better paint adherence. Since the precision fit of the molds all but eliminates the seam that typically appears as plastic flashing in between molds, Wyrd has also streamlined processes at the warehouse for inspection and quality control. The new plastic figurines also cost less to ship than metal.

As a 3D modeling platform for designing organic shaped products, Freeform can sculpt, texture or emboss products with detail and articulation that traditional geometric CAD solutions simply cannot handle. Because the sculpting process is digital, product designers can resize characters on the fly –enlarging a Rail Golem creature from 22mm up to 78mm – or rewind a design back to an earlier iteration and adjust the eyes, nose and pose until the look is just right.

“Just several years ago it took between 90 and 120 days to move from design to manufactured part for a typical toy. And that’s just one part. Today using Freeform, Wyrd is moving from design to finished parts for 5 characters on a sprue in far less than that, and achieving levels of detail that were difficult if not impossible to obtain in the past,” said George Sivy, co-owner of Ghost Studio. “I’ve used Freeform for many client projects over the past 10 years, and I can honestly say that Freeform stands alone in its ability to achieve such detail while also enabling a vastly improved manufacturing workflow.”

“It’s exciting to see how Freeform and talented designers are pushing the limits of detail, in ever smaller and smaller formats,” said Joan Lockhart, vice president of marketing for Geomagic. “Even more compelling is the savings in time that Wyrd Miniatures’ work with Ghost Studio was able to realize, by creating molds directly from Freeform’s digital files. 3D digital workflows are transforming manufacturing, and Geomagic products are proud to be at the forefront, from scanning through design and manufacturing, to final inspection.”

See Wyrd Miniatures’ newest box sets in Booth 1131 at Gen Con starting this Thursday August 16 at the Indiana Convention Center. Find out more about Geomagic and its Freeform products at www.geomagic.com and www.sensable.com.