Colored Filament Container Terrain for Necromunda

Oct 25, 2026 Last reply: 1 day ago 3 Replies
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The detail that jumped out at me is that most of the painting work was done before any brush touched the models. The maker assigned contrasting filament colors inside the slicer, using the cut tool with 'Cut to parts' enabled, so whole sections of the terrain came off the printer already in their base colors. For a full tabletop set that seems like a very smart way to cut down brushing time.



The set itself is the Container City: Founders Collection by WargameGeeks, printed on an enclosed Bambu Lab printer at a 0.20 mm layer height. The thick bridges setting was enabled for the railings, which strikes me as a sensible call for parts that thin and fiddly. The component list is genuinely varied: shipping containers, stacked containers, oil drums, ladders, walkways, scaffolds, skips and portable toilets, all built up as modular pieces for the new edition of Necromunda.



The finishing passes are where the colored prints get pushed into something grittier. Dirty Down Rust effect paint went onto the container panels with a brush, then was watered down to streak the rust downward. Artist's Loft Orange acrylic was sponged on over that, and Artist's Loft Silver metallic was drybrushed across container edges and the scaffolding. Most container pieces were sealed with Rust-Oleum Ultra Cover 2X Matte Clear, and the graffiti was drawn on with green Posca paint pens plus dual-tip brush pens, which looks like a fast way to get a lived-in industrial feel.



My one hesitation with the colored filament approach is that bare multicolor plastic can read as toy-like until the weathering goes on, so the effect really depends on those rust and sponge stages landing. I am also curious which pieces went without the matte clear, since only most of the containers were varnished.



Project by iPaintSmallThings. Watch it on their YouTube channel:

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Enabling thick bridges just for the railings is the choice I keep thinking about. Thin horizontal bars usually come out stringy and need a lot of cleanup, and on something like scaffolds that cleanup would eat hours across a whole set. The trade-off is that bridges laid down thicker can look slightly chunkier up close, but at gaming distance I would take the clean railings every time.

I would like to know how the color separation was handled on the stacked containers. When the cut tool is used with 'Cut to parts' on a model like that, do the color changes land neatly on panel edges, or did any of the splits end up mid-panel where the two filaments meet on a flat face? That junction is the part I would find hardest to place well.

One variation worth testing: print some of the container panels in a brown filament instead, then sponge the Artist's Loft Orange over them. The brown base would sit closer to a rust tone than a bright colored plastic, so the sponging would have less ground to cover and the pieces might look weathered even before the Dirty Down Rust goes on. It could suit the oil drums especially well.

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