There's a difference between what can be done right now well w/ 3D printing and what we will see "later". When you look at historical wargaming you are often dealing with a very different set of surfaces than you are with 28mm fantasy figures. The former lend themselves better for 3d printing.

http://www.shapeways.com/model/1155418/1-144-fokker-dr-1-x4.html?li=shop-results&materialId=6

In time it will reach the point of what we use but I don't think anyone needs to worry too soon.

As for the pre-colored options, they will appeal to some gamers but not others. As mentioned by others when we play locally I see a lot of 40K and other players just use raw grey models on the table. So at least if they were pre-colored it wouldn't look as bad. We do sometimes use raw models for a game or two but nearly all of us try not to use unpainted models much.

3D printed w/ color will never look as good as "pre painted" (picture what they do with the X-Wing, Wings of Glory and Sails of Glory games if you know any of those), and pre-painted will never look as good as what a skilled painter can do by hand. But a lot of casual gamers enjoy the play hobby without much interest in the build/paint side, just as we have people here that do great things with the painting but don't play (much).

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Wait ye the finish! The fight is not yours.
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http://TacticsInMiniature.com

Yeah, I agree about the plain grey thing. It always seems to be 40k that it happens to though, rarely have I done a SBG battle with grey models. Had there been a choice I would have gone with pre-painted miniatures to start with, but I am starting to enjoy painting a little bit if only for the individuality it brings to your models.

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"3D printing to become an important part of the miniature hobby"

Surely 3D printing will not only become a hobby, you can also yield profit out of it. By the way, what kind of filament material did you use for that "Dark Sword Miniatures: Ser Gregor Clegane""? An ABS plastic filament or PLA filament like this one--www.3d2print.net/shop/product/pla-filament-darkgreen-1-75mm/?

Ah 3D printing - they are just a tool, a fantastic tool it has to be said, but a tool nonetheless that is part of a much wider process. There is always a need for an artist input and someone who knows their way around the traditional crafts. There's certainly a lot of work that goes behind just clicking a button, as I've used them when working with Fosters and Shepperton Studio's.

Fosters will have printers working 24/7 with technicians constantly tweaking and repairing them. Even the very high end printers, the size of a fridge have a lot of malfunctions and warp the material quite often. The process has gotten faster and they do use them a lot, especially for the smaller scale architecture models.

The Aardman 3D printing process involves ZBrush and Maya artists, model makers and traditional stop motion animators, all working together as well as the 3D printers. They still sculpt about 95% of their models, and use the 3D printers as rapid prototyping mostly. Certain small items they will print like e.g. a sword. They sculpt their models and often just digitize the model so that some small tweaks can be made at the end. There will always be room for sculptors. It might change, but using printing alongside sculpting will be the next step.

For me personally, one of my major concerns has always been that the wrong emphasis will drive the development of 3D printing technologies. Just because it is possible to use a certain tool to do a job, it does not necessarily mean that it is the right, or best tool to use. I use them quite often at university and they are great fun, however using the workshop or lasercutters 90% of the time makes much more sense and is faster. Not to mention 3D printing materials are rather restricted at this point because of price, and most of the plastics provided aren't very strong - which eventually will change. There's a lot of software to learn behind all this, and transferring the file to the printer takes time.

Despite mentioning this, you can create some wonderful things with them. I'll be buying a 3D printer kit this summer so I can play around with them more. I'm hoping to design some lotr pieces, and print them off. The price of printers in the last 5 years has come down drastically.

I’m afraid that sooner or later, 3D printing will totally overshadow the traditional way of sculpting. 3D printing technology makes the creation of miniatures, home staples, etc fast and easy, especially now that new materials for 3D printer are being developed like metal, wood, nylon and rubber filament. Here are just few examples of 3D printed items: http://www.3d2print.net/shop/our-customers-cool-prints/cool-print-gallery/

They're going to be just as pricey as GW, albeit customizable. Looks very cool though. If I knew how to mould and make metal replicates, heroforge would become very useful.

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My Lotr backlog: 305/952[][][][][][][][][][]32% completed
Painting Lineup: Mumakil x2, Rohan Heroes x8, Haradrim, SKoDA