Miller's Crossing Inn

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The miller had enemies. The reasons are unimportant. Suffice to say, things came to a head and the miller was killed and his mill burnt to the ground. All that remained were the charred stone walls, yet the water-soaked wheel survived and still turned. Travelers on the busy road often commented on the still-spinning wheel and the blackened stone. Not long after, a wealthy investor purchased the ruined property for a pittance and hired a crew to rebuild. However, it would no-longer be just a mill. Instead, he would build an inn and tavern on top of the mill ruins. He'd add a kitchen, connected behind the bar. Additionally, stables outside the front door would shelter the weary horses of those spending the night. On the surface, everything is normal. Miller's Crossing Inn is a nice, clean establishment. The ale is good, the service fast and friendly, and they have wonderful freshly baked bread, made from flour freshly ground in the basement flour mill. There is a cozy main floor with a nice large fireplace, a second floor with three rooms with windows overlooking the river, one of which is a bit larger and fancier than the others, and a common attic room where you can save a few coin but still sleep in a simple bed. However, in spite of all that, there are whispers. Was the new owner involved in the murder and arson? Were there other motives behind everything that transpired? Today, there is always traffic at Miller's Crossing. The road is well-traveled. However, one can't help but notice, that every few weeks, the stables are more crowded than normal. The King's Guard who stand watch by the bridge just shrug their shoulders. "Probably having a celebration of some sort." Local children tell tales of vast riches and/or hidden bodies locked away in the basement. Probably just children being children. But... If only there was a way to get in there... ************************** This is my entry to the MMF TownBuilder February competition. Everything you see painted in the pictures are models from TownBuilder. The only outside props in the pictures are the black/silhouette 28mm minis shown occasionally to give a sense of scale. Almost every piece in this model has been meticulously positioned and adjusted using Perfectionist Controls. The water wheel is a custom creation using perfectionist controls and mostly wood flooring and wood pillars. The axle of the wheel is actually made with a cylindrical filler block! The bridge is another custom piece made with castle walls, pillars, and the brick flooring from the sewer set. All positioned and rotated just-so. The bridge is also a full 2-squares wide, so it should fit any carts you may have. The majority of the ground is made from cavern floors. The river banks are cavern floors that have been rotated and positioned, again using the Perfectionist Controls. The road is made from the brick sewer set flooring. The river is made from the water floor tiles from the sewer set. The rubble, and the various larger stones are made from pieces of both the stone walls and the castle walls. The construction remains are various pillars, railings, and flooring. Even the well is custom! It's made from a small stone tower, four wood pillars, the small tower roof, and a sewer grate. All positioned via Perfectionist Controls. The stable walls are mostly standard, but everything is still shifted up by half a floor to align with the raised ground. A couple rock piles are combined to make a pile of hay in one of the stalls. The stable roof required Perfectionist Controls to get the stone ridge just right. Finally, the Inn itself. Right away you will notice the building has a split level. The kitchen is a half-floor below the main level of the Inn. This required Perfectionist Controls and constant tweaking of every piece, but I love the look. The front porch is slightly wider than a square so that minis can actually fit. That required the porch roof to be adjusted as well. We don't yet have fireplaces or stand-alone chimneys in TB, so I custom created some using stone pillars and corners. The walls on the main level are a combination of fachwerk walls and stone railings. The stone railings had to be very accurately placed to make it work. They even surround the windows! The gable dormers on the kitchen roof had to be placed using Perfectionist Controls in order to make room for the kitchen chimney. This was accomplished by using two roofs. One for the real roof, and the other, adjusted to be just below the real roof, with the dormer. The stone stairs at the front and back of the inn are custom. I used stone mini walls positioned and rotated into place with, you guessed it, Perfectionist Controls. The wood ridge beam on the roof is also made of wood pillars rotated and positioned just right. The entire exterior shell was printed in transparent PLA and the windows were masked when painted. So now interior lights can shine through the windows as shown in some of the pictures! I designed the exterior to be printed as one piece, as a shell. It is the largest volume piece I've ever printed and fills up my entire build platform! Yet it still took less than 25 hours to print! I filled the interior space with filler blocks. I then adjusted my slicer settings to only print infill where required and NOT in the interior of the building. That allows me to print the interiors separately. I can even fit the interiors INSIDE the exterior shell! The interiors were designed without walls. #NOWALLS! I have pillars on the corners to support the floors above. Instead of full interior walls, I placed rotated wood pillars and railings slightly raised from the floor. This allows full playability, even with minis with large weapons and/or dynamic poses! The flour mill in the basement is a custom creation made with filler blocks and pillars. The interior staircase is also custom-made to fit in the corner. There are two custom fireplaces made with stone pillars and castle wall parts. The bar is made from the old wood railings and a filler block. The furniture is from the TB scatter. I used a filler block with the boolean intersect tool to cut away everything around and below each interior floor. That allows the interior to physically fit inside the exterior shell. I could even make different interior designs for the same exterior shell without having to reprint everything! Finally, back to the exterior, the Miller's Crossing sign is made from a stone railing with a castle mini wall cap. The sign itself was made in SignBuilder and positioned to be a part of the wall. ************************** Everything here could be made with just TownBuilder and your slicer. I wouldn't recommend doing that, but it is possible. I used Netfabb (free) to decimate and boolean combine the various parts into the stl files I have uploaded. This lowered the file size to well below 100MB each and makes it easier for others to print. I've used pieces from nearly every set currently available in TownBuilder. I've tried to stretch the program to the limit, and I think I've succeeded. This program is so powerful, and with the addition of more sets, will become even more so! This may not be the largest build submitted, but I think it's a realistic size while still being playable and usable on a tabletop. I spent countless hours printing and painting the entire diorama. Like I said above, everything painted in the photos is from Town builder. You can make simple buildings. You can make huge dioramas. And you can make anything in-between. This is all printed on a FDM printer. I used a couple coats of Mod Podge to smooth out the river water layers and fill in some gaps in the roofs. Mod Podge actually works quite nicely for filling layer lines.   Good luck to all entries and hopefully all these great designs can show off just how awesome TownBuilder really is!

Author:
TheRooster13

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