HeroForge is one of the well-known tools that helps you design miniatures for tabletop games. Over the years, the team behind the tool has introduced new customization projects, color printing capabilities, and now their latest innovation is here: kitbash.
If you’re not familiar, kitbashing is the practice of modifying models and figures, often by mixing and matching parts from multiple kits. Kitbash in HeroForge is kind of like that, but it’s not. HeroForge was kind enough to give me some time to try it out before releasing it. All thoughts below are my own.
First, kitbash does require you to have a Pro account on HeroForge, which costs about $4 per month. Also, before using kitbash, you must take a short quiz to make sure you understand that there are some rules you must follow or printing will not work.
This includes very small parts, out-of-scope parts, floating parts, and a few others. Overall, this isn’t a big deal, and it helps to make sure these aspects are in the back of your mind when you use kitbash.
As I’ve already mentioned, kitbash on HeroForge is different than many people think. Since there aren’t multiple models that can be broken down and combined, I do feel like this is a bit of a misnomer. However, there are many things you can do to modify the graph.
Basically, when you go into kitbash, your character gets a skeleton with keypoints at each joint and select other areas. You click on a point, which then gives you access to three main controls: translation (aka move), rotation (aka turn), and zoom (aka resize). This allows you to adjust the proportions of the figure, the overall shape of the figure, and more. These are just the basics.
If you want to go deeper, you absolutely can! There is a new tool that allows you to add almost anything in the HeroForge library to your scene. There are several reasons why you would want to do this. The first case is if you want to put something in a place where it normally can’t be placed.
For example, you could add a tail to a scene and make it something your character holds, like a weapon or trophy, rather than having it be part of their body. Second, when you add things in kitbash, they are generally more editable.
One example I’ve come across is capes. If I treat the cape as a back item, then it’s static. If I add the cape via kitbash, it will have some skeletal points, allowing me to edit it for a more customized look and feel.
The third thing kitbash allows you to do, and probably the coolest thing, is create something completely new from scratch. In my experience, this is really where the rabbit hole exists. For example, I want my character to have a spider staff.
However, HeroForge does not. Heck, they don’t even have spiders. So what did I do? I was able to combine many pieces to make a small spider-like thing. I then combined it with a staff from HeroForge and got a spider staff, which wasn’t perfect but was pretty cool.
I’ve shared a screenshot of my creation below, I know people who are able to do some of the craziest things with this tool.
