32mm STL Miniatures

32mm STL Miniatures for 3D Printing: Bigger Models, More Room to Paint

32mm is where miniatures stop being units and start being characters. The extra few millimetres over 28mm don’t sound like much, but they change what you can do with a brush and what the sculptor can put on the model in the first place. Faces get expressions. Armour gets rivets. Cloaks get folds you can actually shade.

Our 32mm STL files lean towards fantasy and character-driven ranges where that detail earns its keep. Files are built for resin printing on machines like the Elegoo Mars and Anycubic Photon, which is the technology that does this scale justice.

Why go bigger than 28mm

32mm corresponds to roughly 1:48, the same ratio as a lot of plastic model kits, which makes finding compatible vehicles and accessories reasonably easy. It’s grown steadily over the last decade as skirmish games and roleplaying displaced mass battle for a lot of players, and as printers got good enough that model size stopped being a cost problem.

The trade is real, though. A 32mm figure next to a traditional 28mm one looks noticeably larger, so mixing ranges rarely works. Terrain and vehicles need to scale up to match, which means more resin and more shelf space. If you’re building a horde army, the bigger scale gets expensive in time before it gets expensive in material. Where it pays off is when you’re printing a dozen distinctive models rather than a hundred identical ones.

What we make in 32mm

Betrayal: The Willing of the Sleepers. A multipart fantasy setting built around two opposed factions. The Katharos and the Vanu each have their own warriors, heroes and visual identity, and the multipart construction means you can vary poses and loadouts across a unit instead of fielding twelve identical models.

Warfane: Fantasy Battles. Our fantasy battle range, with the Dwarves of Khar-Vhul and the Orc Tribes of the Plains of Aeloria as the two established armies. Built for players who want mass fantasy combat with models detailed enough to reward painting individually.

Join or Die Wanted. Wild West gunslingers, outlaws and frontier characters, including the Plains of Terror range. These are character models rather than rank-and-file troops, which is exactly what 32mm suits, and they work as well for roleplaying as they do for skirmish games.

Printing 32mm at home

Larger models are more forgiving of settings but less forgiving of mistakes, because a failed print costs more resin and more time. Around 0.03mm layer height is standard for gaming pieces, and 0.02mm is worth it for a display model or a character you’ll spend real time painting.

Multipart models need more thought about orientation than single-piece sculpts. Print components separately, tilt each one 30 to 45 degrees for drainage, and support flat undersides properly. The upside of multipart is that you can print the same body with three different weapon arms and get three distinct models out of it.

On FDM, a 0.2mm nozzle at 0.06mm layers can produce respectable 32mm figures, and the larger surface area actually helps here compared with smaller scales. Slow the perimeters, use tree supports, and prime with a filler primer before painting.

Frequently asked questions

Will 32mm miniatures work alongside my 28mm collection?
Usually not without it showing. The difference is visible when the models stand next to each other, and it gets worse if one range is true scale and the other heroic. There’s no industry standard governing how a scale is measured, and scale creep has pushed some ranges larger over the years. Print a test model and compare before committing.

What settings should I use for 32mm on an FDM printer?
A 0.2mm nozzle at 0.06mm layer height for character models, or a 0.4mm nozzle at 0.08mm if you’re printing troops. PLA or PLA+, cooling fan on from the third layer, slow perimeter speeds around 30 to 40mm per second, and tree supports rather than standard ones. Tilt the model 15 to 20 degrees. Filler primer hides most remaining layer lines.

Do I need to hollow 32mm models to save resin?
For most gaming figures, no. Hollowing saves material on genuinely large pieces but introduces suction problems and requires drain holes. At 32mm the saving is usually not worth the added failure risk unless you’re printing something substantially oversized.

Can I mix 32mm figures with terrain built for smaller scales?
For natural terrain like trees, rocks and hills, you have some latitude since there’s no fixed human reference. Buildings are the exception: doorway height gives the scale away immediately, and a 32mm model that can’t fit through a door breaks the illusion instantly.

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