Hex Mats

[Muskie]

I am working with my local print shop to make vinyl two sided (grass and water) play mats. I have the price for one sided at this point, put he is going to do a work up for two sided. Currently it is $41 for a one sided water mat, 2'x3'. that is the price for one. If he ends up making more, there is a discount of $5-10 per mat. I hope to have the two sided price for 30"x40" and 2'x3' soon. I did post on facebook a picture of the water one. I told him black hexes instead of white. any feedback in appreciated as I dive in. I will have him print one this week so I can get a better look at it and try it out. I will post more info as I get it.

[Master Roshi]

Originally Posted by Muskie

I am working with my local print shop to make vinyl two sided (grass and water) play mats. I have the price for one sided at this point, put he is going to do a work up for two sided. Currently it is $41 for a one sided water mat, 2'x3'. that is the price for one. If he ends up making more, there is a discount of $5-10 per mat. I hope to have the two sided price for 30"x40" and 2'x3' soon. I did post on facebook a picture of the water one. I told him black hexes instead of white. any feedback in appreciated as I dive in. I will have him print one this week so I can get a better look at it and try it out. I will post more info as I get it.

Sounds good, thank you!

[A3n]

Originally Posted by Muskie

I am working with my local print shop to make vinyl two sided (grass and water) play mats. I have the price for one sided at this point, put he is going to do a work up for two sided. Currently it is $41 for a one sided water mat, 2'x3'. that is the price for one. If he ends up making more, there is a discount of $5-10 per mat. I hope to have the two sided price for 30"x40" and 2'x3' soon. I did post on facebook a picture of the water one. I told him black hexes instead of white. any feedback in appreciated as I dive in. I will have him print one this week so I can get a better look at it and try it out. I will post more info as I get it.

That sounds expensive. did you have a look at the site i used? I just checked & their pricing is still about the same I mentioned in my thread? Yes it is an Australian company but they ship internationally, the product is perfect & the cost is a lot more reasonable than what you have quoted here.

[IAmBatman]

As a proud owner of a Cosmic Space Mat, I can echo that the product is quite excellent.

[AMIS]

Looking at picking up a grass field myself.

[Muskie]

Originally Posted by A3n

That sounds expensive. did you have a look at the site i used? I just checked & their pricing is still about the same I mentioned in my thread? Yes it is an Australian company but they ship internationally, the product is perfect & the cost is a lot more reasonable than what you have quoted here.

Not sure what design and shipping would cost. It is great if you can put a plan together with that company. I am just looking for a mat we can all use. I am hoping that mine will come out to be around $50 including shipping. I would love for someone to come up with something cheaper!! Let us know what you find out with the design. I am trying for grass on one side and water on the other.

[Tornado]

Double sided is certainly worth extra.

[Muskie]

I just picked up the two prototype maps from my printer. The final price for each was $41 per. We tried double sided, but the cost was more than double because of the different material we would have to use. If we get more than 20, the price drops, again after 50.

[Master Roshi]

Originally Posted by Muskie

I just picked up the two prototype maps from my printer. The final price for each was $41 per. We tried double sided, but the cost was more than double because of the different material we would have to use. If we get more than 20, the price drops, again after 50.

Those look great! The size appears to match up with the tiles pretty close

[Muskie]

mats are now for sale under the sales and trade forum. Orders until December 30th.

[BeardBeyond]

Sorry for the necro guys. I wanted to throw my hat into the ring for the design work side of things here. I love what you've done with your mats, and I know why we would not want to do what I'm about to propose (Hasbro can be awfully protective with their intellectual property down to even images of them), but I reeeeeally want to make mats that match the aesthetic of the terrain that will go on top of them. I have access to a reasonable quality scanner for any terrain that doesn't have decent scans online, that being said, I've sent the following to a few etsy Playmat sellers: I'm thinking of trying to make a few custom mat designs for Heroscape. I know there are already quite a few very viable alternatives, but I'd like the ones I make to more closely match the aesthetic of the tiles that will rest on the mats. Before I invest the time and effort it will take to make these designs, I wanted to reach out to a few individuals who produce such mats and see if they'd be willing to work with me on this endeavor. I am not looking to make money off of the design work I'll do nor do I need any sort of credit, I just want to purchase these mats for myself but am more than willing to let you sell the mats made from them as you see fit afterwards. I wanted to go with Grass and Road (and Water, but most alternatives for Water are already really close) to start off with and work outward from there (if financially feasible). We could easily add Sand, Rock, Lava Field, Molten Lava, Snow, Ice, Swamp, Swamp Water, Dungeon, Shadow, Asphalt, and Cement (all the official terrain types) as well as various custom terrain types. I am looking to print them 3'x5' if possible but the files for them (once complete) could easily be used to print any smaller size necessary. I'd like to look into the viability of double sided with different terrain types on each side, but the more I think about it the less likely it is to be worth doing so since the mat designs will maximize their value by having more mats (since they'll be designed to meet edge to edge). With Heroscape's inevitable return next year, there will likely be more people looking into such products than ever before. Just let me know if this is something you could see pursuing and (if so) I'll start on the designs when I get the chance.

[BeardBeyond]

A seller has agreed to work with me and will be sending me the hex grids they use. These are the scans I've got thus far and they will be plenty high quality enough for my purposes. A couple of design decisions going into this I have to decide on are:

-I have 3 tones of snow (some combination of age, material, sets they were released in) so do I go with the bleach white, the off white, or the yellow snow, I'm partial to the bleach white (as it simply looks better) but does the average heroscaper have more of those or the other two? (I know I certainly have less of the bleach white than the other tones). Road has color differentiation too, but there's so much of it that it sort of creates a nifty look. Sand (not scanned yet) is the next most noticeable, but that's an easy pick since the whiter sand doesn't pop as much as the browner sand.

-Do I photoshop out all the points at which the tiles connect or leave them in? This isn't really a big deal either way but will involve quite a bit of effort. I do think it will create a cleaner look, but I may have to do it on a case by case basis as there are plenty of terrain types that mostly have only 1-2 hex variants. (As an example the road spaces look fine using only singles, but the grass spaces look more earthquake-y using anything less than 7-24 hex.)

-Do I go for single sided or double sided? This is a big one because your average Heroscaper won't have this same issue, but I like making living room spanning maps, so if I have say 6 3'x5' maps I can make a much bigger 1 level than I can with 3 double sided (which would also lead to me having to pick and choose which terrain types to use more often).

For the moment I've only got the 3 test scans because I didn't wanna bring a whole bunch of terrain to work and then the scans not look right, but now that I've confirmed that they will look good, I'll be scanning EVERY other terrain type soon to begin desing work on playmats.