In my Open Table TTRPG, all players are part of the "Brighthall Delving Society." This is the pretense for every session we play-- the Society has work for them. I am nearing the 1-year anniversary of the campaign, and I wanted to do something special for my players. Wouldn't it be cool if everyone had a badge of membership to the Delving Society? I've got a 3D printer but I'm no 3D modeling artist... so let this be a guide/inspiration to other amateurs who want to make custom coins without too much hassle.
Lithophanes are super cool objects. When you hold a lithophane up to light, it's so thin that light will pass through and reveal an image. There are tons of free online lithophane makers-- all you need to do is upload an image and it'll spit out a 3D model. I've made tons of Christmas ornaments this way, but we aren't going to be using this software as intended. Lithophanes just so happen to be an easy shortcut for our project-- no 3D modeling software experience required.
These free online lithophane makers make 3D models by turning darker colors into raised areas. If we were making a regular lithophane, the raised areas wouldn't allow as much light to pass through. We can use this principle to our advantage to make a coin. Lighter colors won't be as raised, and white will be completely flat. This is the image I created:
As you can see, the lettering is black, so that'll be the most raised part of the model. I met a few of my players at a Star Trek club, so I also included a reference to the mirror universe's Terran Empire. If you make your own coin, just remember: bigger/bolder will show up better. I lost a lot of details in the laurel motif in the finished product.
Googling "free lithophane maker" will yield a bunch of results. They are all probably about as good as each other, but this is the site I used for this project. Once you upload your image, you can tweak lots of different dimension settings. I wanted something coin-sized, so I referenced the Wikipedia article on the Sacagawea dollar. Dollar coins are 26.49mm across and I wanted mine a bit bigger, so I think I made it about 33mm in diameter. Dollar coins are also 2mm thick, so I set my minimum depth to 2mm and maximum depth to 2.5mm. You might want to do some test batches and see how raised you want the design on your coin.
Once I was happy with everything, I 3D printed them flat directly on my Elegoo Mars 2. I am able to fit 6 coins at a time, and it takes around 15 minutes to print (since I am using a resin printer, they are all printed at once). This is perfect since I've got dozens of players in my games. I can crank these out in no time at all.
Once printed out, I spray painted them silver. The silver will mask a lot of details, but fret not! A wash, usually used for painting miniatures (like Nuln Oil or Strong Tone) will bring those details right back. The point of a wash is that it's a very watery paint that will seep into cracks and bring out details. This is exactly what we want to make the lettering really pop.
