First time trying to paint a thoroughly weathered/rusty piece, and also first time trying to paint 3D printed terrain.

Printed with a 0.2mm layer height, it was surprisingly annoying to paint compared to regular cast HIPS pieces. Washes are completely useless, or at least behave very differently, due to capillary effect of the layer lines.

I think I went a little too heavy with the rust orange color so it lost some definition. It looks a little more defined IRL than the photo shows.

Did you prime it? I never had much trouble painting printed terrain

The paint sticks just fine, I primed it with Vallejo matte black primer that I use for most things. IDK, the paint just flows on to the model in really weird ways compared to the smooth HIPS minis (in hindsight for obvious reasons), I definitely need thicker paint for 3D printed things I learned.

If you print in ABS or ASA you can use acetone to vapor smooth the print. Then you'll get a smooth finish. Its a balancing act between smoothing layer lines and losing print detail though.

Also those are admittedly more difficult plastics to print than something like PLA.

That looks great! Reminds me of the slums in the original Final Fantasy VII.

Yeah I probably could try printing it in ASA and smoothing it, just to see if the result is better. But honestly for terrain I would say the layer lines are not really an issue from a visual aspect, mostly just that I need to approach applying the paint slightly differently.

Here's another piece from the same artist (terrain4print). I tried using metallic silver as the base for most of the panels on this one, and the adding the rust and grime in top of that. I finished it with a dark tone wash on the silver panels because it was still a bit too shiny. Turned out pretty good i would say.

I print almost exclusively in PLA and I use sandable filler primer, and sand a bit on large faces. It isn't as smooth as vapor smoothing in abs, but it does quite a bit to fill in some gaps. Not perfect, and obviously easier on prints with larger flat spots, but I have used it on some 5in figures.

Might want to check out different filler primers, and dropping the layer height will help some when used in combination with that. Mr Surfacer has multiple thicknesses, and there's other options and manufacturers too.