By Printara · Published 11 October 2026 · 15 min read

How to Make a Diorama for 3D Printing from an Idea

Plan the scene first: how big the base is, what scale the figures are, what the viewer looks at and how each piece will be printed and painted. Then get one model for every figure, prop and piece of terrain, arrange them on the base in a 3D tool and export each one as its own STL in millimetres. Support each part for resin at its own angle, print, paint the parts separately and glue the scene together last.

The one rule that makes every later step easier: keep every figure and prop a separate file. A scene that comes out as one mesh prints at one angle, with every figure joined to the floor and no way to get a brush behind them.

Disclosure: Printara makes Diorama Studio, which appears in several steps. Every step also works with other tools, and the tools section compares them.

Step 1: Plan the scene

Five decisions, made before you generate or download anything. Write them down as one sentence and a parts list; the list is also your prompt if you generate the scene.

1. The moment and the focal point. What is happening, and the one figure or object the eye should land on. Put the focal point a little off centre and give it the most open floor around it. In the example, the count and the woman he holds stand in front of the arched window, the tallest shape in the scene.
2. The viewing side. A scene seen only from the front can have a back wall: it gives the scene a backdrop, and nobody sees the backs of the figures. A scene on a table, seen from every side, has nothing to hide behind, so every figure needs a finished back.
3. The footprint. Measure where it will stand (shelf depth, a display case, a book nook insert) and your printer's build plate. If the base is bigger than the plate, decide now where it splits: along a wall, a path or the edge of a rock, where a seam is easy to hide. Our PrusaSlicer split guide and the STL Splitter cover the cut and the alignment pins.
4. The scale. Pick one and size every part to it. Divide the real size by the scale: at 1:56, a common scale for 28 mm wargame figures, a 1.75 m person is about 31 mm tall, a 2 m door about 36 mm and a 75 cm table about 13 mm.
5. How each part is printed and painted. Resin for figures and small props, where the detail is; FDM is cheaper for a large base or big buildings. Anything a brush cannot reach once the scene is together becomes its own part: a figure close to a wall, a prop under a table, a figure in another figure's arms.

Step 2: Get one model per part

You need one model for every figure, every prop that stands on its own and the terrain or set. There are three sources, and most scenes mix them.

Generate the whole scene from one idea

Printara Diorama Studio starts from a sentence or a picture and gives you every part as a separate model. The names below match its buttons.

1. Type the scene under Scene prompt, or type one word and press Write the scene for me. Starting from a sketch, a photo or your own artwork? Drop it into Start from an image and choose Rebuild as miniatures. A photo of a diorama you already have can be used as it is with This IS my diorama.
2. Press Generate master scene (Fast or Ultra 2K) and generate again until the picture looks right, then press Read this scene. One read lists up to 30 characters, props and pieces of setting.
3. Tick the parts you want and press Generate concepts. Each comes back as concept art on a white background. Regenerate the ones you do not like, and use Split when one image holds two things, such as a man and his cart.
4. Choose a texture and press Build approved models. Painting it yourself? No texture gives plain geometry at the lowest cost.

By default, anything a character holds stays with that character: the hunter's crucifix in the example is part of the hunter, not a separate prop.

Generate single pieces

Missing one prop, or want a figure in a particular pose? Generate it on its own from a picture or a sentence in a single-model generator, such as the Printara AI 3D Generator, and export it at your scene's height in millimetres. The Academy lesson Create your first 3D model in Printara shows that route, from a picture to an STL.

In a single-model generator, make one piece at a time, never the whole scene as one model.

Bring your own STL files

Bought or free files, your own sculpts and CAD parts all work next to generated ones. Open each file and measure a figure or a door before you plan around it, because files from different makers rarely share a scale. If you plan to sell the finished scene, check every licence first; our guide to free STL files explains the common ones.

Step 3: Arrange the parts on the base

Arrange the parts in a 3D tool that keeps positions and sizes in millimetres: the Diorama Studio stage, Blender or Tinkercad. Not in a slicer: its arrange button only packs parts onto the build plate and does not keep a scene layout. Do it before you print anything. This is where you catch a table too big for the figures, a figure that blocks the focal point from the viewing side, or a gap too narrow for a brush.

In Diorama Studio the built models land on one stage, on the Scene tab:

• Click a model and use Move, Rotate and Scale (keys G, R and S).
• Turn on Solid floor so every model stands on the floor.
• Select a model, type a Height in millimetres and press Set. With nothing selected, Set all gives every model that height: use it once, at your figure height and before you arrange anything, then set the props and the terrain one by one.
• Measure shows a part's width, depth and height, and Distance measures between two points (keys M and D).
• Save bundle keeps the arrangement.

Arranging files from elsewhere? Blender is free and imports STL with File > Import > Stl (.stl); Tinkercad does the same in a browser for simple parts.

Step 4: Export each figure and prop as its own STL

Keep every printed part a separate object, then export one STL per object, in millimetres. How you do it depends on where the scene was put together.

From Diorama Studio

Press Export ZIP in the bar under the stage. You get one STL per part, named after your models, sized in millimetres at the height you set. Each part keeps its position and rotation from the stage, so the parts line up as arranged when you load them together. A manifest.json lists every part, and one pack holds up to 24 models.

From Blender

Every printed part has to be its own object. If the scene is one mesh, go to Edit Mode and use Mesh > Separate > By Loose Parts (P), which makes an object of every disconnected piece. Pieces that are fused into each other need a cut first. Then use File > Export > Stl (.stl) and tick Batch, which writes each object to its own STL, and Selection Only if you only want the selected parts (see Blender's manual on Separate and STL export). STL files carry no units and most slicers read the numbers as millimetres. A 30 mm figure modelled in metres exports as 0.03 and loads 1000 times too small: set Scale to 1000 in the export options. Either way, open every file in your slicer and check its size.

From one STL that holds the whole scene

A downloaded diorama that comes as one file may still hold separate shells. In PrusaSlicer, Bambu Studio and OrcaSlicer, Split to objects separates shells that are already disconnected; it does not cut geometry that is fused together. In PrusaSlicer, a right-click on a part gives Export as STL/OBJ. For fused parts, cut along a seam with the slicer's cut tool or the STL Splitter; our guides cover PrusaSlicer, Bambu Studio and OrcaSlicer.

Name the files after the parts (Hunter.stl, Table.stl, Base_left.stl) so you can tell them apart on a full plate.

Step 5: Presupport the parts for resin

This is the main payoff of separate parts: each one gets its own angle, and its supports go on the sides nobody sees.

• Tilt every part. Do not print large flat faces parallel to the build plate. Tilt figures and props so each layer is a small cross-section and the supports land on the back and the underside. In the example, every part is tilted between 30 and 45 degrees.
• Light tips on figures, heavier ones on terrain. In the example, the figures and props stand on 0.2 mm contact tips and the castle set on 0.4 mm tips.
• Keep supports off faces and hands. Put the contact points on the back of a cloak, under a table top, behind a wall or under the base. If a support has to touch a visible surface, choose a spot you can sand.
• Lift the parts off the plate. The first layers are exposed much longer so they stick to the plate, and any detail printed in them comes out over-exposed. The example uses a 5 mm lift and no raft.
• Print small parts solid. A 30 mm figure or prop takes 0.1 to 1.5 ml of resin, so hollowing saves almost nothing. Hollow only big, thick pieces such as a rock or a building block, and give each hollow at least two drain holes on a hidden face so no liquid resin is trapped inside.

Lychee Slicer, CHITUBOX and PrusaSlicer's resin mode all generate automatic supports. In Printara, open a part from your library in Printara Studio, give it the height it has in your scene and use the Supports tab: it adds resin supports at the size and tilt you choose and gives you Download Supported STL. The Hollow tab hollows a model with drain holes. Both tabs come with the Plus and Pro plans. Automatic supports from any tool are a starting point, not a guarantee: rotate the result and check every contact point and every thin edge before you slice.

Printing on FDM? Print the base and buildings flat on the bed. A 0.4 mm nozzle blurs the face and fingers of a 30 mm figure: print figures in resin, or use a 0.2 mm nozzle and tree supports.

Step 6: Print and clean up

• Print one part first. Pick the thinnest one (in the example, the candelabra with its candles). If your exposure and supports hold that detail, print the rest.
• Clip supports before the final cure. Straight off the plate the parts are not fully cured and the supports snap off cleaner; after the UV cure they are harder and more likely to take a chip out of the part. Elegoo's resin beginner guide cuts them with diagonal pliers before washing and curing. Wear nitrile gloves until the parts are cured.
• Sand the feet and bases flat. Support marks under a figure make it rock.
• Cure fully, then dry-fit everything on the base. A part that rocks or does not sit where the digital layout put it is easy to fix now and hard after painting.

Step 7: Paint each part

• Paint before you glue. The back wall and the floor are easy to drybrush with no figures in the way, and a figure on a handle (a cork or a bottle cap with a blob of putty) can be painted all round.
• A simple order that works on resin: primer, base colours, a wash into the recesses, then drybrushing or highlights on the raised edges. Leave the varnish until the scene is glued. On stone terrain like the example's set, a dark base coat and two drybrushed lighter greys do most of the work.
• Scrape paint off the glue points (under the feet and the matching spot on the floor) so the glue grips resin, not paint.
• Use the colour texture as a reference. STL stores shape, not colour. If you built the models with a colour texture, the 3D view shows the colours you planned.

Want to paint a head or an arm apart from the body? Split the figure with pins. The Academy lesson Prepare separate parts and resin pin joints splits a figure into head, body and base: a peg on one part, a matching socket in the other.

Step 8: Assemble the scene

• Glue from the back and the bottom forward: the set or base first, then the large props, then the figures, and the smallest props last, because they are the easiest to knock off.
• Superglue (cyanoacrylate) for resin to resin. For a heavy part or a figure standing on one foot, drill a hole in both parts and glue in a short piece of brass rod as a pin.
• Hide the joints where feet meet the floor with a little texture paste, pigment or static grass, then touch up the paint.
• Varnish last: a matte coat over the whole glued scene protects the paint and the touch-ups.

Worked example: a small fantasy village

Build it around one building, keep the base to a size your printer handles in one or two pieces, and decide early how much of each building you show, because buildings get big fast at figure scale.

• Moment and focal point. Market morning outside the inn. The inn is the focal point, slightly off centre, and a path curves toward its door.
• Footprint. About 150 × 150 mm, which fits most FDM beds. Print the base on FDM if it is bigger than your resin plate, or split it along the path.
• Scale. At 1:56 a cottage 6 m wide is about 107 mm wide. On a 150 mm base, show the inn and only the corner of a second house, or make the buildings smaller than true scale and keep the doors (about 36 mm) and windows sized to the figures. At 1:100 a person is about 18 mm and the same cottage 60 mm, so more of the village fits.
• Parts list. Base with the path and a stream bed, inn, cottage corner, well, cart, two trees, fence sections, barrels and crates, three to five villagers. Make the roofs separate if you want to paint the walls easily or show an interior.
• Print. Base and buildings on FDM, or in resin if they fit the plate; villagers, the cart, barrels, fences and the well in resin.

In Diorama Studio, that list becomes the prompt, for example: A small fantasy village square on market morning: a timber-framed inn with a hanging sign, the corner of a cottage, a stone well, a cart of barrels, two trees, a wooden fence, a baker with a tray of bread, two villagers and a dog. Read the scene and tick the parts. On the stage, use Set all at 31 mm for the villagers, then size the buildings and props one by one against them with Measure.

Which tools help create a printable diorama from an idea?

No single tool does every step. These are the common ones for a printed diorama or a tabletop display scene, and the job each does, as of October 2026. Three run in a browser with nothing to install: Diorama Studio, Tinkercad and DioGrid.

Which to pick: to go from an idea to separate STL parts in one place, use Diorama Studio. If you already have the files, Blender or your slicer is enough. For a modular kit from existing parts, look at DioGrid. Whatever generates your parts, check thin details such as candles, spears and fingers before you print.

FAQ

How can I export a diorama as separate STL parts?

Make every printed part its own object, then export one STL per object. In Printara Diorama Studio, Export ZIP gives one STL per part in millimetres, each in its position on the stage, plus a manifest.json. In Blender, separate the mesh by loose parts and export with Batch ticked. In PrusaSlicer, Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer, Split to objects separates shells that are already disconnected; parts fused together need a cut first.

What scale should a 3D printed diorama be?

Any scale works as long as every part uses the same one. Divide real sizes by the scale: at 1:56, a scale used for 28 mm wargame figures, a person is about 31 mm tall and a door about 36 mm. A smaller scale such as 1:100 fits more buildings on a small base.

Should I print a diorama in resin or FDM?

Resin for figures and small props, where the detail is. FDM is cheaper for a large base, big buildings and terrain. Many scenes mix both, which is one more reason to keep every part a separate STL.

Do diorama parts need to be hollowed for resin printing?

Small figures and props do not: at 30 mm each one takes 0.1 to 1.5 ml of resin, so they print solid. Hollow only big, thick pieces, and give each hollow at least two drain holes on a hidden face.

Can I combine generated models with my own STL files?

Yes. Generate each piece as its own model, keep one scale and place everything in one layout. The STL files Diorama Studio exports keep their positions from the stage, so they import into Blender already arranged, next to your own files.

How much does a diorama cost in Printara Diorama Studio?

The account is free. Building a part costs 30 credits without texture, or 50, 75 or 100 credits with a colour texture. The master scene, the read and the concept images also use credits, and each button shows its price first. Ten untextured parts are 300 credits for the models alone: one pack, at 4.90 euros with a plan or 9.90 euros without. Exporting your pack uses no credits.

Sources, checked on 11 October 2026: product and plan details from the Diorama Studio page, the AI 3D Generator page and the pricing page; the example's sizes, tilts, tip sizes, lift and resin volumes from the support project behind the presupported view on the Diorama Studio page; Blender steps from the Blender manual; support removal and drain holes from Elegoo's resin beginner guide; DioGrid details from its homepage.

About Printara. Printara is an AI-powered creative manufacturing platform for creating 3D models, dioramas, laser-cut designs, molds and printable products. Questions or corrections: hello@printara.co.