Midwest Booth - Live Fire

[Fallen]

If you made it to Planet Comicon or C2E2 this year you saw the amazing work that's been done so far between our Longsword and Harvest Battalions to build a modular booth based on the Live Fire map. With the idea started under NobleofDeath16 even going so far as to commission a forge map be created with various layouts based on the typical sizes of booths we're likely to have at conventions.

Link: 405th Midwest Booth Design

First iteration was planned and premiered at Planet Comicon 2025 with this basic layout and some design decisions.

Quick Links:

• Design and Basic Structures
• Paint and Specialty Wall
• Columns and Barriers

Design:

Planet 2025 Layout


C2E2 2025 Layout



Some Reference Images Used



Builds:

For the walls themselves that do not form a room, 2x4 framing with a horizontal center crossbar faced with 1/4" plywood. It's suggested to make the top and bottom go the full width of the board and cut down the verticals so that if someone slides the panel you don't have a joint directly on the ground.


For paint we used the following colors, Behr High Speed Access and Behr Shadow Mountain were combined in the same tray and painted in a crisscross pattern to make the faux concrete look.
Light Gray: Behr High Speed Access
Dark Gray: Behr Shadow Mountain
Green: Behr Cypress Vine

Faux Concrete Painting - it'll look weird at first; trust the process.

The wall stands were built using 2x3 material and stand 72" add these Bar Holders on the cross brace for being able to slide the wall stands through.


I'll go into more details on the columns and barriers in a subsequent post, but the columns are presently designed to be built 12.25" wide by 8" deep including the facade before applying the 3D printed caps. There's also an L-shaped variant for placing on the corners of any rooms built.



Barriers are a fairly simple build but it is suggested to bevel the angle edges.

 

[Parzival]

Are the 3d printed assets of the booth(s) that were designed available in a specific place?

 

[Fallen]

I have more photos from the Planet build, but I want to also invite Skidmorpheus to share his process building the room that was at C2E2 and any build instructions to help others do the same.

Here's some photos from the Longsword build days as it all came together.


Specifically to call out the UNSC panel wall the wall itself is the same framing as the others and used cedar siding panels painted in the green Behr Cypress Vine color as a base and a pure white for the emblem. We just used a projector to project the eagle logo and traced it.



Figure you could use a photo of the labels for the paint colors. I only took photos of the samples I tested before we actually bought gallon sizes of them for the concrete colors.





We did tape off and paint a design with the green as well which I have to say I really like how that worked out. We also added 2 2ft x 8ft panels that came out at a 90 degree from the edges of the walls for added stability at Planet.

 

[Fallen]

Are the 3d printed assets of the booth(s) that were designed available in a specific place?

Yep. I plan to share those when I do the more specific post for the columns and barriers. I need to adjust the models and turn them into build plans.

 

[Skidmorpheus]

Great write up so far! Did you want me to add to this post the room construction? If you prefer I can create my own build thread for the harvest room.

 

[Fallen]

Great write up so far! Did you want me to add to this post the room construction? If you prefer I can create my own build thread for the harvest room.

If you want to add it here that would be perfect. That way we'll have it all in one place for everyone.

 

[Fallen]

Columns and Barriers

Let's talk columns and barriers.
There are two types of column builds set up as of now and one set of plans for the "road barriers" that we used beneath the UNSC Eagle wall.

I've posted the 3D printed parts for both sets of columns on Printables to make it easy

Flat Wall Columns
For flat walls you'll want to print 4 of the side pieces and 2 of the fronts to make the tops and bottoms. Originally in the Planet build the SSG crew made 3 U-shaped parts out of either 2x3 or 2x4's (they'll have to let me know which one) and put one each at the top, middle, and bottom before adding 1/4" plywood as the facade which was painted in the similar faux concrete style I mentioned in a previous post.

I have made adjustments from that original build for the plans I'm sharing here. Instead of making 3 U's I've got it set up with 3 frames, the front being 11 3/4" x 96" and the sides coming out to 6 1/4" x 96". You could probably remove the center horizontal frames and be fine. The build plans were done around using 2x3's but it's simple enough to adjust by factoring in the thickness of the material used. As long as the outside dimensions including plywood come out to 12 1/4" x 8" the 3D printed parts will fit without alterations.



Outside Corner Columns
When Harvest built the room that we added at C2E2 we needed at least a couple of columns that would fit those outside corners. The concept is the same, but instead of the flat panel sides you'll use 4 long side and 4 short side parts. The long side parts should be roughly if not the same as the flat wall column long side, but the short sides are much shorter.

The way at least I modeled them is basically just 2 frames made of 2x3's that overlap and get 1/4" plywood added to the main outer faces. For simplicity w/ Harvest the plans accounted for not adding plywood to the short sides instead just painting the linear lumber w/ the faux concrete style. If you wanted to face those sides w/ plywood make sure to account for that and remove the corresponding amount from the frame widths. The columns are slightly smaller due to an initial change in how the flat wall columns were constructed not fully accounting for the facade thickness. The come out to 12"x12" before 3d prints are applied. Each frame's thickness ends up around 2 3/4" when the facade is applied.




Barrier
Lastly we have the barriers. There are no 3d printed parts to making these. I will say the build plans are adjusted from what I originally built because something I found I didn't like in the ones we used was the thickness of plywood for the faces.

Each barrier starts with making the main shape. I found it easier to just make that out of 1/2" plywood and was able to use all scrap material in my own case. I'd recommend measuring one, cutting it, and then tracing it for all others needed. You'll need 6 total to cover the equivalent of the UNSC wall we had at both Planet and C2E2. 2 of those panels will need/want a cutout for some horizontal braces that make carrying them way easier. You could get away with 1 horizontal brace if you want as well. I modeled around a 1x3, but frankly use what you have. Update from the ones I'd built is using 1/2" plywood for the faces themselves. I recommend beveling the edges where 2 angled panels meet, but you could probably get away without it if you don't have great tools to do so.