How to Downscale 32mm to 28mm (87.5% Slicer Percentage, Explained)

The internet is full of guides for scaling miniatures up — a classic fantasy RPG party meeting a modern sci-fi epic wargame army, small scale jumping to heroic scale, all that. But shrinking a miniature is just as common, and it’s harder to get right. Scale a model down by 12.5% and every support point, every thin blade, and every layer line has to work at the smaller size.

This guide covers the number (87.5%, same as it ever was), the slicer routine that keeps detail intact, and the practical reasons you’d downscale at all. If you’re going the other way, my 28mm to 32mm guide has the full walkthrough.

What Percentage Do I Scale 32mm Down to 28mm?

The number: 87.5%

Type 87.5% into your slicer with X, Y, and Z locked. That’s 28 ÷ 32 × 100 — the exact reverse of the 28mm-to-32mm upscale, which is 114.3%. Where the upscale grows a model by 14.3%, the downscale shrinks it by 12.5%, so a heroic 32mm figure lands at true 28mm eye level on the 175cm baseline.

This is the conversion I reach for when a modern sci-fi epic wargame proxy needs to stand next to a classic fantasy RPG party, or when a sculpt I love only exists in 32mm and I play the 28mm WWII platoon wargame. The number shows up in the slicer percentage calculator and in every row of the miniature scale conversion chart, always with the axes locked and always measured to the eyes.

Why 87.5% and not 90%?

Same reason the upscale isn’t 115%: because both scales measure the same 175cm human to the eyes, the ratio between them is fixed at 28/32. Deviating from it shifts every figure off the intended eye line. 90% sounds friendlier and is close enough to pass the eye test on a single model, but batch-scaling a squad to 90% leaves you with a 28.8mm figure — small enough that nobody will measure it, wrong enough that I won’t recommend it.

The one thing that does change the number is the measurement convention. If a sculptor measures to the top of the head instead of the eyes, the downscale percentage shifts by about a point in the other direction. The scale conversion chart lists both where it matters, but gaming convention says the eyes, so 87.5% is my default.

Why Would I Shrink a 32mm Miniature to 28mm?

Fitting more minis on the plate

The most practical reason, especially on resin: an 87.5% miniature takes up about 67% of the volume of the original (0.875³ ≈ 0.67), so you fit noticeably more minis per build plate per run. Once you’re printing rank-and-file infantry in batches, that’s real time and real resin saved. I use the slicer percentage calculator to plan batch spacing, and the reference page has the full matrix if you want to see every pairing at once.

Mixing with a true-scale collection

The other reason is consistency. The publisher moved to 32mm heroic in 2014-2015, but the classic fantasy RPG, 28mm WWII platoon wargames, and most historical games stayed true 28mm. If your collection is 28mm and you find an STL that only ships in 32mm heroic — common with popular sci-fi and fantasy sculptors — 87.5% is what makes it look at home in the display cabinet next to everything else.

There’s a caveat I have to flag: shrinking a 32mm heroic sculpt to 87.5% gives you a smaller heroic sculpt, not a true-scale 28mm sculpt. The proportions stay chunky — the head is still 1:6 of the height, the hands are still oversized. For most hobbyists that’s fine, because it reads as “detailed 28mm”. If you’re a stickler for anatomical proportions, the heroism is baked into the model and no percentage will remove it.

How Do I Downscale a Mini Without Ruining the Detail?

The slicer routine for shrinking

Lock the axes, type 87.5, apply. Then the steps that actually matter when you’re going down, because the problems are different from an upscale:

1. Re-generate supports. Supports generated for the original size won’t scale sensibly — gaps get too tight and contact points get too small. Deleting and re-supporting takes two minutes and saves a failed print.
2. Check the layer height. Detail that printed cleanly at 32mm is 12.5% smaller now. On resin I drop to a finer layer height for the batch; on FDM I switch to a 0.2mm nozzle if the model has faces worth saving.
3. Re-check orientation. A 12.5% smaller footprint changes the balance of the model, and thin blades or antennae that survived at 32mm may need a tilt to survive at 28mm.
4. Print one test piece and measure it with my PARKSIDE calipers before committing to a full squad — same rule as every conversion on this site.

What gets lost when you shrink a miniature

Two things, predictably: surface detail and mechanical strength. Fine features get denser relative to the nozzle or resin pixel, so a face that printed cleanly at 32mm can lose its expression at 87.5%. On FDM, thinner features also mean more fragile prints — swords, rifles, and capes are the first casualties. That’s the trade you’re accepting for a cheaper, denser plate.

The good news is that everything shrinks uniformly, so proportions never distort. If the original was well-sculpted, the 87.5% version is the same sculpt with less material. That’s exactly why the reference page treats downscale as the mirror of upscale rather than a separate skill — the math is the same, only the print settings change.

Are 32mm and 28mm Miniatures Really That Different?

The 14.3% height difference in practice

Side by side, the difference reads as much bigger than 14.3%. Hold a classic true-scale (28mm) power-armoured soldier next to a modern heroic (32mm) one and the latter looks a third larger — because the height ratio compounds across all three dimensions. A 32mm figure at 1:50 has nearly 50% more volume than a 28mm figure at 1:56, and most 32mm sculpts pile heroic proportions on top of that. When you downscale, you’re removing volume, and the model’s presence drops faster than its height.

Heroic proportions vs true scale when going down

This is the one thing nobody warns you about: scale is not the same as proportion. 28mm and 32mm describe where a figure’s eyes sit; heroic describes how the sculptor shaped the body inside that height. A 32mm heroic miniature downscaled to 87.5% still has the big head and oversized hands — it’s a heroic 28mm figure. So measure any unlabelled STL against a scale reference bar and weigh the proportions before you type in a percentage.

If you mostly play 28mm systems, my fantasy RPG miniature scale guide shows what a true 28mm army looks like across every size category, from Tiny to Gargantuan. Compare it against your shrunken 32mm squad and you’ll see the proportions instantly.

That’s the downscale. 87.5%, axes locked, supports re-generated, one test print. If you want the full set of percentages — including how the same ratio behaves across the 35mm sci-fi mass-battle game and the 40mm sci-fi skirmish game, and the rest — the miniature scale conversion chart has the master list.