Custom Supports in Lychee Slicer

Auto supports get a model 80 percent of the way printable. The last 20 percent is the cape edge that always tears, the spear tip the algorithm skips, the mid-air cloak fold the auto generator cannot see from above. That final 20 percent is manual work, and it is the difference between a usable hero miniature and a model with a snapped sword or a detached face.

This article covers the workflow for manual support placement in Lychee, the four specific placements that always need a custom support added by hand, the correct tip diameter for each, and how to verify the result with Lychee’s lift simulation before the file goes to the printer.

When to use custom supports

Not every file needs custom support work. If the file came pre-supported from a creator on Patreon or MyMiniFactory, skip both auto and manual support entirely. The creator has placed every support by hand on the actual geometry, tested it on a real printer, and shipped the result. Opening that file in Lychee and adding auto supports on top is not improving the file; it is adding collision risk and unnecessary contact points. Load the pre-supported file, orient it, and print it.

For more on choosing between pre-supported files, auto supports, and manual placement, see the support settings for resin miniatures article.

Custom support work is for files where no pre-supported version exists: models from free repositories, sculpts you have made yourself, older STL releases without a supported variant, or any file where the auto support result has visible gaps after inspection.

The four-step workflow

Manual support placement in Lychee follows a fixed sequence: run auto first, identify the gaps, place manual supports on top, then verify with the lift simulation. Each step has a specific purpose and skipping one creates work later.

The auto-support step is not optional even when you know manual work is coming. Auto handles the 80 percent of geometry that is straightforward: the underside of the body, the base, the top of the arms, most flat overhangs. Starting from scratch and placing every support by hand on a character miniature would take 20 minutes or more. Auto handles the bulk; manual targets the gaps.

Step 1: Run auto first

Open the support panel in Lychee (Support tab, top toolbar or the side panel depending on your version). Select the auto-support preset you have saved for miniature work. If you have not saved one yet, use the built-in miniature preset as the starting point and set the tip diameter to 0.4 mm before running it.

Click the auto-support button and wait for the placement to complete. Do not adjust anything yet. The auto result is the baseline you are about to improve, not the finished product.

Step 2: Identify the gaps

Lychee provides two ways to find unsupported overhangs after auto placement.

The first is visual inspection. Rotate the model in the viewport until you are looking at it from below and slightly in front. Work around the model slowly, checking the underside of every overhang. Any surface pointing downward without a support column beneath it within a few millimetres is a candidate for a manual addition.

The second is Lychee’s missing-supports overlay. In the support panel, turn on the overhang highlight (sometimes labelled “show unsupported areas” or similar, depending on the Lychee version). Lychee colours unsupported overhang surfaces in red. The overlay is fast and catches geometry that is easy to miss in the viewport rotation, particularly on the undersides of weapons and on the hidden faces of turned heads.

Use both. The overlay catches most gaps; visual inspection confirms whether a flagged area is a genuine risk or a small surface that the surrounding supports will hold adequately.

Step 3: Place manual supports

Manual support placement in Lychee is a two-click action per support.

Select the manual support tool from the support panel. The cursor changes to a crosshair. Click on the model surface at the point where you want the support to contact the model. Lychee places a preview point. Click a second time to confirm, and Lychee draws the branched support column from that contact point down to the build plate or to the nearest support structure.

If the placement looks wrong after confirmation, undo and try again. Common errors on the first attempt are clicking the wrong surface (the top of a cape when you wanted the underside) and clicking too close to an existing support column. Zoom in before placing supports on small geometry.

The support tip diameter for manual placements is important. Do not inherit the auto-support tip size for manual work on visible surfaces. The working ranges are:

• Character miniatures (28 mm to 75 mm scale): 0.25 mm to 0.4 mm tip diameter. Use the lower end on faces and fabric; the higher end on weapons and structural geometry.
• Terrain pieces and large models: 0.4 mm to 0.6 mm tip diameter. The geometry is less fine and the contact point is usually on an undetailed surface.

A tip that is too thick leaves a visible pock-mark scar on the model surface at the contact point. A tip that is too thin tears mid-print, leaving the section it was holding unsupported from that point forward. The ranges above are derived from practical use on miniature geometry; stay within them and adjust based on what you observe over a few prints.

The four placements that always need manual supports

These four geometry situations defeat auto support algorithms consistently. Check them on every character miniature and add a manual support if the auto result has left them uncovered.

Cape edges and trailing fabric. Auto supports place columns under the main body of a cape, but the thin trailing edge of the cloak is where failures happen. The auto algorithm reads the midpoint of the fabric mass and considers it supported; it misses the actual edge. On a model with a billowing cloak, add one manual support at the trailing tip of the cloak, even if auto has placed supports further up the same fabric. The tip diameter here should be on the low end of the character range (0.25 mm to 0.3 mm) because the fabric edge is thin and visible.

Sword and spear tips. A blade or spearhead pointing away from the body is a long unsupported overhang at the end of thin geometry. The auto generator often misses it entirely, or places the contact point on the flat of the blade at an angle that holds poorly under the lift cycle. Add one manual support at the very tip of any weapon, placed on the underside of the geometry at the correct angle. A single well-placed support here prevents the tip snap that is one of the most common failures on hero miniatures.

Weapon hafts: banner poles, staves, axe handles. A long diagonal weapon creates a mid-shaft overhang in the section furthest from the body. Auto supports see the geometry at both ends of the weapon and treat the connection to the body and hand as adequate. The midpoint of the shaft has no coverage and will droop or snap mid-print on larger scales. Check the midpoint of any long diagonal weapon. If the nearest support column is more than 4 mm away, add a manual support to the underside of the shaft at the midpoint.

Faces in the lee of a head turn. A character looking to one side presents a shadowed face to the auto-support algorithm. The top of the turned head is supported; the cheek, jaw, and brow on the downward-facing side are not, because the algorithm reads from above and cannot see the shadow geometry underneath. After running auto supports, rotate the viewport to look at the model face from directly below. If the jaw and cheek on the downward side lack coverage, add one or two manual supports to those surfaces. Use the lowest tip diameter in the character range here (0.25 mm to 0.3 mm); the face is the most visible surface on any character model and support scars here are permanent.

Step 4: Verify with the lift simulation

After placing all manual supports, do not send the file to the printer yet. Use Lychee’s lift simulation to check the result.

The lift simulation is Lychee’s layer-by-layer slice preview. Access it via the slice and preview workflow (Slice button, then use the layer scrubber in the preview panel). Scrub through the layers from the build plate up, watching for two failure modes:

First, any layer where a section of the model appears floating with no connection to the layers below it. A floating section means a gap in the support structure. Go back to the support view, find the section that floats, and add a manual support under it.

Second, any manual support that is itself not connected to the build plate or to a lower support structure. This is rare but happens when a manual support is placed at an angle that Lychee resolves into a branch that terminates in mid-air. If you see it in the lift simulation, undo the placement and re-place the support from a slightly different starting angle.

The lift simulation takes a minute and prevents a failed print that takes hours. Run it on every file where you have added manual supports.

The orientation interaction

Manual support quality is directly tied to orientation. A model with too many gaps for auto supports to cover cleanly may simply be oriented at a suboptimal angle. Re-orienting so that fewer surfaces face directly downward reduces the number of manual supports needed and puts existing supports on better geometry.

If you find yourself placing more than five or six manual supports on a single model, stop and check the orientation first. A 5 degree rotation of the model can move a problem surface from a downward-facing overhang to a sideways-facing one that needs no support at all. For the full orientation workflow and its interaction with support placement, see the resin print orientation guide for miniatures.

Re-orient before doing the manual support work, not after. Manual support placement on a well-oriented model is faster and the result is more reliable.

Saving custom support presets

After dialling in the manual support workflow for a particular creator’s range of models, such as a Patreon subscription with a consistent house style for capes and weapons, save the support preset in Lychee with that creator’s name or style as the label.

The next model from the same creator starts from the same auto-support baseline, which means the auto result is already closer to correct and the manual pass covers fewer gaps. Over a series of prints from the same designer, the manual support time per model drops significantly.

The preset saves tip diameter, branch thickness, density, and all other auto-support parameters. It does not save the individual manual placements from a specific model, but those are re-placed in minutes once you know where to look.

What good results look like

After the auto pass, the manual additions, and the lift simulation check, the support structure on a character miniature should have the following characteristics: no floating sections in the lift simulation, a manual support at every cape trailing edge, weapon tip, weapon haft midpoint, and turned-face jawline, and tip diameters matched to the surface visibility of each contact point.

A print that comes off the plate cleanly with this preparation will have small contact marks at each support point. On correctly sized tips, those marks are a fraction of a millimetre and primer covers them. On incorrectly oversized tips, they are visible through paint. Getting the tip diameter right before printing is always faster than compensating at the painting stage.

For the support settings that underpin all of this, the working ranges for density, branch thickness, and raft type, see the support settings for resin miniatures article. For diagnosing prints where support problems are still occurring after checking the above, see diagnosing failed resin prints. For a full walkthrough of the Lychee interface from the beginning, see the Lychee slicer guide for beginners.

The four placements covered here will not change. Cape edges, weapon tips, weapon hafts, and turned faces defeat auto supports on every algorithm and every version of Lychee. Check them on every print and they stop being failures.