[WIP] 15'th century german full plate armour.

Fingus

All right, so I already have a daily sketchbook, but I feel that this would fit better here. I got tired of modeling junk I found around my apartment so I decided to repurpose my daily one-hour 3D sketches into something bigger and more ambitious. Feeling sadistic and in the mood of kicking my own ass I decided to do a suit of german plate armor, down to the fluting and ornamentation. Those crazy germans.

http://www.englyshe-plate-armourie.co.uk/Gal_GermanArmour.html







Everything will be modeled by hand, no sculpting or scanning. I'm hoping that at the end of this I will have a solid portfolio piece and a much stronger eye for proportion, detail and plane change. I'll probably need to frankenstein a few pieces as the replica I'm working from hasn't been completed yet. It's missing the pauldrons, gauntlets, and a few other pieces.

Here are my humble beginnings:



Still blocking in shit.

Fingus

Here is today's progress. It's going slow because I'm paying a lot of attention to proportions and scale rather than detail. Today I blocked in the couter (elbow guard) which was surprisingly tricky. I should start planning out my approach on paper before I start modeling.

Fingus

Blocked in the boots. This is going too slow. I'm being too precise and nitpicky.

Fingus

Update on the shoe. Catching myself getting caught up in details, I'm going to move on to blocking in the helmet or gloves next.

Fingus

Blocked in the helmet. Proportions are all wrong, I just focused on nailing the main shapes.

Fingus

Pauldrons and besagews.

Fingus

About everything should be blocked in now and about the right placement and proportion. Now I'll move on the the fun part which is the details! But now it's spring break. I'll make an effort to do these sketches over the break, but I'm traveling to Seattle with my friends so I might not be able to find time for it.

Hazardous

Keep going dude this is going to be epic!

Fingus

@Hazardous

Oh my! I'm honored sir, thanks for the words of encouragement.

I went to Seattle for the spring break so I didn't get any modeling done this week. But now I'm back to SF and ready to continue. Today I fleshed out the helmet a bit.

Ihazard

very nice start you've got all the shapes right as far as I can tell, are you going to have all that fancy gold and engraving on it too?

Fingus

@lhazard
Of course! Wouldn't be a challenge without it. I got an idea on how to approach it too. Going to see how much I can get out of the Wire Tool, but I'll probably end up having to touch up a lot by hand anyway.





Helmet. This week hasn't been too productive...

Xoliul

Yo are really doing this the right way, or at least exactly like I would do it. Keep it up, this could become quite good!

MEGALOS

Really awesome stuff man, keep it up! Can't wait to see the end result

Ruz

perhpas the bevels are bit thin and may not catch much light.seems like really thin card in a lot of places

Fingus

@Xollui
Thank you very much! Very encouraging to hear I'm doing it right by an accomplished modeler such as yourself.

@MEGALOS
Thanks a lot! I can't wait to finish it either, mostly because I'm itching to play with rendering and materials on this guy. And I really need to get a portfolio put together soon...

@Ruz
Hm, you got a point there. I have a bad habit of doing the bevels by hand with the Split Polygon Tool and not curving the bevel so they're stuck at a 90 degree angle. Any area in particular that stands out to you?

Today I played some catch up and did large parts of the breastplate.

I also found two good places to find reference on armour:
http://rubens.anu.edu.au/lists/arms_and_armour.html
http://www.armsandarmourforum.com/forum/ (my account hasn't been activated yet so I'm not sure how good it is, but I got a good impression from what I hear people say about it.)

Fingus

A little fun I had with a texturing assignment for a different class.

seth.

Armour is coming along great man, tighten up thje ribs on the chest a little though they aren't quite looking as refined as your ref.
Looking forward to seeing how you get on with the chainmail, I would consider that one of the trickiest areas, and would like to steal your technique

siggi-gross

hi fingus,

great work, keep it up :thumbup:


as it seems that you are trying to be historical accurate and one of my "real life" hobbies is reenactement, let me try to crit a few minor points:

concerning the flutes on your breast and back plate:
- the sharp edges are raised and the lower parts are at "ground level",
- the alignement is great :poly121:

i really like the overall shape of your sallet,
but mainly the visor is a bit odd:
- the lower front is way too sharp
- the transition from the lower part to the hinge should point rather upward than ending in a "blob"
- the top edge of the visor is folded inward about 3-6 mm
- the overall line of the lower edge is fine, try to give the tail a slight curve up
- the complete lower edge of the sallet needs a rolled edge
- or the fancy brass lillies :poly101: (go for it!)
- the groove in your crest seems a bit too deep (not shure from your images)
i did a quick paintover:

also have a look at these:



armsandarmour forum is a great resource
if your need more info or references, pleas PM me

can't wait to see it ready :thumbup:
cheers siggi

Fingus

@seth
I plan on making a single ring, rather lowpoly, and using duplicate with transform to build a flat square of chainmail. Then I will use the bend deformer and lattice deformer to shape them around the body. There's pretty much no way to avoid getting a crazy polycount so I'm waiting with that step until the end because I'm working on a two year old macbook.

@siggi-gross
Oh my! This is absolutely fantastic feedback, thank you so much! I'm overwhelmed.
You just clarified a lot of areas that were ambiguous to me because it's kinda hard to read the construction and form of objects that are so extremely reflective. I had a hard time getting the fluting to look right but now that you pointed out that they curve outwards I went "d'oh, of course!".
Your feedback on the helmet is fantastic and I will get to work on those areas today. I intend to add the brass lillies, and I have a pretty good idea of how to do them too. But I'm waiting to do that until I got all the big forms locked down. I'm trying to get better on working from big to small rather than getting caught up in the fine details immediately.
As for reference. I've been trying to get a good picture of the side of the breastplate. I'm not sure how the plates overlap and connect, or if they hinge or are simply bolted together. The armor I'm working from is the armor of Sigismund of Tyrol. I'm not sure if it goes under other names.

Fingus

I did the changes you suggested and added some bolts. I'll fix the fluting tomorrow, I need to texture, shade and light a scene and two characters by tuesday for my other class.

ElizaW

This looks like a great project! The armor's going to look amazing when you finish.

Apophis3d

Really coming along nice and easy to texture too

siggi-gross

hi fingus,

more reference:
as for the body armour:
this one is not for someone in the shape of sigi, but shows the construction and overlapping of the back.



http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/9/index/582182/1
http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=21487&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Fingus

So I kinda lost my motivation to work on this guy for a couple of days, but today I sat down and made up for the lost hours. I finished the front part of the breastplate.

3DVlad

This is turning out great man. Im really curious to see how it turns out so Ill sub to ur thread and stalk u for a while

Fingus

Oops! Didn't notice the feedback when I posted yesterday.

@ElizaW
Thank you. I hope I can get it finished before the semester ends.

@Apophis3d
Oh I dunno how easy it will be to texture, or at least I'm feeling that the UV process will be a pain in the ass because the plates have thickness to them. Do you have any thoughts on how you would do it?

@siggi-gross
Ah yes, that is perfect! Thank you very much. I suspected it worked like that but I wasn't sure.

@3DVlad
Yay! I stalker.
I wonder if it's possible to see detailed stats of the thread, like how many people follow it and such.

So here's an update on the breastplate. I forgot to add the fluting on the front part and had to find a way to add the new edgeflow without breaking the curvature. Ugh. I kinda pulled it off but I spent way too much time trying to figure out a clever way of doing it when I just ended up carving it in with the Split Polygon Tool.

Fingus

Just trucking along.

Fingus

All right, finally done with the front part. Phew.

bonds0097

This is shaping up really nicely. Is this going to be baked down to a low-poly? Some of the edges where you have different plates seem very sharp and may need to be a sloped a bit so that the bake picks up 'em up. If it's just a high-poly exercise, then disregard.

AnimeAngel

looking good. Very nice detailing so far, keep it up

Fingus

@bonds0097
It is intended to just be a hipoly exercise, but I did consider doing a lowpoly bake. Although with some of the detail I added recently like the floral pattern on the chest it could get tricky... I don't really know much about texture baking.

@AnimeAngel
Thank you! I'm getting pretty sick of this armour though... I need to move to a different part or something. :S

No armour today, but I started making a building!