Quote - rokket, thx fr yr work on this.  your attitude is positive and friendly, and I want to commend you on your participation here.  addtionally, you may try this metallised glass visor shader, should you desire it.

Well, thank you very much! It's really nice to be appreciated.

I copied that shader and I am going to try it out. Thank you for that.

Quote -   It would be nice to see some procedural shaders made for it.

Right now procedurals are all I have on it since it's not mapped. I will see how the mapping turns out before I go either way.

Quote - Here is now that metallized shader turned out. Keeping in mind that there is no one in the suit, so you can see into the helmet somewhat because of the refraction. Looks ok?

Nahhhh. I didn't look too closely at the shader. This isn't what it's supposed to look like...

How does she look?

I finally got the metallic lense shader right, and I am rendering a close up of the helmet to post in a minute or two.

You can clearly see the hood under the helmet. I am liking this. I can't wait to get it rigged and tested.

Thank you so much, Miss Nancy!!!!

She isn't inside the suit. I wanted to see what would happen if it wasn't conformed to her.

There are some obvious issues, and the seams on the crotch split in the back, but this does look promising...

If I was to individually import and rig each part, it could probably work, but that seems like a whole lot of work tweaking each and every bone.

I will tweak the rigging later on and start packaging this up.

How many people want this?

The posing looks promising.  I was concerned about how the mesh would respond to a pose.  Nice work.  Sign me up.  I'll take enough for a whole army.

Thanks! I am going to start tweaking the rig later today. I was hoping to see a few more reponses, but I guess it's early in the AM here.

Progress report when there is progress to report!

I just realized this is a landmark for me.

Not only is it the most complicated model I have ever made, it's my first conforming figure, and my first venture with weight maps.

I jumped from walking to a race car.... :blink:

I'll take a dozen. Well maybe a half dozen to start with.

:lol:

Sure!

Here is the coloring I am thinking of using for the base. Of course I will probably do a bunch of options and add them as a MatPose file (gotta figure out how to do that)...

How does it look? Too much? Not enough?

ATM, just right.  Why not save the textures as mc6?  MATPoses are becoming a thing of the past.

Quote - ATM, just right.  Why not save the textures as mc6?  MATPoses are becoming a thing of the past.

mc6 is just a material collection, right? I do that anyway for things I package up to give away. I was just thinking of those who don't know how to use the material room...

MC6's are specific to the figure, so the collection will span over the different material zones designated by the individual vendors.  The advantage over MATPose files, easily applicable to both individual figures & props, especially props without a figure in the scene.  The user only needs to be in the Material Room to use them.

Quote - MC6's are specific to the figure, so the collection will span over the different material zones designated by the individual vendors.  The advantage over MATPose files, easily applicable to both individual figures & props, especially props without a figure in the scene.  The user only needs to be in the Material Room to use them.

I was already thinking that. I am going to include the above materials as one set, and use the default setting as the original colors I was using when I started posting my progress.

If all goes well, I should be able to upload this armor by Monday.

 It's hard to see in this render, but her gloves aren't fitting properly to her hands either. When I conform the armor to her body, they ride up for some reason. Her original boots were doing that too and I can't figure out why.

But how is this for a final thought? As I stated earlier, I will rig the helmet and hood as separate figures, so she can remove the helmet.

I am still pondering the gloves. Opinion? Should I leave them attached to the armor, or make it so they can be removed too? I have never seen Halo armor where the gloves weren't part of the under armor except in home made versions (Pepakura).

As a suggestion, and if possible, removable gloves would be an asset.  I would love to have that option.  Or a separate MAT zone which can be switched invisible when needed. 

The range of movement will be restrictive with armor like that, extreme poses will just simple distort the mesh.  Users should be aware of these limitations.  Perhaps you may need to set those in the rigging.

Yeah, the main goal I am after in the rigging is that the chest armor doesn't move when the arms do. I only want it to follow the chest twist or side to side movement, so perhaps I will smart prop it. I had a piece of the chest armor rigged so that it was fairly stiff (unchecked bend, tweaked the falloff zones), but like a fool I deleted it because I wanted to do the entire armor instead.

I got to thinking about it last night as I was going to sleep, and I may just export out in pieces: the underarmor with the shoulder padding, gauntlets, belt and thigh armor as one piece,the chest, the hood, the helmet, the gloves and finally the boots. That would be eight pieces total. Doable, but it will take a bit more time. I am up for it.

Then you would have a range of options available (like that scene where she is at the campsite with her helmet and gloves off, pouring sand out of her boot).

As far as limitations in ROM, I guess when the user sees the chest piece poke through Miki, he/she knows they bent her too far...

More good news: I injected a couple of Miki's morphs into it and they took without any issues. So you can morph her body and the armor will follow.

And it poses really nice. But of course if you load a standard pose you will have to make adjustments for the armor.

The above render has the Miki 4 body injection. Turned out really nice.

I am getting excited for this all over again.

Nice work Rokket!!

Thanks. I just finished UV mapping everything --- after I said I wasn't going to. I have some ideas about what I want this armor to look like, and I can't do it with procedurals because I suck at it.

So I am going to import the whole mess, get the textures and materials the way I want them, then re-rig and go from there.

The textures in the image above are close to what I am thinking, but I am going to stick with the original red and tan coloring scheme.

Opinions?

You have done a grand slam job!

Quote - You have done a grand slam job!

 

Thanks!

The under armor is rigged and I am working on the gloves now. I had a problem with them when they were part of the under armor, so I am hoping they will not be a problem now.

I am rigging them separately so you can take them both off or one off, or whatever!

I agree with hborre .. You've done a grand slam job on the halo armor.   ** 
**

Quote - I agree with hborre .. You've done a grand slam job on the halo armor.   ** 
**

Thank you, that means a lot coming from you!

But hold the praise until you download it... hehehe... :m_wink:

It's going to be awesome rokket. And I really the camo texture.  I recently forced myself to learn a little about the material room. It's not as scary as I thought it would be. LOL

Quote - It's going to be awesome rokket. And I really the camo texture.  I recently forced myself to learn a little about the material room. It's not as scary as I thought it would be. LOL

For me, I have a handle on the simple things, but start throwing the math in there, and I am lost. Thank god for bagginsbill.

I have most of the rigging done. I will have the armor uploaded to freestuff sometime this weekend.

I have been messing with shaders and nodes, wanting to do the armor completely procedural.

The texture map I was using for the camo armor was from a pic I found out was copyrighted. So I scrapped it and went with using the Spots node under 3D textures.

The under armor texture was a done with tweaking the marble node's scale and turbulance, along with changing the default colors. I also plugged the node into Bump and set it for .08...

My Poser units are inches...

How does it look? I know some are probably as anxious to get their hands on it as I am to release it.

I am still trying to figure out what I want to do with the lense on the helmet. I am working on that one today.

The armor camo looks great!  Not too crazy about the under armor texture, but it can work.  Something to look forwards to.

following this is great

Rowlando

This is so wonderful! I love seeing stuff for "the other guys and gals"

Quote - The armor camo looks great!  Not too crazy about the under armor texture, but it can work.  Something to look forwards to.

If it's not to your liking, it can always be tweaked in the materials room. Won't be able to do anything with texture maps, though. None of this was UV mapped.

Will be uploaded in the next day or two, with a very extensive ReadMe file...

I do like this.  The detailing is very well proportioned and crisp.  It definitely works.

Cool, back to tweaking the rig. Hopefully it will be done soon. I've had to tweak it several times to make sure it wouldn't come undone with different poses...

That looks very good. Looking forward to it.

This looks fantastic. I can't wait to try it out. Thanks in advance for creating this. Your latest materials look great.