Hey everybody. I just wanted to get some critique on my latest modeling effort. I'm still working on a helmet, and am almost done with a sword for her now. I know it's not the best rendering in the world--I'm not so great at setting up scenes, but let me know what you think.

Upir

I, for one, am very interested in this. :) Jay

Looks great - especially the gloves!

Beautiful! It has a 'real' look to it that I'm always on the lookout for---Please let us know when it's ready.

It's looking as good as your Mike version already.

hmatienzo: Thanks. This one is four figures. The chainmail pants underneath the leg plates are one figure, each gauntlet is a seperate figure, and the rest is included in a single figure. It is a lot easier to set up than Micheal's version. I keep learning how to do things better. The elbow and knee joints are set up as Joint Controlled Joints, so that they position themselves when you move the shin or the forearm. For some reason that doesn't work when the figure is conformed to Vicky though--it's strange.

I really don't want to be critical of something which is so much work... but please think of what armor is supposed to do: deflect a blow by an edged weapon. The thigh bands look to be upside down for this purpose. They would catch a sword's edge and slice deeply, and Vicky would probably lose a leg (from bleeding or gangrene if nothing else). Not pretty. The elbow and knee pieces should be wider to better protect vulnerable areas. Knights ride horses. Even male armor tends to be wide at the hips for this purpose. If you have ever been on a horse, you know they are wide... and the war horses back then were huge! Please allow room for a quilted pad or coif under the helmet if you are aiming for a remotely realistic look. Bare metal on skin will cut it. 15th century metallurgy and sweaty salty skin equals rust. I hope that Vicky has a couple of well-muscled squires with their equivalent of steel wool to maintain this stuff! ;^) It looks good. But if you are going to assign a date, you are setting an expectation that it is true to that period, and functional. Carolly

hauksdottir: Thanks for the comments. Normally I would agree with you on several points you've made. However, I decided to make a few comprimises in the interest of making the armor more feminine. The breasts on the breastplate for example. You are correct that one would wear padding and chainmail underneath. By the time you had the plates over all that you'd have no indication that it was a woman wearing the stuff. The narrow waist is a compromise to make the design feminine. The leg bands are lapped correctly however. The design is loosely based on North west European curiassier armor circa 1600 (while that isn't the 15th Century, I titled it that because it is meant as a companion piece for Micheals version of the same name) I have studied a great many photos of armor and in all of them the leg bands overlap in the fashion I have modeled. They generally fit together much tighter, but the larger gap is there to accentuate the fact that it is made up of plates. nu-be: The gorget (collar piece) is based on a photograph of a suit of embossed armor attributed to Lucio Piccinino of Milan c. 1590. This suit of armor has an articulated neck piece that extends up the neck as I have modeled. You can find many examples of suits that utilize pauldrons (shoulder plates) as I have depicted. Also, you can't see in this rendering, but the leg plates only cover the front and outside of the legs. The inner thigh, back of the legs, and her bum are not covered with articulated plate, so she wouldn't sit on them. Anyway, I did make some compromises in the design, but they were deliberate. This is meant to be a fantasy suit of armor, not an exercise in complete and utter accuracy. I wanted it to be obvious that the wearer was female, so I went with a more form fitting look. This is my answer to the chainmail bikini so often seen in fantasy art. In fact, I have yet to find a photo of a suit of plate armor that was intended for a woman, so there goes the realism right there.

I updated the image, so she is now holding her sword:

Cool, just got Mike's last month (then my HD crashed, but just got it back up again) -> I'll be looking forward to this one too! Bout time Vicky gets serious about her armor (but she does look great in skimpy stuff too;p

igohigh: Those HD crashes suck. I get a windows protection error ever fourth or fifth time I boot up, but after a shutdown everything comes up fine. I haven't figured it out yet. And yes, skimpy can be good, just not when the swords are swinging and the arrows are flying.

nu-be: I did a quick render of the back side of the model, so you can see that she should actually be able to sit down. The other image still didn't give a good idea of what the back looked like.

igohigh: I think this one is a lot easier to use than Micheal's version. I think you will like this setup better. I may have to revisit Micheal's armor and do some kind of update.

The armor looks great. One of the better sets I've seen. The only problem I can see (maybe it's just the angles) is it looks like the pauldrons appear to be digging into the arm plates. Nice work though, I couldn't make that. Just out of curiosity, where can one see the micheal's armor? Looking good! ~DM

CrystalDragon: You can find Micheal's Armor at Daz. The pauldrons actually have a cutout so they can lap down over the arm plates. It does sort of make it look like it is cutting into the arm. They take some effort to pose well, but they don't intersect.

ah, ok! wow, can't wait then! ~DM

Upir...Very, Very Nice...if you want a Bata tester I would be more than happy to help out -hint, hint :-) I would love to create a texture for this down the road. P.S. I know you are making a helmet for her, but if you ever saw old re-runs of Ivanhoe (a TV show when I was kid) sigh...getting old... they all went around most of the time with only chainmail on their heads. To make my point - the long flowing head of chainmail working down on to her shoulders would give a more feminine look to her like long flowing hair (an extra prop to the package).