Its a stretch to call this "Armor" but it is a molded helmet nonetheless. If this is the wrong place to put a build like this, let me know... right now I can only post to the noob forum, so if there's a place for non-Halo armor, feel free to move accordingly!
So, I went out and found some of the pep files for Guy's helmet, but unfortunately they didn't seem terribly accurate to the current generation. Daft Punk got new equipment in late 2004, and it seems like the existing pep files were built off the previous version. The differences are subtle, but I decided to take a crack at molding my own piece.
First thing was first, I needed to make accurate illustrations of the helmet and figure out the wiring I'm going to be tossing in there. Guy's helmet is the gold one, with the large black "fishbowl" visor, and large color bars left and right. After a lot of research, I built this in Illustrator:
You'll notice the mention of shift registers in there. I'm going to be using an Arduino programmable logic board to power the LED banks. By using 4 shift registers, I can control 32 independent channels for all the LED effects. These will all be selectable from a controller connected to the helmet, which will be build into a wrist piece (this is the way Daft Punk controlled their V1 helmets)
Next step was some PCB layout design. This is the "chin" LED banks, where you see the red, yellow, and green square LEDs in the picture above, as well as the 2 rows of white LEDs. There will be 2 of these boards, a left and right.
This is the board that will house 4 white LEDs and illuminate all of the color banks on the left and right sides of the helmet. There will be 16 of these total.
Enough drawings, onto the actual work!
Strange as it sounds, I took the template I made above, and built a faux 3-D helmet out of it in illustration board. This gave me a rough idea of scale before actually sitting down and carving clay. I also took the excess material from the illustration board and kept it as templates to put over the working helmet to make sure I was getting all the curves right.
This next part is a little weird. This is my second helmet build, and my first with such a complex shape, so I'm mostly winging it here process-wise. I started by covering my fake 3-D thing with a bunch of expanding foam:
Which I then carved into a rough shape:
...really rough...
Then I got started with some clay, which (after drying) got some apoxie sculpt in the lower places. I know this seems like I'm using every material in the book, and I think in the future I can cut down on this a lot... but its actually working out rather well so far.
The ear puck areas were trimmed out
And then I built up some of the areas in bondo to match the curvature of my diagrams
Ear pucks were carved out of MDF screwed together to make sure I kept the same shape.
and were shaved down on a router
A couple of test fits
And after anchoring the baseplates for the ear pucks and sanding down the first coat of bondo. This is just some patch work to hit the low parts and bubble holes. Need to do some primer and smoothing out once this is sanded.
The plan from here on is to smooth the entire piece before adding on the raised sections around the ear pucks and the visor (as well as the rear "hoop".) This is because it will be much easier to ensure a perfect curved surface if I don't have to worry about sanding into corners. After that, I'll build the raised portions in Apoxie sculpt, sand, paint, mold, profit!
As for the visor, I'll be making the mold 1/8" deeper in the area where the visor will go. Once the mold is made, I'll cut that part out and vacuum-form it out of tinted PETG. I'll repeat this same process for the rear clear part that the wires sit on.
Hope you guys like, stay tuned for more.
So, I went out and found some of the pep files for Guy's helmet, but unfortunately they didn't seem terribly accurate to the current generation. Daft Punk got new equipment in late 2004, and it seems like the existing pep files were built off the previous version. The differences are subtle, but I decided to take a crack at molding my own piece.
First thing was first, I needed to make accurate illustrations of the helmet and figure out the wiring I'm going to be tossing in there. Guy's helmet is the gold one, with the large black "fishbowl" visor, and large color bars left and right. After a lot of research, I built this in Illustrator:
You'll notice the mention of shift registers in there. I'm going to be using an Arduino programmable logic board to power the LED banks. By using 4 shift registers, I can control 32 independent channels for all the LED effects. These will all be selectable from a controller connected to the helmet, which will be build into a wrist piece (this is the way Daft Punk controlled their V1 helmets)
Next step was some PCB layout design. This is the "chin" LED banks, where you see the red, yellow, and green square LEDs in the picture above, as well as the 2 rows of white LEDs. There will be 2 of these boards, a left and right.
This is the board that will house 4 white LEDs and illuminate all of the color banks on the left and right sides of the helmet. There will be 16 of these total.
Enough drawings, onto the actual work!
Strange as it sounds, I took the template I made above, and built a faux 3-D helmet out of it in illustration board. This gave me a rough idea of scale before actually sitting down and carving clay. I also took the excess material from the illustration board and kept it as templates to put over the working helmet to make sure I was getting all the curves right.
This next part is a little weird. This is my second helmet build, and my first with such a complex shape, so I'm mostly winging it here process-wise. I started by covering my fake 3-D thing with a bunch of expanding foam:
Which I then carved into a rough shape:
...really rough...
Then I got started with some clay, which (after drying) got some apoxie sculpt in the lower places. I know this seems like I'm using every material in the book, and I think in the future I can cut down on this a lot... but its actually working out rather well so far.
The ear puck areas were trimmed out
And then I built up some of the areas in bondo to match the curvature of my diagrams
Ear pucks were carved out of MDF screwed together to make sure I kept the same shape.
and were shaved down on a router
A couple of test fits
And after anchoring the baseplates for the ear pucks and sanding down the first coat of bondo. This is just some patch work to hit the low parts and bubble holes. Need to do some primer and smoothing out once this is sanded.
The plan from here on is to smooth the entire piece before adding on the raised sections around the ear pucks and the visor (as well as the rear "hoop".) This is because it will be much easier to ensure a perfect curved surface if I don't have to worry about sanding into corners. After that, I'll build the raised portions in Apoxie sculpt, sand, paint, mold, profit!
As for the visor, I'll be making the mold 1/8" deeper in the area where the visor will go. Once the mold is made, I'll cut that part out and vacuum-form it out of tinted PETG. I'll repeat this same process for the rear clear part that the wires sit on.
Hope you guys like, stay tuned for more.