Halo 4 BR85HB SR (Pic heavy!) - First Major Project

Thanks, @Noble 10!

FoxtrotX146 said:

Check this out!! This was recently brought to my attention a while ago. I hope I'm not too late...

http://www.westaby.net/store/index...._id=24&zenid=fcf206388eaf90f8f6f34758f15c8103

This includes the ammo counter and the bevel.

Click to expand...

I have seen that, as it happens; if you're building a rifle and not too comfortable with electronics it's a really good deal. However, for the BR85 I need it to look exactly like this:



...Which definitely isn't a seven-segment display. Due to the awkward yet characteristic shape of the housing and lack of short-run options on custom-shaped OLED panels, my only option is to recast that section and construct a projection module to recreate that high-res monochrome flat panel look. The theory is pretty straightforward, I have the general gist straightened out in my head. We'll see what it'll be like in practice.

You're certainly far from too late, too. I doubt I'll start any electronics until early next year, once the first run of kits are shipped and I can sit back and focus on my own copy for a short time. If all the R&D on the scope, ammo counter, etc goes according to plan, I'm intending to offer that stuff as aftermarket accessories (ammo counter will require some chop-shopping of the original part). They won't be cheap though, since it'll be a short run of off-the-shelf parts. I'm estimating around $150 or so apiece for the ammo counter and scope, based on my cursory research so far and estimated build time. Need LCD screens, cameras, processor boards, lenses... I don't know if anyone else will want "the definitive" BR85HB or if I'm just crazy and have the right skillset, but we'll see about that in a couple months!

It's always good to maintain awareness of the build help available for people; maybe someone else reading this needs just that thing! Even with my comfort with electronics, there are some things I'd likely just farm out- like the Needler sound board, for instance.

Oh ok I gotcha. As for me I am no better than connecting wires the way they are supposed to. Well its good to know that I am in good timing but you are going to be making authentic BR WHICH IS FREAKIN INCREDIBLE NEWS FOR ME!!

Taking in Consideration that you are going to ship the first kits next year, what will it have instead of the scope and display. I'm not sure I understood but, will it be up to us to carve out the panels and finish the gun or will have at least a "dummy" panel?

Keep up the good work!

I may have begun to regret my decision to build my armour first and then do my DMR. I know this is a BR but they remind me of DMR's, dunno why.

Turns out I took enough pics of the ammo counter (that I just finished off this morning, thanks to being sick basically all week last week) to warrant its own update, if anyone's interested in how a complex unit like that goes together. I'm not overly happy with its level of accuracy, but I think it's within tolerances.













































Now to get to work on stretching those side scales and Bondoing them in place. Then it's just the Picatinny rail to do.

My god. I didn't think you could capture such a detailed piece in wood, but with some liberous bondo applications, you sure as hell did it. As if the rest of the build wasn't enough to blow me away, that certainly did.

Thanks, FoxtrotZero! Amazing how much detail Bondo can capture if you set up the substructure correctly beforehand and have the patience to work it with both Xacto blades and files. Some small parts- a few inches of a bevel, a symmetrical compound curve- take a good two hours to do even after the initial fill pass sets up. It looks like a mess to begin with, but you just have to have the confidence to keep working it- you can always refill a section, after all.

Ok, there was a little more to it than just what I thought in the last update, but progress is definitely being made, and carry rail completion is within my grasp.







Side scales mounted and upper vents cut out:



I'm not a fan of working with styrene, despite its precision, but sometimes it's necessary:





Substructure set up and ready to go:





Big pile o' Bondo for a big section of filling:



This section is tricky, still not completed either. Next update.





The initial couple passes of Bondo look like crap. Don't worry about it, it all works out in the end.











Starting to look like a real thing:







This line had to be pretty precise, since it's one of the most visible sections:



But I didn't go overboard on these lines, since they're underneath and barely visible on the final assembly:



Some symmetry at last:



Finally getting close:



Onto the final round of detailing...



Next update shouldn't be long, I'm about to get started on the Picatinny rail, and then all that's left to do is Bondo squishing the front and rear where they sit on top of the barrel jacket.

Finished most of the carry rail. I wasn't expecting what superficially appears to be a fairly simplistic geometry to be such a long and tedious job. But, 7 hours of work later(!), the Picatinny rail is complete and all I have left to do is Bondo squishing the bottom sections against the barrel jacket.

Discovered Blender has a ruler/protractor function in the Grease Pencil tab. Win!



Made a template of the center points of the end radii from superglue packaging using the above measurements. Punched the holes to get the pen through.



Center punched (well, wire nailed) the points.





Drilled and marked the lines to rout out to. Used a little diamond bit.



Little rail clip detail, I dunno what it's supposed to be. There's a similar one underneath at the back. Yay greeblies!



Finally coming together! Was at this point that I posted yesterday's update:



Picatinny (is it actually a Picatinny pattern rail, or do we just call it that?) rail cross-section pieces:



Rib-and-sparred together into the general outline.



It fits as it should, since I remembered to take the axial measurements from the model rather than the asset:



Now to fill in all that air space with Bondo:



5 hours or something later...:



Now for the teeth. I'm not attempting to make 3mm boxes without 1/8" stock (there it is again), so I'll make a simple box mould jig:





13x3x200mm channel, give or take:



Second batch was WAY too much hardener, like 4:1 instead of 50:1. So it cured rubbery, as expected, though this turned out to be quite useful later. I may use this as a deliberate technique in future:



Foil gets pressed in by a length of 1/2" stock that fits perfectly:



Two batches is pretty good. Only the top, maybe, 0.8mm is the rubbery Bondo. After cleanup:



Making the teeth. Scribe 7mm on both sides:



Cut through the rubbery Bondo, kinda like nocking a tree. Then press down through the other side like a pill cutter, rocking it a lot to avoid the harder stuff crumbling:



File the facets up true and put a 0.8mm-ish bevel on the two sides:



Do that like 20 more times, with the couple cm left over that I'd planned for. Only one tooth went in the reject pile, there aren't many air bubbles. I may fill them later, but chances are the auto primer will do it for me.



Glued on and done!



Mmmm, sexy detail. I added the detail on the rear of the rail, since 343i didn't bother adding geometry somewhere that's invisible under the scope. Obviously in the real world, it will be visible at least some of the time, especially if custom scopes are used (the DMR or BR55's, maybe?) , or it's put somewhere different:



Not much to do on this now. Once that's complete, I'm going to rework the grip, then everything's going to get primed up like the barrel jacket is.

You, sir, are a Michealangelo of Bondo sculpting. Sweet mother of Cheetos, this is top notch work. Keep it up

Thanks, @WhiteWolfLegend! I dunno if I'd go quite that far, but...

FoxtrotX146 said:

Oh ok I gotcha. As for me I am no better than connecting wires the way they are supposed to. Well its good to know that I am in good timing but you are going to be making authentic BR WHICH IS FREAKIN INCREDIBLE NEWS FOR ME!!

Taking in Consideration that you are going to ship the first kits next year, what will it have instead of the scope and display. I'm not sure I understood but, will it be up to us to carve out the panels and finish the gun or will have at least a "dummy" panel?

Keep up the good work!

Click to expand...

Thanks! Missed the question here. The ammo counter display is made, as you can see. The replacement projection section will consist of the display unit and some of the side scales of the carry rail as a whole box with the electronics inside and some connectors poking out. The display on this, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. If I can get custom printed/cut transparent vinyl decals, I may go that route.

The scope, I'll be doing a regular dummy version with some kind of reflective blue "display" to attach- probably that transparent blue self-adhesive stuff over foil and the reticle drawn on. That'll get replaced by a second cast scope with the electronics inside. I doubt the electronics will be able to fit into the original dummy scope, it's very tight tolerances which I won't be sticking to on the Mk. I.

So the kit'll ship as a complete, event-ready unit, but it won't be the "definitive" BR85 until a couple months or so later when the more complex electronics can be shipped. Initial cost will just be the $230+shipping. Final cost I'm estimating as closer to $600, but with some luck it could be a little lower. I think that leaves me with a very thin profit margin, but I'm more interested in getting the best possible builds into the wild that I can right now.

The only work I'm envisaging you guys to have to do is some epoxying or drilling and screwing (might be better for dismantling for electronics), the usual trimming and sanding, and some fairly minor filling, particularly along seam lines. No more than one would usually expect from a kit.

-------------------------------------------------

Since I'm on here anyway, I'm going to put this update out there, particularly for @FoxtrotX146 and @Arcanine. I discovered to my horror yesterday that the carry rail somehow contrived itself to be assymmetrical. Considering the stock and placement was all identical I have no idea how that could happen, but in the interests of transparency I want to put it out there anyway. Fortunately it's only really noticable if you're looking close up and dead-on, and paint may mask it even more.



Here it is at its most visible. The left side here is 3mm further out than the right, which is 6.3mm as it should be. How this happened I have no idea, the scale itself must have warped somehow while gluing it down, because it only goes as far back as the top of the styrene:



...After which it goes back to normal all the way back to the ammo counter.



But yeah, anywhere off-axis and you're pretty much fine. The amount of detail overall is a little overwhelming anyway, so I'm sure people aren't focusing on a couple bevels at the front, assuming they're close enough to notice the difference.

This looks absolutely incredible! I could only dream of having something of this quality! I'm more of a DMR guy, but occasionally I use the BR and this is just stunning. I plan to eventually try to make a DMR, but there are so few files out there I'm not sure how I would start. I may try a sort of sliced/foam combo thing using a side picture as a reference from scratch. If I do, and it turns out half as good as this BR, I'll be more than happy. Once again GREAT WORK! Definitely subscribing to see this finished.

Figured while it was on the nice clean background of the pool table, I'd take a quick current pic- I've added some Bondo on the front section where it bevels into the barrel jacket. It's hard to get this section meeting cleanly, since it always is off by the thickness of the aluminum foil. I may retry with cling film; assuming it doesn't tear, it may mould to the forms more cleanly and be thinner than the foil.

murishani047 said:

This looks absolutely incredible! I could only dream of having something of this quality! I'm more of a DMR guy, but occasionally I use the BR and this is just stunning. I plan to eventually try to make a DMR, but there are so few files out there I'm not sure how I would start. I may try a sort of sliced/foam combo thing using a side picture as a reference from scratch. If I do, and it turns out half as good as this BR, I'll be more than happy. Once again GREAT WORK! Definitely subscribing to see this finished.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I'm generally impressed with it myself, I don't know if I was expecting it to come out this well, but I'm not complaining, for sure. It definitely gives me some confidence to tackle more complex projects in future!

The DMR OBJ is here: http://www.405th.com/obj-files/download-661-halo-4-game-assets-unsc-weapons-part-one.html - if you have Blender you can spin it around and zoom in on texture and mesh details. That's how I'm getting the detail in the BR85.

Wow! thats looking superb!!

I think all the unhappiness is paying off, so to speak. I'm that same way with all my projects, you're never quite happy with it, and you know that you can do better, and why wait for a next time, do it now.

I guess the only problem with that is time consumption. But you are clearly moving through this project fast! Keep up the good work!

And if you want, I could grab all the textures and set up a realtime shader and make a bunch of renders so you can actually view it as if it was in-game (with the normal map and all (it's what all the detail is baked into)).

Master Builder Thanks! I'm inclined to agree. Perpetual dissatisfaction with my own work and competition with others' work definitely tend to be the main driving forces for me. It might seem like a negative way to work, and it probably is, but I think the results are better for it.

It doesn't feel like it's going that fast from this end! I do seem to be generally on time with the schedule I foresaw though, which is good. I could probably have worked a little faster, but you can only obsess for so long...

I wouldn't mind having the normal map if you can acquire it, I've definitely missed not having it a couple of times. I'm reasonably sure that all the normal details are all on the diff texture that comes with the model, and which direction they go in seems fairly self-explanatory, but it'd be nice to have confirmation, I suppose. I have a beefy enough PC that I could just set up the shader in Blender and switch it to texture view in real time though. I guess it's a little late at this point, but still.

RobTC said:

Figured while it was on the nice clean background of the pool table, I'd take a quick current pic- I've added some Bondo on the front section where it bevels into the barrel jacket. It's hard to get this section meeting cleanly, since it always is off by the thickness of the aluminum foil. I may retry with cling film; assuming it doesn't tear, it may mould to the forms more cleanly and be thinner than the foil.

Click to expand...

RobTC said:

It doesn't feel like it's going that fast from this end! I do seem to be generally on time with the schedule I foresaw though, which is good. I could probably have worked a little faster, but you can only obsess for so long...

Click to expand...

First, beautiful build. You are getting great details and fit. Use PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) mold release for Bondo and fiberglass molding. Amazon sells it, but most marine supply places that have a good fiberglass selection have it as well. I thin it slightly and spray through an airbrush or automotive touch up gun. Dries onion-paper thin and does not fail.

Your progress is fine. My last one went 4 years!

Redshirt

Quick minor update:

Carry rail is "done", had its first coat of primer. Once it's more smoothed out it should be ready to prime and enamel, since I did theoretically all the filling work beforehand. The Barrel jacket got a dusting of primer over the parts I smoothed out and trimmed down, and now has its first coat of enamel.

The grip has its Valspar Stone side scales on, they look and feel pretty good, just needs the holes drilling and it too can have its final primer and enamel. Maybe I'll figure out the trigger situation on that prior to priming though. I think I'm going to stick with my original custom trigger assembly plan, because it's easy to implement and cheap to source. The grip area is smoothed out more and will get a film-not-foil Bondo squish with the grip to merge it properly into that thumb cutout area, then a dusting of primer and enamel.

I'm starting on measurements for the magazine well now and I'll be building the stock around that (because it makes sense to do it that way). With any luck I can have it close to completion by the end of the week. That's my goal, anyway.

Pics to follow in the next couple days, then I'll get on with that HQ update I promised.

Redshirt said:

First, beautiful build. You are getting great details and fit. Use PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) mold release for Bondo and fiberglass molding. Amazon sells it, but most marine supply places that have a good fiberglass selection have it as well. I thin it slightly and spray through an airbrush or automotive touch up gun. Dries onion-paper thin and does not fail.

Your progress is fine. My last one went 4 years!

Redshirt

Click to expand...

Thanks! I tried it and found that cling film works ok with a little cleanup of the inside, but on the next project I use Bondo on, I'll definitely be sourcing some polyvinyl alcohol. Does it peel off or something? How does it allow the two pieces to separate afterward and how's cleanup? Does it sand or peel off?

Four years?! Wow, your dedication is impressive. Yeah, I think three months is enough for me! Hahah. I have people waiting on completion, too.

RobTC said:

Quick minor update:

Carry rail is "done", had its first coat of primer. Once it's more smoothed out it should be ready to prime and enamel, since I did theoretically all the filling work beforehand. The Barrel jacket got a dusting of primer over the parts I smoothed out and trimmed down, and now has its first coat of enamel.

The grip has its Valspar Stone side scales on, they look and feel pretty good, just needs the holes drilling and it too can have its final primer and enamel. Maybe I'll figure out the trigger situation on that prior to priming though. I think I'm going to stick with my original custom trigger assembly plan, because it's easy to implement and cheap to source. The grip area is smoothed out more and will get a film-not-foil Bondo squish with the grip to merge it properly into that thumb cutout area, then a dusting of primer and enamel.

I'm starting on measurements for the magazine well now and I'll be building the stock around that (because it makes sense to do it that way). With any luck I can have it close to completion by the end of the week. That's my goal, anyway.

Pics to follow in the next couple days, then I'll get on with that HQ update I promised.



Thanks! I tried it and found that cling film works ok with a little cleanup of the inside, but on the next project I use Bondo on, I'll definitely be sourcing some polyvinyl alcohol. Does it peel off or something? How does it allow the two pieces to separate afterward and how's cleanup? Does it sand or peel off?

Four years?! Wow, your dedication is impressive. Yeah, I think three months is enough for me! Hahah. I have people waiting on completion, too.

Click to expand...

The PVA simply washes off with soap and water, yet is impervious to resin and Bondo. My Spartan laser was always intended as a one-off. It wouldn't have taken nearly as long if I wasn't requiring all of the animation and functionality. I had a fully detailed solid blank in 2012, sadly destroyed in mold making.

Redshirt

dude this is some really clean work! nice job!

Ok here you go: Link

I thought you would like to be able to view it yourself in real time, as opposed to me making a bunch of renders. It also saves me time.

Just a side note: I had to shrink the maps down by a power of 2 in order to upload them (free version), but they still look good and hold all the detail. Also I can only upload one set of maps, otherwise I would have included the screen and scope.

Enjoy! Let me know if you need anything else!

Thanks, @harvola!

Redshirt said:

The PVA simply washes off with soap and water, yet is impervious to resin and Bondo. My Spartan laser was always intended as a one-off. It wouldn't have taken nearly as long if I wasn't requiring all of the animation and functionality. I had a fully detailed solid blank in 2012, sadly destroyed in mold making.

Redshirt

Click to expand...

Oh, nice. That's awesome. Sort of like a "regulated oily dirt" kinda thing. I'll definitely be looking into that on future projects then. Aye, it's the fitting-bits-together that takes the time. I'm building the kit in modular pieces so that it can be electronics'd if people want, but it can also just be epoxied together and painted as-is. All the electronics, optoelectronics and animatronics will be a separate "aftermarket" project so I can ship in a timely fashion.

I saw your blank, it was very cool. Even though they aren't really all that similar, your build reminds me a lot of mine, only with more airsoft (hmm....).

Master Builder said:

Ok here you go: Link

I thought you would like to be able to view it yourself in real time, as opposed to me making a bunch of renders. It also saves me time.

Just a side note: I had to shrink the maps down by a power of 2 in order to upload them (free version), but they still look good and hold all the detail. Also I can only upload one set of maps, otherwise I would have included the screen and scope.

Enjoy! Let me know if you need anything else!

Click to expand...

Yeah, I see the loss of detail. There's still plenty in there though, that's super cool. Already spotted something I'd entirely missed. And that damn D indent on the back of the barrel jacket vents that I constantly remind myself to do and always forget. I'll be browsing that model some more for sure. Thanks, man!