Hello Spartans!
This will be my second post on the 405th forums after my welcome post a few weeks back. I'm still relatively new to the costuming world though I'm a member of the 501st Legion (Garrison Titan up in the Seattle area) after building a Shoretrooper Squad Leader and TFA Kylo Ren. I built the Shoretrooper from a kit so I do have some experience in building armor that I hope will translate well to this project. I've been a big fan of Halo since the original and I love the new look of the Spartans in Halo 5. I'll be adding to this build thread as I go. Hopefully this will provide some useful material for others or at the very least some entertainment value for the rest! I'm planning to be done with the suit by end of the year (ahead of my second child expected in January) to be [officially] debuted at Emerald City Comic Con in April.
Now on to the Halo 5 Noble build...
PLANNING: I'll be 3D printing all of the armor pieces with the exception of the helmet which I've commission from Brian Johnson. I'm printing on a Creality CR-10s and so far the results have been great! The color scheme will be a vibrant green (Montana Gold Acid Green) and flat black. I'm a big fan of weathering so the green will be dulled a bit with a black wash and silver streak weathering. I'm estimating around 800 hours of printing for all of the armor parts (roughly 35 parts total excluding the weapons).
SOURCING: The armor will be printed in PLA. So far I've used black 1.75mm Hatchbox PLA though I am going to test out some Amazon Basics PLA soon. I bought a pair of tactical boots from Amazon for about $70 that have a great futuristic look that I hope will show through the foot armor a bit. For the undersuit, I'm going with a motorcycle base layer from Dainese. The undersuit is around $100 but it should pay off. It'll be cool, form-fitting, and provide a good structure to attach armor parts to without sagging or losing it's shape. I'm going to layer thin EVA foam parts to the undersuit to give it the Halo look, primarily around the torso, naval, and hips. This will also give me a good surface for painting to give the undersuit more green surface area. I have industrial velcro that I will be gluing to the underside of the armor and suit so the parts are easily removable but secure to the undersuit. I may resort to some additional strapping if the weight of the pieces is too much for the undersuit to hold.
MODELING, SCALING, and PRINTING: I found the Halo 5 Noble .obj files on the forums posted by Art (aka 'THE FRIGGEN MAN'). The .obj opened in Blender with very soft details so I opened it through Microsoft 3D Builder and saved down a new .stl file of the full suit. I'm 5'8" so I scaled the full suit .stl to be about 60" (again, excluding the helmet) to give it some relative scale prior to parting out the .stl files by armor part. From there, I cut out each individual armor part and saved each as it's own .stl file. Fortunately, the CR-10s has a pretty large print bed (300x300x400mm) so I'm planning to print everything as one piece with the exception of the chest piece which I'm expecting will need at least six parts. Of the 35 parts (give or take depending on how I split the chest), I've printed five to date. A 'test' original Halo Magnum that I will be sizing up slightly and re-printing, bicep (with pauldron as one piece), two knees, and a foot (one of four parts of each foot). To get scaling right, I'm using a few anchor points. For the legs, I'll start with the knee, followed by the foot, and scale the shin accordingly based on the distance between. The thigh will follow from the top of the knee. The arms will start with the bicep and hand plate with the forearm scaled based on the distance between. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with the chest at this point but the general scaling I've done should be pretty close. The chest of the Noble suit does have an 'Iron Man' light that I'll be adding as well.
Onward! I'll post progress as things start to come together.
This will be my second post on the 405th forums after my welcome post a few weeks back. I'm still relatively new to the costuming world though I'm a member of the 501st Legion (Garrison Titan up in the Seattle area) after building a Shoretrooper Squad Leader and TFA Kylo Ren. I built the Shoretrooper from a kit so I do have some experience in building armor that I hope will translate well to this project. I've been a big fan of Halo since the original and I love the new look of the Spartans in Halo 5. I'll be adding to this build thread as I go. Hopefully this will provide some useful material for others or at the very least some entertainment value for the rest! I'm planning to be done with the suit by end of the year (ahead of my second child expected in January) to be [officially] debuted at Emerald City Comic Con in April.
Now on to the Halo 5 Noble build...
PLANNING: I'll be 3D printing all of the armor pieces with the exception of the helmet which I've commission from Brian Johnson. I'm printing on a Creality CR-10s and so far the results have been great! The color scheme will be a vibrant green (Montana Gold Acid Green) and flat black. I'm a big fan of weathering so the green will be dulled a bit with a black wash and silver streak weathering. I'm estimating around 800 hours of printing for all of the armor parts (roughly 35 parts total excluding the weapons).
SOURCING: The armor will be printed in PLA. So far I've used black 1.75mm Hatchbox PLA though I am going to test out some Amazon Basics PLA soon. I bought a pair of tactical boots from Amazon for about $70 that have a great futuristic look that I hope will show through the foot armor a bit. For the undersuit, I'm going with a motorcycle base layer from Dainese. The undersuit is around $100 but it should pay off. It'll be cool, form-fitting, and provide a good structure to attach armor parts to without sagging or losing it's shape. I'm going to layer thin EVA foam parts to the undersuit to give it the Halo look, primarily around the torso, naval, and hips. This will also give me a good surface for painting to give the undersuit more green surface area. I have industrial velcro that I will be gluing to the underside of the armor and suit so the parts are easily removable but secure to the undersuit. I may resort to some additional strapping if the weight of the pieces is too much for the undersuit to hold.
MODELING, SCALING, and PRINTING: I found the Halo 5 Noble .obj files on the forums posted by Art (aka 'THE FRIGGEN MAN'). The .obj opened in Blender with very soft details so I opened it through Microsoft 3D Builder and saved down a new .stl file of the full suit. I'm 5'8" so I scaled the full suit .stl to be about 60" (again, excluding the helmet) to give it some relative scale prior to parting out the .stl files by armor part. From there, I cut out each individual armor part and saved each as it's own .stl file. Fortunately, the CR-10s has a pretty large print bed (300x300x400mm) so I'm planning to print everything as one piece with the exception of the chest piece which I'm expecting will need at least six parts. Of the 35 parts (give or take depending on how I split the chest), I've printed five to date. A 'test' original Halo Magnum that I will be sizing up slightly and re-printing, bicep (with pauldron as one piece), two knees, and a foot (one of four parts of each foot). To get scaling right, I'm using a few anchor points. For the legs, I'll start with the knee, followed by the foot, and scale the shin accordingly based on the distance between. The thigh will follow from the top of the knee. The arms will start with the bicep and hand plate with the forearm scaled based on the distance between. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with the chest at this point but the general scaling I've done should be pretty close. The chest of the Noble suit does have an 'Iron Man' light that I'll be adding as well.
Onward! I'll post progress as things start to come together.