Reach Mark V[B] - First Spartan

[Hype]

On the heels of wrapping up my ODST build (seen here) I have begun the process of planning the grueling task of my first spartan. Like many of us, the Reach Mark V(b) is may favorite Halo Spartan style, and so I have chosen it to be my first spartan. To make this task even more challenging, I am planning on shooting for maximum detail and accuracy, because if its worth doing, its worth overdoing.

Step One: Deciding the Armor (and weapons)​

To refresh my memory I used this tool to learn what my Reach spartan had on him the last time I played.

With this in mind I found a designer who made nearly everything I needed, albeit it is the Halo Infinite Mark V(b). Close enough counts for horseshoe and hand grenades, and Halo has plenty of hand grenades so we can let it slide.

TitleWave Designs​

He has a functioning hard case for the thigh, a TAC pad for the left arm, the TAAP armor attachment that I decided to go with instead of chest pouches, his legs came with the FJ Para knees, everything is set up to use lights, but the only thing missing was the shoulders. He had many shoulder but not the Gungnir shoulders. HAD, because I messaged him asking if he could just add the mounting system he uses for the Mark V(b) armor to the Halo Reach Marine Guard shoulder that he already had designed and posted, as they are essentially the same thing. Instead this madman designed the perfect recreation and posted it in 24 hours. Despite not planning on starting the 3D printing anytime soon, I felt obligated to immediately buy all the files I needed from him for his excellent service.

If anyone is looking to do any 3D printing, I implore you to consider him, but enough shilling. He didn't have the Pilot helmet, so where did I go for that?

Nerd Forge Designs​

Now some people maybe asking, "Nerd Forge Designs has tons of parts, and already had the shoulder made, why didn't you go with his files?" and to that I would say "Thank you for asking that very specific question that helps me build a narrative to tell a story" and he didn't have the FJ Para knees, or the hard case, or the TAC pad. But that seems like a small detail, with a bit of time, that could be easily adapted, and the truth is, I really didn't want to. I thought about reaching out to him about the knees, but as many people who have bought his security shoulders with kukri know, he seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. When people bought the file, it did not come with the actual security shoulder. Enough complaints and refund requests seem to have come in and CGTrader has taken down that listing, assumedly. And truth be told, once I had a stellar experience with TitleWave, he had nabbed me as a customer for life, but I still needed a helmet, so I picked up Nerd Forge's helmet and went on my merry way.

Galactic Armory​

A man who needs no introduction around here. I have his ODST files, and trust what I've seen and printed and will be getting his Reach DMR. Since his Magnum is technically not from reach I haven't decided on what pistol I want to use, if any. If you have a recommendation I'm all ears.

Step Two: Learning How to Size Armor in Armorsmith​

This is where we are now. I was lucky enough that all of the important pieces in my ODST build were nearly perfectly sized, but with a spartan needing more fine tuning to get the tolerances right, I thought it would be prudent as well as economical to spend the $40 on software to save time and filament. I am now researching many other threads and tutorials on doing it properly. As a lanky 6'2" 215lb man, I doubt I would be lucky enough to have all armor made just for little ol' me. Here is what I have now.

I am fairly certain I need to increase the size of a few things, the biggest thing is the shoulders. It technically being a Halo Infinite armor set, the shoulder are a lot smaller than Reach, they will need to be sized up to get the right look.

Step Three: 3D Printer Goes Brrrrrrr​

I have a Bambu Labs P1S, and with the amount of experience I have with setting up slicing, it's just a matter of waiting for the parts to come out.

Step Four: The Undersuit​

This is were it starts to get difficult. My first armor I made was a foam ODST set from the foam files here in the Armory. I can confidently say, I suck at it. There is a reason all of the armor I am making is designed by someone else and fabricated by a robot. I just don't have it in me. To compensate for this I plan to copy use as reference the work that KitKatGoose did on her Reach armor seen here.

Step Five: Mounting​

I put buckles and magnets and straps on it.

Step Six: Painting and Weathering​

My favorite part of any prop. Going to prime, silver layer, black layer then color (teal and white) layer, using toothpaste to layer the damage and create chips and scratches. I also have a cricut for making accurate decals.

Step Seven: Powering up​

Planning on adding the lights to the shield emitter spots an putting fans in the helmet as well as a speaker/mic if there is room.

Closing Statements​

If you have any experience with what I am planning, or know of any threads that cover what I am going to be doing, please share them. I am in the information-soaking-up phase. I look forward to this build and being able to stand side by side with my fellow Spartans in the future. Not to set lofty goals and rush this project but I would like to try and have this trooping ready for Megacon 2025 in Orlando, FL (Feb 6-9), but I understand that is a very fast timeline. Luckily I work in education so Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks I could work on it full time. Baring that I'd aim for Metrocon 2025 in Tampa (July).

 

[Hype]

Step Two: Converting Myself to Cyberspace​

As this was my first time using Armorsmith, I went in with a lot of questions. I have used a few 3D modeling programs before, Fusion and Blender are the main ones, so I knew my way around well enough. The hardest part was getting accurate measurements to put into Armorsmith. Luckily my wonder wife lent me a hand and helped me get the measurements I couldn't reach. After putting everything in I looked funky. For instance, my belly was a bit larger than thought it was, but that might have just been my ego talking. Second, my thighs were a bit short. After making a second round of measurements I got the avatar looking pretty good.

Unfortunately, I did not feel confident in my avatar because nearly all my parts where not needing any size adjustments, despite me being a solid four inches taller than what the original sizing was made for. Like I mentioned before, I am lanky, so the arms and shins I can believe, but the chest and thighs and hips was harder to trust. So I decided I would look into getting a 3D body scan that KaeSpoon wrote about in this tutorial. While at a convention a couple weeks ago there was one of those booths that will take your picture and make a little figurine of you in your cosplay. I asked them if they would just do one of me in my underwear for use in scaling armor, and after some strange looks and laughs, they said there wasn't anything wrong with it, and we walked their trailer outside that had the booth. While walking out I asked exactly how much it would be if I just wanted the file and did not need the figure printed, because I don't need a little mostly naked me. This is when they dropped the bomb on me. They wanted $100 just to send me the file. Their cheapest figurine was 3 inches tall and cost $110 before shipping. I don't know how they figured the cost of the file alone, but upon hearing that I back out and left. I kept searching and I found a local gym near me that had a machine and service by 3D Fit Scan. I was able to go in, take a scan in sixty seconds and had my scan sent to my email ready for download in ten minutes, all for the low price of $20. So with that done, behold, my very high poly count body.

Spoiler: My Mostly Nude body

If this is inappropriate I will remove it, but seeing as KaeSpoon did it too, I imagine its alright.

With that out of the way, here I am wearing armor.

Almost infuriatingly, most of my sizes were mostly fine. So if you were looking to use Armorsmith and can't get a 3D body scan, don't worry, its just fine to use the avatar that you made with your measurements. In the end I made the following changes. The original measurements that I had before I had the 3D scan are in parenthesis.

• Chest - +5% (+3%)
• Bicep - +2% (+1%)
• Forearm - +1% (0%)
• Belt - +4% (+3%)
• Thighs - +1% (0%)
• Shoulders - +10% (This is to make them Reach sized instead of Infinite sized, 0%)

With this I have begun printing test sizes, starting with the forearms because they are on the smaller end, and important to get right.

Reserved for Step Three​

 

[Hype]

Reserved for Step Four and Five​

 

[Hype]

Reserved for Step Six and Seven​

 

[Hype]

I am still not working on this build full-time while I finish some of the details on my ODST, but while waiting for some supplies to come in the mail, I messed around in Armorsmith and did a test print of the pilot helmet and visor buck.

I was concerned with the size, but as I messed around with it it seems like like I might have nailed it. When I loaded the file into Armorsmith it was tiny, the actual size of my head, so I had to increase the size by 20%. This seems to be just about 100% because the magnetic closure on the nape just barely fits the 12x3mm magnets I have. It will be fine as I have a smaller head.

In the spirit of spending too much money, I also bought a nice new soldering iron in anticipation of all the electronics I'll be putting in this suit. It's amazing how much easier it is to wire electronics when the solder melts how it's supposed to. And because I was eager to use my new toy, I ripped apart a set of electronic ear protection I had lying around and started to see how I could get it to fit in the possibly too small helmet.

I used hot glue to secure the parts just in case they needed to be moved, but I'm pretty happy with the arrangement. I will also be printing a magnetic cover for the battery and board but with the foam padding that will be added and wearing a balaclava, I shouldn't have to worry about my hair or head hitting it.

The buck came out wonderful and is sanding down easily. I may not need to do any filling for layer lines. I will do a pass of filler primer and then sand that to see the results though.

One thing that came up on my ODST build was I was asked how I get clean seams between split parts. While not anything particularly technical, it really is just a lot of sanding and multiple layers of smoothing compounds, whether that be spot filling putty or paint, but step one is to get the raw part as smooth as possible. The way I do this is I always print in with black filament. This is because when you sand away at it, it will turn grey, leaving the lower layers that still need to be sanded down as black. This is a good visual guide as to where you still need to work on. An air compressor also helps to blow out the dust from the layer lines.

I have an appointment this week to get my body 3D scanned for importing into Armorsmith, so this weekend I should have an extremely accurate model to use and start scaling pieces. Then we can complete step two!

 

[spartan114x]

I just sliced my helmet yesterday and was thinking about the seams. What do you print at? I’ve got it set at 0.15 layers with lowered perimeter speed. Trying to let the machine do more work, looking at five days for all the parts.

 

[Hype]

I printed the helmet at .12mm layer height with a .2mm nozzle and with Bambu Studios' default speeds. 120mm/s outer walls. Depending on your printer you may not be able to get away with these speeds. I have a little bit of issues with the edges, so slowing it down to 100mm/s might fix that but it's such a small problem that sanding an extra 60 seconds gets rid of the ridge. It could also be a flow rate issue. I think the helmet took 5 days, not including the buck. It might have been faster because Bambu Studios seems to overestimate a bit, maybe 4 days total.

I will be printing the armor at all sorts of different layer heights depending on the details, but the bulk of the pieces will be done with a .4mm nozzle. The small details, like the knobs on the chest piece, will use the .2mm nozzle.