The point a lot of us have been before

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Pitj3

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Hey y'all!

I think I'm at the point where a lot of you guys/gals have been at before, you got the material, you got the tools, you got the drive. But there is that one thing holding you back.
In my case this is never *ever* getting the scaling right and after a ton of tries losing motivation only to come back again a year or two later, hoping that this time you'll get it right and you'll finally be able to build the costume you want to build.

For me this has always been a Mark VI Recon Armor, starting with the helmet.

I've followed all the scaling guides here, but it's always either way too big, or too small. So I'm at the point now where either I'm just extremely stupid when it comes to following guides, or my head is just a size that is alien-like.

I recently got an A3 printer, which made me very excited to get going on this again, making it easier to print large parts. But before I start again this time, I want to be absolutely sure I got the right scaling, I don't want to lose my motivation again and not build that dream costume.

I would appreciate any help you awesome folks can give me with this, I'm going with the pepakura method (as you probably have guessed by my mentioning of the A3 printer). It's just my preferred way of working, foam and I don't get along well.

Cheers for reading so far and I hope you can help me out!

Pitje
 
Armorsmith is a great program you can purchase to scale models to a digital mannequin of yourself. I dont really know what to tell you in wise of formulas of scaling. I have seen them and they worked (except for one), and I know if feels miserable to have to restart. I cant imagine how unbearable it is to have to restart more than once, but there are a few people here that do, so maybe they will help you out more. I have seen people when they go to 3d lrint a helmet, they print a rough skeleton if the helmet in all the different axis so they can get a feel for the size of the helmet without investing alot of time or resources. Maybe this can help for pepakura too!
 
Armorsmith. that is all.
My ODST was my first ever suit, and I think it turned out as well as it did(at least in my mind) because I had armorsmith at my disposal to get the coverage almost exactly the way I wanted. only $30 will save you countless hours and $$ in failed attempts.
 
I don't have a spare 30$ laying around to spend on a single piece of software at the moment. Even though it looks amazing and probably deserves it. I have to make do with very little. I already amassed most of the required stuff to build the armor over the years. Just not the piece of software ;)
 
I don't have a spare 30$ laying around to spend on a single piece of software at the moment. Even though it looks amazing and probably deserves it. I have to make do with very little. I already amassed most of the required stuff to build the armor over the years. Just not the piece of software ;)
Can relate, my start up cost to get into cosplay easily tipped me near $400 but I just missed out on taco bell for a few weeks before buying the software. In any event good luck building! hope to see some builds in the future :)
 
If you want some specific advise on getting the scaling right using the free pepakura designer you can PM me. I don't mind helping. It just takes a patient and clear mind. A little bit of experience doesn't hurt. ;) It sounds like you're ready you just need a build buddy to help you along.

To be clear though I have no experience with 3d printing. But, we can figure out what size it should be and then get someone else to help translate that to printing.
 
If you want some specific advise on getting the scaling right using the free pepakura designer you can PM me. I don't mind helping. It just takes a patient and clear mind. A little bit of experience doesn't hurt. ;) It sounds like you're ready you just need a build buddy to help you along.

To be clear though I have no experience with 3d printing. But, we can figure out what size it should be and then get someone else to help translate that to printing.
Thanks for the offer! I’ll send you a pm in the morning. I won’t be using my 3D printer for the armor. (Maybe for a few details). I was talking about an A3 paper printer :). So pepakura to paper to glueing!

Cheers and I’ll message you soon!

Pitje
 
Hello, when I was doing the initial scaling for my suit, I would take the measurements of a piece (for example a mk 6 helmet is about 20cm high and 20cm wide) and I would measure that out with a tape measure and compare it to my actual head with a mirror. Knowing your body dimensions helps for this as well. But doing this gave me an actual visual reference for my personal scaling. You can look at the measuring tape beside your head and visualise the helmet based off of this, and it works for any other part just as well. I found it much more helpful than just scaling calculations (I used them as a base value, btw) and I am notoriously bad at using said calculations.

Sorry if this is hard to understand, this is my literal first ever post on this website. :D
 
I think the software is a great value, because you will loose more wasting materials and time. BUT... if you still don't want to buy the software there are some methods you can use, like taking a picture (with a ruler) of yourself and using photoshop to visually scale the armor and give those numbers to the pepakura software.
 
I haven't tried this, but you should be able to do what armorsmith does using either a model of yourself or a close one from makehuman and blender. You first import the model of yourself into blender and scale it correctly(to measure distances in blender, you can use the "Ruler/Protractor" tool from the grease pencil menu and snap it to vertecies by holding CTRL white selecting the points). Then, you load the armor in and scale that to your model. Once it's scaled, you apply the scale to the model and export it. Now you can unfold it in pepakura and build it. If you want to use an already unfolded model, you just measure a few edges in blender, measure them in pepakura and scale accordingly.
One quick note: blender uses millimeters as units and pepakura as well, but since blender usually isn't used with hugely scaled up models(the default cube is 1x1x1), you could scale everything down by 100 in blender and just scale it up again.
 
Hey y'all!

I think I'm at the point where a lot of you guys/gals have been at before, you got the material, you got the tools, you got the drive. But there is that one thing holding you back.
In my case this is never *ever* getting the scaling right and after a ton of tries losing motivation only to come back again a year or two later, hoping that this time you'll get it right and you'll finally be able to build the costume you want to build.

For me this has always been a Mark VI Recon Armor, starting with the helmet.

I've followed all the scaling guides here, but it's always either way too big, or too small. So I'm at the point now where either I'm just extremely stupid when it comes to following guides, or my head is just a size that is alien-like.

I recently got an A3 printer, which made me very excited to get going on this again, making it easier to print large parts. But before I start again this time, I want to be absolutely sure I got the right scaling, I don't want to lose my motivation again and not build that dream costume.

I would appreciate any help you awesome folks can give me with this, I'm going with the pepakura method (as you probably have guessed by my mentioning of the A3 printer). It's just my preferred way of working, foam and I don't get along well.

Cheers for reading so far and I hope you can help me out!

Pitje

Lol how can I relate so much
 
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