TurboCharizard Makes a Rakshasa

[TurboCharizard]

OP: Announcement and Index​

Ahoy 405th, I’ve gone and done it again with the habit of go quiet on the forward facing forums while working on a new modular assembly armour core to have something new to wear for Otafest. I’d like to say that this time was different and that I practiced self-care and took my time on the build but, hah, not quite.

Much like the previous MkVII build the core design features of the suit were focused on easy preparation of parts and the ability to quickly change features and rigging of the suit if it is to be worn by another costumer or if certain restrictions of attachments are imposed by an event. With a new armour core to work on, a consideration I had was the interconnectivity between the various cores specific parts and I am pleased to say that yes, Cross-Core builds are in.

This time what I worked in secret on was the Rakshasa Core from Halo Infinite. Just building a game character is kind of something that I’ve lost interest in since it limits creativity and selection of fun paints, fabrics and features. As before, this is a crossover build with a Vocaloid design near and dear to my heart. I’m partially blaming Benton188 for planting the seed of NASCAR billboard props in Infinite which became Goodsmile Racing 2010 Super GT Livery Miku in my brain.

The Rakshasa core already has the cooled suit with safety harnesses that reads as a pilot or pit crew member when in the bright colours of certain armour coatings (Hammerhead Squadron and Tawney Prairie as examples) and then paired with a liberal placement of markings, advertisements and colour splashes, bam, Racing Miku.

The concept of the build was always in the back of my mind brewing since the first Vocaloid build but the steps to execution were never quite solidified in my mind until a series of random chance led to two things to act as inspiration. The random chance was a multiple hour delay on the Shinkansen changing some vacation plans that ultimately landed us with some freed up time to just explore Akihabara. Right at the station we jumped out of, there was a Good Smile pop up shop (uh oh for our spending money) which also had a Good Smile Racing section with one ballcap left. Something that I always thought would fit the inherent vibe that Dinh and co gave off during the Infinite Lone Wolves cinematics of an at ease SPARTAN hanging out around a convention booth.

I’d like to thank the absolute lads Angus314 , Jerverant, MDBDesigns , ODCA , PerniciousDuke , Rock Lobbster , and SubXzeroXhero for their experience with the core and being able to bounce ideas off of them for three weeks straight in a caffeine fueled Fusion360 frenzy. Cheers to you for not getting immediately fed up with my constant “what if” approach.

Since this is a non-traditional build thread in the fact that there is approximately three months worth of work already completed and the whole suit is “finished”, the first page of posts is reserved as documentation for the build. Posts will be reserved and linked to the Original Post for easier future access since this will be one part “how to build a Rakshasa”, one part “here is a dozen different tutorials” and one part “link dump with shenanigans”.

Post 1: Costs Breakdown
Post 2: Design Methodology
Post 3: Design Process
Post 4: Suit Features
Post 5: Suit Concept
Post 6: Parts Sample, Revisions, Future Updates
Post 7: Assembly
Post 8: Surface Preparation
Post 9: Resin Casting
Post 10: Paints and Decals
Post 11: Vacuum Forming
Post 12: Fabric Selection and References
Post 13: Flexibles and Soft Parts - Pattern Creation
Post 14: Flexibles and Soft Parts - Assembly
Post 15: Electronics
Post 16: Otafest Glamour Shots
Post 17: Future Additions and Longevity
Post 18: Signing Off

Posts will be reserved en masse initially, one post per day will be uploaded. Until then, Happy month of Halloween.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 1: Costs Breakdown​

As is tradition this first post is a method of self reporting so that everything can be looked back on fondly (or I can call myself out on overspending) on materials used to make a specific part further down the line when the suit needs fixes or it is passed onto someone who never had first hand knowledge on how to repair it. This approximate shopping list and time clock can be used to help gauge if you have the time and funds to take on a project of this scale. If it is your first suit then expect a bit more up front cost with having to source materials and tools that are just on hand and available in a workshop that has been building costumes for a decade.

By no means is this comprehensive as a required shopping list. I implore you to get creative, use the blank canvas of a SPARTAN to tell a story and go nuts. Rakshasa suits are perfect for experimenting on weathering, rigging and a whole bunch of other lesser used techniques in the 405th wheelhouse.

Take everything on this list as a rough guideline knowing that it’ll be different based on personal scaling and material availability in your area. Victoria is a fairly artistically inclined town with various suppliers for these items but plenty of online ordering was required so shop smart and get those online savings where you can. Also take advantage of currency exchange rates and sales events when possible.

Any cost not directly indicated was an item that was already an off the shelf item in storage in the workshop or is fairly common and easy to acquire from a hardware store or through McMaster-Carr.

Suit Associated Costs

Base Materials
eSun PLA+ Grey - 176
Spool3D Flex PLA - 34
Fiberglass Mat - 40
Polyester Fiberglass Resin -35
XTC3D Epoxy Resin - 42
M3 x 30mm Fasteners - 12
M5 x 12mm Fasteners
M5 x 30mm Fasteners - 15
M5 x 45mm Fasteners
M4 Fastener
M5 Washer
M5 Nuts
M3 Nuts
Helmet Liner Padding - 15
PETG Sheeting -10
Smooth-On MoldMax 30
Smooth-On SmoothCast310

Fabric
Ottertex Waterproof Canvas Orange (3m) - 39
Ottertex Waterproof Canvas White (5m) - 63
Cotton Duck Canvas Black (5m) - 63
Lining -
Pellon Flex Foam Fusible Stabilizer (2 Packs) - 37
Gloves - Far too much after buying three pairs
Balaclava -
Thread T70 1800yd spool (Black, Orange and White) - 42
1” Webbing White
1.5” Webbing White
1” Webbing Red (10m) - 17
2” Webbing Red (10m) - 19
2” Webbing Black
1” Webbing Teal (10m) - 18
⅜” Nylon Rope - 14

Rigging
Radio Chest Harness - 20
Tactical Belt - 21
Non-Roll Elastic -
Parachute Clips -
Elastic Lace (Pink) - 4
Crash Pads - 35
Heelys - 90

Paints and Coatings
Rustoleum 2 in 1 Filler Sandable Primer - 80
Rustoleum Matte White Primer -30
Rustoleum Matte Black Primer - 30
Rustoleum Gloss Black - 15
Rustoleum Silver -15
Golden High Flow Acrylic Pearl White -12
Vallejo Metal Color 77.720 Gunmetal - 12
Alclad Aqua Gloss Clear -8
Rustoleum Matte Clear -15
Leak Seal -18
MTN 94 RV-2004 Kalani Orange - 13
MTN 94 RV-241 Madrid Red - 13
iDye Poly Purple (2 Packs) - 8

Electronics
5V 4020 Blower Fan - 10
USB Powerbank
Raspberry Pi Zero W - 22
Display HAT Mini
Bluetooth/UHF wireless voice amp - 65

Consumables
60 Grit Sanding Disc
80 Grit Flapper Wheel
120 Grit Sanding Pad
220 Grit Sanding Disc
220 Grit Sanding Pad
300 Grit Sanding Disc
300 Grit Sanding Pad
400 Grit Wet/Dry Sandpaper
Latex Masking Fluid
Masking Tape (Various)
Double Sided Tape

Design Time
6 Weeks - 188 Hours

Print Time
Total Material Weight 7.5kg
Total Machine Time 18.83 Days

Sanding - 94 hours
Paint/Coatings - 18 hours
Soft Parts - 74 hours

Total Time Dedicated to Suit - 374 Hours

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 2: Design Methodology​

For this suit and any that are based off of it in the future there was a set outline of things that it had to be. This helped focus my attention to making my time designing and building easier and limiting the stress in potentially difficult building conditions while being under a time limit. The five main points that I adhered to were as follows.

The suit must be infinitely customizable for any armour permutation.​

This challenge was addressed in the MkVII Armour Core build and resulted in the “Hard Point System”. Attachments in Halo Infinite, much like Halo Reach follow a consistent placement pattern around the SPARTAN armour core. However, unlike Halo Reach, Halo Infinite and the designers of the Rakshasa core were very thoughtful of how each type of attachment would connect to the body of the wearer. Each mounting point either has some greeblie, panel or object that is a different colour zone on the canon armour coating system which allows for some trickery in removable plates that can be fastened and removed as needed. This must be compatible with other cores within reason and creation of mounting brackets and adapters must be considered for cross-core features.

The suit and its individual components must be easily replicable.​

For the Hard Point System to work certain tolerances must be maintained during construction and when worn to limit deformation and allow for continued use of the system through the life of the suit. Also, sewing is hard. I do it, I hardly know what anything is called so it’s mostly a situation of “engineer puts fabric together based on looking at how pants are made”. I’ve set up a scalable pattern and a more traditional pattern for all sewn items that are adjustable within Pepakura which gives a sense of comfort and familiarity to all of us that started with papercraft and foam building in the before times.

The barrier for entry must be low.​

Due to point two limiting the primary material to a 3D printed medium and a considerable sewing project there exists up front costs to build this style of suit. Unfortunately printers and filament are expensive so the goal was to limit individual part size wherever possible to fit within the build volume of a standard Prusa i3/Ender 3 which are the most common build volume. As an additional design constraint, planning for minimal support material usage to get the most value out of the spool of plastic was considered. Material substitutions are designed into the file pack and options for using pre-purchased parts are given to save on expensive (and addicting) trips to the fabric store.

Every chance for a simplification of a future construction step, the design must attempt to simplify.​

Post processing is the point where you make or break the appearance of a suit. Layer lines in the crevices give away your material used. Difficult to mask parts often leads to pieces that are hand painted or paint bleed from tape peel up. Separation of greeblies and pieces that are in a different colour zone that do not add to the overall strength and stability of a part were removed for easier finishing work to save time either through easier access or the ability to duplicate through casting of parts.

The build must be complex to allow for all desired features but be simple enough to easily construct through short instructions.​

Planning for every possible attachment variant as well as having separable greeblies makes for a suit that instead of consisting of just main body components but alternatively has over one hundred pieces of varying sizes. Without being the designer of the suit files this becomes a daunting task of a jigsaw puzzle. Keyed geometry and simple instructions that combine with well organised and segmented documentation sections keep the build manageable and easy to follow. Check off lists and worksheets that promote note taking help immensely on a full suit build. Documentation saves lives.

With five main constraints on the overall design for how to make a suit it seems a bit daunting but when boiled down to the base description of “Rakshasa looks cool at first but oh no there’s so many details” we have a rally cry and a goal we can all believe in. The time constraint was a primary concern for the prototype suit as will be discussed later. This project started in mid-February and needed to be ready for the Mother’s Day weekend at Otafest so wherever a few hours of physical hands-on time could be saved, it was needed. I was stuck at home for a week with COVID and managed to crank a few of the digital designs out quickly at the start which helped but this is by no means a thread advocating for time crunched building. To make this suit it required dedicating an amount of time daily that would constitute working a full time job with overtime on top of my normal job. Do not attempt this if you value not upsetting your normal daily schedule or if you value having a social life.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 3: Design Process​

I’d like to preface this by offering my thanks to the efforts of Jeffw773 and Surasia as well as countless others within the Halo Archive community. Their efforts in the creation and collection of excellent tools that let you examine the in-game characters and play dress up dollies with the spacemens has been astoundingly useful. Having these tools that allow for an easy reference that isn’t just recording fly arounds in multiplayer makes for the individual parts designing that much easier. It also limits the stretching and deformation as well as clipping of the body that happens in game.

This post is one part an analysis of my thought process for approaching any CAD project as well as a short sample on how to step through using Fusion360 for a printable design.

To address probably one of the biggest questions on why Fusion360, the collection of features makes sense for my workflow as a small business. It does many things for the Autodesk price of one thing. It does not do everything (arguably even one thing) perfectly but the ability to do multiple design workflows, produce drawings, BOMs, CAM instructions, produce renders, make animations, make flat pattens for objects, order hardware, etc., etc. all within one software package makes it something that is invaluable. Yes, I do have a paid subscription for some of the improved features but the free version for makers and education is more than capable to do more than 95% of tasks that I do, just with a few less creature comforts. I’ve had no formal training in Fusion specifically but through learning AutoCAD in highschool, SolidWorks in university and a handful of other tools in my professional and hobby career, this generic workflow process will help you think through nearly any physical object that you would like to create. Since we are talking about creating armour for real world production, this process is more focussed on the design steps to making a manufacturable item as opposed to creating a mesh to be textured, rigged and optimised for use in games and animation. That is an entirely different level of black magic that I often do not dare to touch.

Short, snappy and segmented approaches that are easily turned into a PowerPoint presentation are always the goal since broad topics that narrow down is the best way to learn and retain information so this post within a build thread of ordered segments will cover

-Identify Symmetry​

-Identify Base Shapes​

-Consider Part Connection​

-Consider Part Creation​

-Consider Physical Forces​

Identify Symmetry
A quick and simple way to save time and computer processing power is to focus in on how to reduce workload that you will physically have to do and what the computer will have to calculate. For the purpose of this post I’ll be using the Rakshasa Chest as an example workflow.

The Chestplate has a left-right symmetry in design but not in detail. Perfect, we make half and most CAD software packages have a “Mirror” tool.

The Backplate is nearly four way symmetrical with a full left-right symmetry. Using the mirror tool twice here is an option, as is rotational patterning if the software allows for it. Create a base shape, rotate for four copies and edit for specifics after, amazing!

Identify Base Shapes
Any object can be broken down visually into a few base features which have complexity and detail added on later. Many CAD software packages have the ability to create base shapes such as spheres, cylinders, cubes and prisms as base features that are simple to modify. In Fusion360 there is multiple approaches to how you can interact with these features depending on your preference of Workspace.

The Form environment allows for node editing of a TSpline body.
The Solid environment allows for parametric editing of a BRep.
The Surface environment allows for patching, stitching and boundary editing of a zero thickness surface body.

As I’ve said, Fusion360 is a “Swiss Army Knife” approach that takes multiple facets of design and jams them into one. Form is closest to Blender. Solid is closest to SolidWorks. Surface is closest to SketchUp. All of them can produce the same output but dang if the inputs aren’t WILDLY different to get there.

Each of the environments ultimately can be used exclusively but mastering the ability to identify which to start in to simplify load on your computer and the overall number of steps is an art form. Sometimes you can get away with purely one environment. I’d always recommend blending as many approaches as possible but for very complex forms I’ll often find myself working in the Form environment, converting to something workable within the Solid environment and cleaning up anything that’s odd or needs refinement within Surface.

The Base Shapes for the Chestplate are best described as a rectangular prism with draft angles applied on outer faces and a hollow inner and lower face. The Abdominal Plate is an arc of a truncated cone with offset faces. The Backplate is an octagonal prism with four D Rings that connect. Nearly all parts can be prepared within the Solid Environment but for finer control you may want to dip in and out of the Form Environment for the Abdominal Plate or Strapping.

Due to the fact that this is a LONG wall of text, have a funny video showing how to edit in the Form environment of Fusion. Some people are scared of Purple Fusion but it is extremely powerful and I highly recommend you play around and learn some of the features.

Consider Part Connection
This comes from a person that spends a concerning amount of time working on machines designed by British engineers that have clearly spent a lot of time making bets at the pub about the minimum amount of access required to repair a part. I like being able to easily step by step put one thing on top of the other and not have to contort my body to do so. The goal for creating armour should be the ability to add even the most detailed parts onto a base feature in a simple manner and have a way to access that later if required for repairs. If need be, individual parts should be able to be removed, replaced and refreshed if they take damage. Greeblies should have keyed geometry to help with mounting and any interconnecting parts should have proper tolerances for the mediums that we’re working with.

All parts have inset and recessed surfaces protecting the majority of the greeblie components. NICE

Consider Part Creation
Any objection designed will have to be translated into a physical item that is manufactured by one method or another. We're primarily focusing on 3D printing of objects due to the commonality of printing armour parts but digital design is not limited solely to FDM processes.

When focusing on an FDM part, you need to consider how it will be printed. Having a nice flat base for it sit on the print bed is always a good idea. Having faces that join with other parts being oriented for printing with the mating faces on the print bed will often result in easier joins and post processing since it's often harder to warp a print surface than it is to have a slight misalignment or drift over the production of a long print.

Minimizing support material on external visible faces or critical mechanical structures is a balance that must be found. Clearing off grids, trees and extra remnants on large flat external surfaces is often easier than prising them out of important keying details. Oftentimes nobody will be able to see the inside of armour or its going to have additional overlapping features that make it unimportant so having minimal clean-up on the inside of armour for stray material is usually the choice I make. Having no supports required would be the ultimate dream but in the world of armour and props it's not always achievable so compromises have to be made.

Part orientation during printing also should help with the overall strength and durability of the piece. As an example I always use, blades and long narrow objects are not the best for FDM processes. As you get closer and closer to the tip the amount of material becomes less and less with fewer options to rely on internal support materials. A blade tip on a print that was made vertically in one piece can easily have a shear due to the nature of the layered material allowing for a split along a layer line. Rotate the preparation into a horizontal print and complete it in two mirrored halves and you end up with a part that is less likely to shear and will have a bit of inherent flex of the material.

The Chestplate can be printed with the top surface facing the print surface to reduce material use and preserve internal mounting features. The Abdominal Plate can be printed using the lap joint to the Chestplate as a flat printing surface creating an upright print. All Backplate parts can be prepared flat due to their design and all detail being oriented outward.

Consider Physical Forces
Plan ahead for how parts will be interacted with in the real world. Parts like the Backplate are lightweight, float as a decorative piece on the back and overall won’t be pulled or pushed on in any major way so as long as the geometry interlocks together for proper appearance and easier glueing, no extra considerations really need to be made.

For the Chestplate we need to look at how all the external possible attachments interact with it, how high friction and mobility areas (near underarms, abdominals) will be impacted by common movements. Traditional armour relies on thin sections to be supported by ribs, splines and rolled edges to create stong plates that are lightweight and offer strengthening features that also deflect possible harm. We as modern cosplay armourers like composites and can use similar techniques on already lighter materials.

Adding recesses with the Shell feature creates an analogue of the rolled edges to help limit unwanted bending and flexing.

Adding ribs with the Rib and Web features helps add internal structures perfect for limiting unwanted bending as well as keying features for mould making.

Pair these with the ability to add internal and external shells of resin and fibreglass and you can have an extremely durable part for a fraction of the weight and machine time.

Sometimes rigid isn’t always the right answer for a part. Flexible materials or even separable plates on a floating connection that slide out of place to allow movement are the best choice.

Luckily with the Rakshasa Chest major components are separated by wide gaps and held together with strapping. If I was to rebuild any single part after attempting the Jack-O pose in this gear it would be to prepare the Abdominal Plate in a flexible to stop the initial jab of the plate when folding myself in half. Hinges for strapping helped in some cases for me personally but I need more wear time in the suit to confirm future points of issue.

Fusion Workflow Sample
This is by no means a step by step explanation but an overview of the goals of each segment. Working section by section and making use of Components will greatly help with the reliability and longevity of the workflow by reducing calculation load. Included below is also a replay of the Timeline for features that are captured.

-Import Reference Canvas
-Create Rectangular Prism for Chestplate in Solid Workspace
-Correct Rectangular Prism Draft angles
-Trim to correct shape with Split Body
-Create recesses for greeblie features with Split Face > Offset
-Create base feature of Abdominal Plate in Form Workspace
-Correct features and smooth faces in Surface Worspace
-Create Rectangular Prism for Backplate in Solid Workspace
-Apply Draft and Split Face > Offset features as required
-Create Strapping using Sketch Sweep method in Surface Workspace
-Import McMaster-Carr components for assembly

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 4: Suit Features​

For this post I will be exploring how the core parts of the suit operate. Components like shoulder UAs, thigh Utilities, wrist and chest attachments will be discussed later once the basics of assembly have been shown. The best way to explain how a suit works is with an excess of design progress photos and showing how the sub assemblies interact.

The key feature of the Hard Point System is through holes for fasteners and captive nuts that can quickly and securely attach parts in a repeatable fashion. Due to the integration of McMaster-Carr into Fusion 360 ordering parts was easy and exact fastener lengths could be quickly acquired. The majority of the suit makes use of M5 10mm fasteners at standard scale which translates roughly to a 6-32 nut and 6-32 ⅜” fastener if you need to run to the closest big box store for spares in North America.

Chest​

The Rakshasa Chestplate is a UA panel that is suspended over the Flak Vest which allows for plenty of access to the internals of the chest and possible storage space in the worn armour. All of the Hard Point fasteners are accessed through the reverse side of the chest and are secured to captive nuts in the Chestplate to make for less fiddling with hardware.

In total there are five removable panels that can be interchanged or modified depending on the Chest Attachment that is being worn.

• The top panel being the most secure is perfect for mounting adapters to hold UA plates and supplemental ammo packs as seen in AAP/Heartplate TAC/CMA M-25 and FCI-I/SPDR/TRAPDOOR.
• The two side panels are used as blanks for blocking the rectangular vents but adapters for bolts to pass through the vents can hold side mounted knives and rigging points as seen in RUCKAMUCK HIPPOTOOTH and Wolf Fang.
• The two lower rigging loops above the abdominal plate combined with the top panel help create a secure mounting point for larger attachments such as the Class IV Techkit and Pro Doc which extend a lot of weight outward from the Chestplate.

As always accessibility and ease of wearing is a main focus in designing a costume so the rigging of the Chest can be completed with simple nylon webbing and parachute clips that extend over the shoulders to connect to the upper section of the Back Plate as well as under the arms. The underarm game appearance has a hastily sewn together strap that has split which can be recreated with a slight overlap of two webbing straps and some sewn Velcro.

Bicep​

As is often the case with SPARTANs, the Rakshasa Biceps offer one of the primary customization points that most drastically alter a players silhouette. Early in Halo Infinite we were unable to do Cross Core customization of armour which was a sticking point for many fans of customization. I didn’t want to be trapped in a similar situation and went through all my available MkVII Shoulder UA options to confirm fit to the Rakshasa Core. The opposite direction check that Rakshasa Shoulder UA options would work on the MkVII Core and that is also valid.

The shoulder mounting to the bicep utilizes a variant key piece of the upper bicep. The two variants allow for a hardware mounted shoulder that can be changed quickly or a decorative blank bicep which admittedly looks really good on a lightweight tactical SPARTAN.

To make use of existing hardware within the design, grommets and washers are used for bolts to pass through the Shoulder Bell which secures the fabric part in the required position as well as being an optimal space for adding a D ring to run straps to the torso and limit unwanted bicep armour rotation. On a bicep with no shoulder UA this isn’t as important but some of the Rakshasa shoulders are BIG.

Forearms​

Canonically there is one hard point on the Rakshasa SPARTANs right wrist for decorative armour attachments (Shield Nodes and Bucklers) as well as a connection point on the left wrist for game specific equipment (Grappleshot, Repulsor, etc.). With a small removable detail panel on the wrist any attachment can securely be mounted to the forearm using two fasteners and making use of the geometry of the armour plate.

As always, the wristband is removable to assist with those who might have limited hand mobility and can either be attached with nylon elastic to form a flexible connection or clipped on and off as needed by someone who assists the wearer don/doff the armour.

Thighs​

Canonically there is a hard point for Utilities on the Rakshasa SPARTANs left thigh and through a removable panel this thigh plate can be used to mimic that feature. Anywhere high movement is always a pinch point and even though the Rakshasa thigh is not fully enclosed around the leg it has two narrow protruding sections that have plenty of potential to be stabby and uncomfortable. The Rakshasa thighs also sit much higher than other games and a flexible option is almost always preferable. To alleviate some of the chance of painful poking or worse, mentally damaging cracking noise when sitting, the rear segment is separated to be connected by nylon elastic to help improve the chance that you get to sit as a SPARTAN in costume.

Boots​

One of my biggest consistent issues with Halo boots in general is the extended toe spikes that exist on their boots. Rakshasa takes that to the extreme by shortening the foot length to a more average looking human appearance but extends the toes to fill the same length as other SPARTAN boots would fill. To help with being able to walk and not catch on everything, the toes of the Rakshasa boot are articulated with a hinge and prepared in a flexible material.

Some cosplayers prefer to leave behind canonically correct footprints, that is an option, however I prefer to have proper shoe tread so I left the removable soles off of my personal boots and have Heelys instead. They’re comfortable (for the most part), add a bit of a lift compared to normal shoes (better than boots for weight on average) and are durable soles for a bowlegged goblin like me that wears out shoes quickly.

Undersuit Layering​

The soft parts are the majority of the work on a Rakshasa suit. No lie. Creating the Flight Suit, Flak Vest, Shoulder Bells, Padded Belt and all the strapping is a full costume of effort on its own. I do not fault anyone at looking at the amount of effort required after making all the hard armour components and then getting an off the shelf close enough solution. The amount of small detail to add, the specific order of operations that is required for adding certain details, the multiple different techniques required as well as some interesting tools makes for a daunting task. The only reason I completed all parts is for the masochistic part of my brain saying “yeah you can do that” while also ignoring the fact that I can’t sew, I just put fabric together. If you ask be any of the specific names of the techniques used I’ll bumble around the internet to see what I can find and point at it. As I’ve said before, I’m classically trained in applied sciences and didn’t touch a sewing machine until several years into my cosplay career.

The most important takeaway with the Rakshasa soft parts is that all of them have an apparent purpose (except the circumferential thigh strap, that thing doesn’t do anything). There are plenty of interconnecting parts between the major armour components so it’s best to go part by part and point them out.

From the Flight Suit base the only major connection points are the cooling lines that run along the arms and legs. The hose guides on the upper panel of the sleeve runs from the neck on the shoulder and terminates under the Forearm plate before the wrist. The lines on the legs have one hose guide at the midway point approximately where the bottom of a pocket on trousers would be. The hoses extend below the padded belt and terminate under the front main panel of the Thigh Plate.

From Flak Vest the Back Plate and Chest Plate are mounted using the strapping passthrough under the epaulette loop. There is a decorative belt around the natural waist but it is worn unfastened.

The Padded Belt does the majority of the work of the suit rigging. A thinner tactical belt is run through the loops and helps support the loops that suspend the Codplate and Tailbone Plate. On each hip there are three small pouches that also obscure the rigging strap that runs down the outer leg to the Thigh Plate. From the Tailbone Plate there’s also the circumferential thigh strap that crosses the Thigh Plate rigging strap, if you can’t tell, I’m not a fan.

The base of the knee pads of the Rakshasa SPARTAN are similar to a common skateboarding crash pad with two tensioning straps, one at the top and one at the bottom of the sleeve. As a personal preference I prefer to suspend my shin plates instead of friction fit them so a loop on the top of either side of the shin runs to the tensioning straps on the knee pads and a tensioning strap is made using the lower decorative strap of the shin.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 5: Suit Concept​

As mentioned in the OP the concept of this suit is for bringing the motorsport aesthetic components of the Rakshasa Core and blending them with the 2010 Goodsmile Racing Pit Crew livery.

For this one I leaned heavily into the powers of the Halo Infinite SPARTAN Pack on The Halo Archive and some MikuMikuDance assets to see what could be done to blend the two together.

Blender, MMD and Inkscape are all free but mastery of these programs is not required in any way shape or form to complete a paint job. Instead of digging into the depths of the textures from the game I quickly just blocked out colour changes to canon appearances that I wanted to incorporate. This is not a one to one match to the final suit, some segments were changed along the way to improve contrast and add variety to parts that may not have much in the way of colour zone utilisation.

Helmet - BUNYIP Helmet​

The Bunyip Helmet is arguably the most “racecar” of the Halo Infinite buckets. I was looking at reusing a CQB for Miku with the more rounded shape but the large ear panels of Bunyip align very well with Miku’s headphones.

Torso - Rakshasa Chestplate with AAP/Heartplate​

I’m going to say it. The AAP/Heartplate only having the teeth pattern in game is a huge missed opportunity for customization. I liked it as an option for adding three large flat panels to add advertisements and logos to. The base of the chest also was adjusted to be a bit more colourful and the planned orange segments on the lower panels were left white to not lose the defined shape of the chest into the orange of the Flak Vest and flight suit.

Biceps - Rakshasa Biceps with SAP/HVISTLA Plating​

As mentioned earlier, the majority of the Rakshasa shoulder UA options are BIG or too busy for my tastes on a digital diva. After looking at the Bicep on it’s own for several hours during designing it in Fusion360 I grew more attached to having the no UA option and following tradition of the larger UA on the left side. SAP/HVISTLA offered three locations for added decals, of which I made use of two for the 初音ミク logotype and her 01 numbering. The mono-colour underarm strapping was changed from the canon grey to a red and white two tone to match the banding on the upper glove section.

Forearms - Rakshasa Forearm with FOX 2449​

Having the ability to control the playlist that’s on my suit’s speakers is always nice and the FOX 2449 is just large enough for a Display HAT Mini screen. This can display the current song and offers four buttons for controlling playback. Connected to a Pi Zero W that is operating off of a phone hotspot we can have Spotify actively displayed and controlled.

Much like with the biceps, out with the boring single colour plates and in with a highlight of red and white to match Miku’s wristbands.

Gloves - Drapsmann Gloves​

I honestly wanted the most plain and uniform gloves as possible and thankfully the default Rakshasa glove delivered in this case. Finding a good base glove has been an ongoing struggle because of orange but we’re getting there.

Thighs - RakshasaThigh with Brace of Blades​

You may notice that Spike Pack is the attachment that is shown in the colour blocking mockup. Another instance of me pausing and thinking about what would actually look good and be functional on the suit. In this case it was a bit of wordplay going from KingBlade lightsticks to Brace of Blades that I stumbled on while searching to see if there was an off the shelf option for a light stick to fit in the Spike Pack holster. Instead of the three kunai that are on the thigh attachment I have three loops for holding concert light sticks. These came in handy since one of the first outings for the suit was to a concert at Otafest. This is another instance of “haha, but what if” while in a voice chat paying off.

The webbing running over the front of the thigh plate was given a pop of teal to match accent colours on the helmet and the LED lighting of the Brace of Blades giving a bit more “Miku Blue” to the suit.

Knees - UA/Type SN​

The choice of the knees here was based entirely off of aesthetics. The steam shovel knees of the UA/Type GNY were tempting but for the look of a slim fitting thigh high boot I had to keep the profile of the shins, knees and thighs pretty slim.

Shins - Rakshasa Shins​

Again, the shins were required to be slim fitting so I went about five percent smaller than I normally would for these. It worked out for mobility and with the suspension rigging to the kneepads I can adjust up and down as needed.

As with most other parts the strapping colours were changed to add more colour pop and nods to the original design.

Boots - Rakshasa Boots​

Rakshasa boots in game are kind of boring. There’s all these greeblies and extra panels that are all one colour zone and the usual highlight is the tape holding the boot together. I opted for no tape (digital divas have minimal damage to their gear) and added more splashes of red to break up the shapes and showcase some of the detail in the form.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 6: Parts Sample, Revisions, Future Upgrades​

With the base suit requirements outline and the digital design side squared away it’s time to move onto prototype production. For the most part the finished suit is all of the prototype parts due to the lessons learned from previous designs and meticulous note taking on the Rakshasa design. If anything with the fleet of printers dedicated to printing out prototype pieces the holdup in the process was the ability to not design parts quickly enough through the evenings. Honestly it’s not a terrible problem to have but some mental stress is there for sure in that situation.

Luckily with this suit I had the pleasure of having a new printer join the fleet that is fast, reliable and can handle flexible materials fairly well with a bit of tweaking. As before the two Ender 5 Plus workhorses were there for larger pieces and the new to the party K1 Max. The K1 Max is a little smaller than the two machines that it replaced but the print speed and quality of life features over the six year old Tevo Tornados is worth the change. I’m also a sucker for the stability of gantry printers and CoreXY is just a bonus.

As shown in Post 1 of this thread, the cumulative print time for this whole suit was a little under three weeks of machine hours. Theoretically if timed correctly and with similar printers you could prepare all hard parts for a Rakshasa suit within a week. I don’t know if that’s a good idea for a person’s sleep schedule but hey, con crunch does funny things to people.

A round of applause for the big Creality Cubes and their ability to not churn out spaghetti.

-MikuCube (01)​

-TwinsCube (02)​

-LukaCube (03)​

For this post I want to focus more on the samples of parts that did receive changes to their design either during the process of print verification or later after a first wear of the suit. Showing off parts that are finished and saying that everything is great is a little disingenuous to the process. We can always build and improve a suit, even after it’s “ready” or “good enough”. A suit is never finished and is always a Work In Progress until it leaves your hands to be worn by someone else.

On the forearms everything came out great with the parts press fitting together. The FOX 2449 slots together well and for purpose of taking a photo of all the pieces together I used some painters tape to stop the access sled from slipping out. For the eagle eyed viewer who has studied absolutely every detail of the Rakshasa core the middle photo with the wrist attachment removed you may spot one inaccuracy that was fixed. There is a strapping slot missing in the wrist plate that was added in a later revision.

For a more secure attachment of the FOX 2449 access tray, a hidden captive nut and bolt through the geometry was added to replace the initial magnetic lock. This ended up providing a larger area for a screen and microcontroller to be added as well as access for an internal battery pack removing the necessity to run external wiring or cut any extra holes through the modular Forearm.

Overall, two small changes to the Forearm but reprints nonetheless! There’s always going to be something that you notice is out of place or can be improved on for actual use in the finished project. Whenever you have the chance to sit back, analyse your work with an impartial eye and consider what can be worked on or what mistakes were, take it and save your future self repeating tedious steps.

Speaking of repeating tedious steps. Ha. Boots.

I had scaled everything to match the game length of the boot relative to my in person scale and shoes of choice. In the end it looked great for photos but it created a safety hazard for me. There was no way that I could properly glide and stop in the Heely’s without the toes or heel plate having the possibility of catching on the ground if there was an uneven surface. I’d rather not bail in Heelys while wearing all the extra armour parts so an entire reprint at a smaller scale with more clearance around the shoe sole was done after two events with the original boots.

Photos with vehicles as proof of the boot update. You can see an increased gap between the heel plate and the toe cap as well as more clearance between the metatarsal plate and the shin. Overall it’s more comfortable to walk in and I can safely wheel around if the venue allows wheeled shoes or rollerblades (a lot of them have explicit bans on them for safety reasons).

Shown below is a parts sample based on indecision. At the start of 2024 I was working through completing the Season 1 and 2 of Halo Infinite shoulder UA designs and there were a few that I really liked on the Rakshasa Core. Ultimately I went with the SAP/HVISTLA Plating to have a Rakshasa specific part on the suit and showcase how the “naked” bicep looks really cool without additional plating. Options are available and interchanging them in the future may be on the table, especially with the UA/Viator that has plenty of surface area for some itasha wrap features.

Lastly, it’s the Bunyip. It’s a cool helmet. It has CQB aesthetics that I love. It has the right shape for a race pilot. It just doesn’t feel right for Racing Miku. One of the most important updates to this suit in the future is figuring out what her face should be. Right now, it’s not speaking to me.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 7: Assembly​

For getting an armour piece from fresh off the printer in parts to something that is “wearable” the following steps are followed.

Tools Overview​

For assembly we’re keeping the toolbox super basic and relatively simple with one or two outliers.

-Needle nose pliers​

-Flush cutting pliers/diagonal cutting pliers​

-A knife/deburring tool​

-Painters tape​

-A drill with bit index or step bit​

-Five minute epoxy​

-CA glue​

-CA kicker​

-Plastic welder/hot stapler​

-0.8mm wave staples​

-Rotary tool with grinding stone​

Safety Concerns​

Safety is always the number one concern when working with a mix of sharp tools, chemicals and high heats.

-Sharp materials and sharp tools, use appropriate tools and protections​

-Chemicals requiring gloves, respirators and ventilation​

-Heating and melting of materials requiring respirators, ventilation and removal of flammable materials​

-Removal of metal components which can eject, recommend safety glasses or grinding shield​

Deburring, Support Removal and Dry Fit​

The most important part after removing a print from the bed is clearing as much of the support material from the internal structure as possible. This will help with the sanding stages later and overall make the suit less pokey. Generally I use a set of pliers to twist and break supports from the parts to limit hand contact and all the micro cuts that come from handling small, sharp plastic pieces while still maintaining full finger dexterity and grip from not wearing gloves.

If there are any stubborn supports that do not want to be removed we politely but firmly remove them with the rotary tool being careful not to damage the part. The goal here is removal of excess, not smoothing so a quick pass is all that’s needed.

From there I’ll remove any remaining brims that are necessary or blob/zits/strings from printing that may have occurred by carefully trimming with a knife. For brims that were on joining faces I will leave those connected for plastic welding purposes.

Parts Adjustment​

Next comes the moment of truth where we prove if our Armorsmith skills are indeed as good as we think. Key together any locking parts of the “mission critical” portions and painters tape the rest together so try things on and make sure they fit. If there’s anything that’s close but won’t require a complete redesign or rescale minor adjustments can be made if under time crunch. Some people like to tease things into shape with a heat gun, I prefer a subtractive method with small adjustments using a knife or at worst a rotary tool. More often than not, it’s better to just rebuild the part for overall accuracy.

Before anything is permanently affixed I like to guarantee everything fits well and has room for added layers of paints and epoxies further in the build process. If it doesn’t fit now, it’ll be more of a pain when it’s all together.

Things like layer shifts or warping from poor bed adhesion can also be assessed at this point to see if it’s recoverable or worth redoing entirely. A layer shift can be split at the shift and rejoined, a slight warp can be sanded level again but sometimes it’s not worth the time and easier to just reprint. Luckily for this build no major corrections were required which saved plenty of time.

Some gentle changes like fixing through holes back into circular shape, opening recesses or sanding parts for a better fit are just part of the game sometimes.. For bolts and support rod fit I first drill at the exact diameter of the fastener to deburr the hole or remove any tear-dropping and then follow up with one bit size up to smooth and add extra tolerance for adhesives like epoxy.

Adhering​

This stage is primarily for affixing parts of the same colour or large base components since I tend to leave greeblies and attachments for after the base colour stage. As always, anything that can make your life easier, do it.

Depending on the part I will use either CA glue or a five minute epoxy to join large parts together. Epoxy has roughly twice the shear strength resistance of a CA glue joint so for parts that will be flexing with movement I will often lean toward epoxy as the adhesive of choice. The two can be used in conjunction though with the quicker setting CA glue being used to tack important geometry in place while the epoxy cures. Like with all tools adhesives do take up space and viscosity of the adhesives can and will make parts difficult to assemble if your tolerances are too tight so always check first on how parts fit.

Staple​

Plastic welding is one of those funny tricks that I picked up over the last few years and I don’t know if I’ve shown it in a build thread yet. The concept is simple, basically do the soldering iron melting of parts together but with a stronger connection due to the staple insert.

The staples are heated by running current through them and the hot staple is then embedded midway through the body of the part at the joining seam as shown below. It takes a bit of practice to know how long to heat the staples and how much pressure is needed to melt into a surface but once you get it, these joins become nigh on indestructible.

Using whatever cutting tool you have that can get as flush to the surface as possible, trim the ends of the staples. The less pokey your armour is, the better. Diagonal cutting pliers are great for this and usually plastic welder kits come with a pair however the quality of the steel may vary.

Grind down the ends with a grinding stone and then use the flat tip of the plastic welder to smooth over the welding marks. This is why I keep brims of adjoining faces still attached to prints, free material that can be used to make things smooth instead of using odds-and-ends old filament from ends of spools. Brims are already held in place for you and are printed thinner which requires less heat to get everything cooperating.

In the end, all of this doesn’t need to be beautiful, it just needs to be accurate enough that there’s no lumps on the outer faces and no stabby bits on the inner faces. Even the stabby bits is a light requirement due to the fact that everything will be coated in fibreglass which covers and rounds most issues.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 8: Surface Preparation​

We currently have all our main armour parts together and segments separated based on colour zones, time to get them ready for paint. This is arguably the longest and most physically demanding stage of a normal armour build so expect to be sore in multiple ways and put on some good music to just flow with.

Tools Overview​

-Rotary Tool
-80 grit flapper wheels (25mm height, 80mm diameter)
-5” orbital sander
-5” orbital sander pads 60/80/220/300 grit
-Mouse sander
-Mouse sander pads 60/80/220/300 grit
-Linear pen sander
-Two sided tape
-Sand paper 80/220/300/400/600/800 grit
-Needle files
-Disposable cups
-Disposable brushes
-Mixing sticks
-Silicone mixing tray/cup
-Aluminium foil
-Fibreglass cloth
-Polyester fibreglass resin
-XTC epoxy resin
-Bondo Body Filler
-Bondo Glazing Putty

A work station where you can be an absolute mess for periods of time

Safety Concerns​

-Chemicals and particulate requiring use of a respirator and ventilation
-Spinning tools working to remove material requiring safety glasses or a grinding shield
-Grinding tools requiring ear defenders
-Chemicals requiring use of gloves
-Fibreglass is itchy. Cover literally everything
-Take breaks, your body will thank you

General Approach​

You can likely notice that there are multiple sanding tools listed within the Tools Overview, this is due to the fact that although I like sanding, I hate sanding. My back and hands will get tired long before I am mentally done for the day on cleaning up parts so anything to help get to a milestone of “X armour parts sanded to Y grit level” quicker is always needed. For every sanding grit I start with the orbital sander, follow with the mouse sander for sharp corners and finish with the linear sander for small recesses and sharp corners. The goal is to save fingers and arms for the wet sanding later. Let the machines do the work early on to save you pain.

60-80 Grit​

The first pass after assembly and deburring is one where we have to trust the process. Stuff left the printer looking nice and glossy coming off the machine but we’re going to mess that all up in the name of getting it even smoother later.

If there’s any large surface defects that need to be reshaped or filled, now is the time to fix them and smooth them with Bondo Body Filler. Luckily on this suit there was only two or three spots that called for a body filler repair but the general rule of thumb is that any defect 1cm or less in width and depth can be fixed with body filler without a backing reinforcement, anything past that might need to be reprinted for structural reasons or a metal mesh should be added. For smaller defects (pits or scratches less than 3mm in depth) Bondo Spot Putty works great. This suit was getting an epoxy shell so the spot putty stage was not as important but at the same time there weren't too many locations in need of repairs.

Fibreglass Reinforcement​

It is well known that I am a clumsy lad on occasion (parts of this suit have been involuntarily drop tested) and due to that fact I like to add an interior layer of fibreglass. It’s lightweight and adds a bit of extra structure that will help prevent catastrophic failure of parts due to dropping or heat warping which is entirely a positive in my books. The added benefit of resin flowing and accidentally filling in layer lines on the outer faces of the armour is just a bonus.

For doing a considerable amount of fibreglass at once I like to pre-cut squares of fibreglass cloth and store them in a small rectangular take out container to help organize the workspace and limit damage spills can make in a time sensitive operation when odd shapes like armour are being manipulated.

To help further keep things simple and minimize loss when doing things I like an easy repeatable measurement for working with the chemistry of the chemicals. Most red beverage cups have some sort of marking on the side for specific volumes, and this 60mL marking is a small enough volume that’s easy to work with before the resin gels as well as being a nice round number for the approximate number of drops to get the magic 3-4% catalyst. As always temperature plays into chemistry and I was working in a basement in the Great White North which means adding a little extra kick always helps make sure we can get over the threshold for curing. Nobody likes sticky or smelly armour.

Applying two layers to all suit parts and three to some of the more accident prone parts (boots, shoulders, forearms) took about eight hours of solid work and I can tell you, that much time in nitrile gloves is not the most fun.

The only thing that is less fun than applying a bunch of itchy glass strands with a liquid poison is cleaning up the sharp sections of the hardened itchy glass. I will always advise against gloves when working with any rotating tool but for the sake of trimming excess and cleaning up edges, it was a tuck coveralls into gloves situation and tape the seams to stop as much as possible from getting in and onto skin.

Epoxy Coating​

Again it’s more poison, this time with a slightly more viscous resin that has a slightly higher bonding strength and overall resistance to the types of damage that costume armour is expected to encounter (flexing, dent impacts). I’ve used XTC-3D on quite a few other projects and I reserve it for the times that I want to be fancy and not have to deal with chasing drips like with polyester fibreglass resin. It cures quickly (as long as you mix correctly and don’t have old stock) and sands just a little bit more evenly.

The rules for XTC-3D that they really need to print larger or at all on the instructions are as follows.
-Check the date on the box. If the manufacture date is older than a year, do not buy it.
-Shake the daylights out of Part B before use. This stuff separates and will leave you with a mess if you don’t
-Alway B onto A, never A onto B
-The listed mixing time is no joke

For mixing again we have the funny red cups, this time cut down to size for easier handling and mixing. The newly introduced tool is the excuse to have a lot of ice cream (4L recyclable bucket) and aluminum foil to make a wide tray. Epoxies like this are exothermic reactions when mixed with their hardener and spreading out the volume in a wide container like this helps slow the cure while limiting the chance of the mixing cup smoking and wasting a few dollars of material.

Covering the whole suit while carefully avoiding panel lines is a time consuming task and having the constant pressure of a tray of material that is threatening to go bad if you don’t work fast enough is stressful.

180-220 Grit​

Yes XTC is self levelling and will make a nice shell coat on the armour parts that will look nice but unfortunately some of the sharp edges will have been rounded and potentially some panel lines will have been filled so this stage is more for correcting any defects and helping satisfy any perfectionism. Overall the goal at this stage is to get a good paint surface that’s free of any telltale signs of FDM printing.

As always, continue to dry fit parts and confirm that any added material doesn’t get in the way of proper alignment and fit. Small greeblies that are inset may be the biggest struggle after an epoxy coat since their nests may have been slightly filled in. A linear pen sander is great for clearing out corners with the pointed triangle pads or in extreme cases a pointed grinding bit for a rotary tool can be used.

400-800 Wet Sanding​

The first step to this process is to spray a layer of high body filler primer, my personal preference is Rutoleum 2 in 1 Filler/Sandable but depending on where you live that may be difficult to source. If you’ve been a good noodle in previous stages things should already look really smooth but we’re being extra and going for a shine.

Depending on how many little treats you need in your life, another 4L icecream bucket can be used for water during the wet sanding stage. The goal of this stage is for a nice glossy finish on parts that will create natural reflections of light. Yes, you can go higher than 800 grit but overall I’ve found that past 600 grit there is very little benefit for large printed pieces if you’re painting with rattle cans. If you’re planning on using parts for moulding master parts, go higher but for this, save your fingers the pain.

If you can, do better at controlling the weather than I did and spray paint and wet sand outdoors in temperatures above 10°C. Always read the manufacturer's application instructions, they’ve probably tested the product once or twice.

Here the fingernail scratch test is going to be doing a lot of work looking for any small recesses that may not be readily visible. The filler primer will help highlight low spots as you sand most of it away from the surface of the parts. Water will also add a reflectance to the parts that help you spot any surface defects. Switching between colours of filler primer also helps if doing multiple sanding passes but here I was being thrifty and bought in bulk the grey. I’ve included a picture of an unrelated project to help show the colour switching of filler primers.

The goal is always that your armour should look good wet. What exactly does that mean? Wet surfaces amplify how light hits it and if you’re in a workshop working on a mostly monochromatic thing, if it’s not highlighted and showing reflections well in that state, it;s not going to once paint goes on. Water will show you exactly where you need to sand more, you’ll be able to see how it evaporates off over time to see any defects. Getting past this 400-800 range is more often than not the stopping point if you’re using rattle cans and not going for a glossy or pure metallic finish. At this point you’re going to have the look of a manufactured part that is grit blasted, cleaned and powder coated which in turn feels right for armour. If in turn what you’re working on is an ODST, you already know that you’re ready for jazzyboy hours in the rain.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 9: Resin Casting​

Thanks to all the time we spent in preparing the surface of the parts we can now be lazy and make many, many copies of them. Gloves and their small finger plates are perfect for this. I’d much rather sand one part to perfection, mix some goo in a cup and have that one piece as many times as I need instead of sanding ten or more parts to perfection.

This will be a guide for a simple one part mould to introduce people to the concept of casting as a method of quick parts production.

Tools Overview​

-Disposable mixing cups
-Disposable soft brush
-Marking tools
-Volumetric measure
-Scale
-Mould release
-Smooth-On Mold Max 30
-Smooth-On SmoothCast 310
-Hot glue
-Foamcore board

Safety Concerns​

-Chemicals requiring use of a respirator and ventilation
-Chemicals requiring use of gloves
-Chemicals requiring use of safety glasses

Identify Casting Viability​

The most important part of casting is planning and forethought. Choosing the correct type of casting procedure will allow you to create and replicate almost anything. There are many different casting techniques for different materials but as an introduction we’re going to focus on the simplest, an open face one part mould.

A one part mould is as the name implies a single body of flexible silicone that can be used to produce our parts. This type of mould is perfect for recreating parts that have one flat back surface and no details that overhang that would become trapped when removing the part from the mould.

Although a slight draft angle does help with the removal of the part from the mould it is not strictly necessary but is best practice. The draft angle on the part allows for easier separation and gives the mould a longer life.

Finger plates are a perfect example of a piece to be cast with a wide, flat back that will attach to the glove and a tapered inward profile on all sides with only one vertical surface.

Choose your goops​

As always, different materials act in wildly different ways. Chemistry does that for some reason. Here we need to make a few important checks to select our mould material and also our casting material.

For the mould itself we will be looking first at the choice between a tin cure and a platinum cure silicone. On average tin cure silicones will be less durable in the long term and shrink and deform more over periods of time than a platinum cure silicone.

Platinum cure silicones have to consider cure inhibition by sulfur being present either in the model or on the surface of the mould box. Careful sealing and cleaning is very important in case of any contamination.

Certain mould materials will also be more prone to trapping air bubbles when mixing and pouring. Some materials are advertised as “Non-vacuum” or NV which are usually low viscosity and do not need vacuum degassing to remove air bubbles.

For the part materials, the sky is the limit once you have a mould to work with. When making many copies of an object I often lean towards a material with a short cure time like SmoothCast 65D or SmoothCast 325 but depending on your exact needs, poke around and see what cool composites you can make!

I was working on a different project at the time (Dune Crysknives x 30) and the finger plates for my SPARTAN gloves worked out as a convenient dump mould for excess material.

Building a mould box​

This is where you can go either as simple or as basic as you need. The goal here is a container that is large enough to make a mould that will be strong enough and durable to create as many cast copies as we need. At the same time we don’t want such a large box that it breaks the bank with expensive goop to fill it.

Creating a liquid proof barrier is fairly simple and as with everything cosplay and making, there’s multiple ways to go about it depending on what your needs are and what tools are available.

The old reliable disposable cup​

For small objects like the finger plates, you don’t need anything more than a simple disposable cup. It has a flat bottom, contains liquids well and even has markings for specific volumes in some cases making future math easier. When making moulds of small parts, this is my usual go to.

Foam core walls​

Infinitely customizable and adjustable for a dirt cheap solution. Foam core can be picked up at the dollar store in large sheets and then cut down to exact measurements as needed. For larger block moulds I have a melamine board as the base (nice and level) that can be washed and reused for moulds and then for the foam core I have a collection of old promotional signs from work that I cut down on the band saw or table saw to make sure edges are parallel. A bit of hot glue to tack all the pieces together and it’s off to the races.

LEGO bricks​

If you’re a collector of interlocking bricks, creating a smooth surface on a build plate and then walls out of any assortment of bricks on hand makes for a fast, reusable and most importantly precisely repeatable box for any mould.

Custom printed walls​

For awkward shapes on large objects, this method makes use of a tool that most of us have already on hand. It also lets the computer do a lot more of the math so that you don’t have to!

Tricky math stuff for silicone​

It’s best to go into a process like this that uses a bunch of spendy materials with a plan. First we need to know how big our part is. If you have access to the design of the part in Fusion360 it’ll be able to tell you exact volume within the Properties menu.

Then we need the maximum height of the model plus a 10mm or ½” of room at the top of silicone. Find the highest point of the model and find a measurement from the flat base, in this instance 7.5mm thick with an extra 10mm for a total of 17.5.

Next, we take the approximate volume of our cup which can be approximated as a cylinder or truncated cone if you need more precision. I was using the smallest cup I had on hand, obviously your values will be different.

If you are opposed to math, filling up your mould box with rice or a similar dry grain and then using a measuring cup to determine the volume of rice needed to get to your required level will save some time with a calculator.

Now with a value for total volume of the container, the total volume of the part and an extra buffer for wastage when mixing we get a 170mL total silicone volume required. If you are using a 1:1 mix ratio by volume silicone such as the Smooth-On OOMOO series the total can be divided evenly for your part A and part B. If you’re using a by weight mixture like the Smooth-On MoldMax series then there’s a little bit more math involved for figuring out your part A and B. For a first casting project, if you can get away with a tin cure silicone I highly recommend taking a bit of stress out of the process and using an easy mix material like OOMOO.

With all your planning laid out, it’s finally time to put on the safety gear, glue anything in place that needs it and start pouring goops. For a nice glossy part and easier separation, a release agent should be applied to the part and the mould box walls. I like Ease Release spray but even thinned vaseline will work in a pinch.

Measure carefully, mix thoroughly and most importantly read the instructions of your chosen material.

Best practice on pouring a mould is to pick a low corner and slowly fill the box with a narrow stream letting the silicone pour over the part to guarantee that air always has a way to escape and not be trapped against the part. Air bubbles are our enemy and adding them in at this point would be devastating.

Everything will go well if you follow your plan and once the cure time is up you can free your mould and the master part. Any hot glue on the box materials and master part can be loosened with isopropyl alcohol.

I like to trim the base of the mould by adding a chamfer around the outside removing any stringy bits or the meniscus that formed along the wall of the mould box. This helps let everything sit flat and level when casting.

Tricky math stuff for resin​

Using the Fusion360 or rice calculated part volume, convert into units that are needed for our casting material. Many resins are 1:1 so it’s as simple as add a bit extra for wastage and divide by two.

Tricky waiting part​

There’s a time on the label for a very important reason. Do not remove the liquid while it is still liquid.

As simple as that, now I never need to worry about losing finger plates while getting up to antics at a convention. An afternoon of chemistry and I can have a full extra set!

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 10: Paint and Decals​

This is the part of every project that I just get to sit back and enjoy. If I could magically have a bunch of paint ready parts in front of me to use as a canvas I’d be a very happy Turbo.

Tools Overview​

-Delicate surface masking tape
-Flexible masking tape
-Liquid latex masking fluid
-Plastic wrap
-#11 Xacto
-Silicone spudger
-Airbrush
-Compressor
-Cricut Vinyl Cutter
-Low Tack Stencil Vinyl
-Transfer Tape

Safety Concerns​

-Chemicals and particulate requiring use of a respirator and ventilation
-Chemicals requiring use of gloves

Colour Pattern and Design​

As mentioned previously, The Halo Archive is a lifesaver for fiddling around with colours if you know roughly what your target is. Because I’m still not a Blender wizard that can just modify textures on the fly I need to lean on other tools like MikuMikuDance, Inkscape and Gimp to help translate the ideas into something that’s a better visual representation than hand waving.

Blender, MMD and Inkscape are all free but mastery of these programs is not required in any way shape or form to complete a paint job.

The original concept for a Rakshasa build was always to use Tawney Prairie as a jumping off point since that is what my usual Infinite loadout uses. It’s a lot too orange and red for my tastes and needed some pops of colour and some extra colours added in to break up some of the large colour blocked sections and highlight individual armour components.

Overall I wanted to incorporate less than six colours to fit within the limits of the Halo Infinite Armour Coating system while largely sticking to colour zones but adjusting with extra stencils and shapes to add the details of Racing Miku’s coveralls, boots and gloves.

The rough breakdown of what I went with was as follows
Orange - Main Flight Suit and Flak Vest, Gloves
Pearl White - Boots, Chest Armour
Red - Accent and Logos
Teal - Hair Colour Accents
Gunmetal - Greeblies
Black - Reserved for Strapping and Undersuit Contrast

On the final suit you can see a few points where I deviated from the colouring book plan and decal placement but the heart and soul are still there.

Paint Selection​

To absentmindedly browse similar paints to the hex values that I selected, Encycolorpedia allows for a search of popular common paint brands within a Δ range for similar off the shelf colours. This helped to track down a few possible candidates of solid tones but as I’ve stated previously in the thread, this build was a full send which meant violence in finishes. We’re getting metallics and pearls all in one.

For the metallic black and the pearl white I was able to go with two paints that I had on the workshop shelf to test and see how they looked together in person under different lighting conditions. Getting the orange and red was an adventure of trying out a new to me line of paint by Montana meant for street art. I highly recommend it if you can find a shade you need. The finish is tough.

With a bunch of paints ordered and all parts ready for colour coats I started the process of testing different primer coats with the different paints to see how they reacted. These test pieces are just acrylic Christmas ornament half globes that I bought in bulk for a crafting workshop at local libraries and still have dozens of. They’re great for seeing how light reflects off of a surface and testing paint adhesion or for possible reactions between odd paint combinations.

Everything will look good on a screen but you just have to have it in front of you to tell if it’s good or not. If anyone else has had success with TurboDork through either an airbrush or HVLP, I’d love to know your steps.

Chip Weathering​

This build created a long running internal debate on how fresh off the manufacturing floor a digital diva SPARTAN should look. The deciding factor was time available for doing an extra paint step and the argument for natural wear just making a suit look better over time as silver is revealed. This is very much not for the faint of heart since you have to very much trust the process in an intermediate ugly stage. First a matte black coat goes down over everything that will have chip damage followed by a dusting of a bright metallic. You don’t want everything coated evenly so that there’s visible variation on revealed chipped sections.

Trust it, no matter how gross it looks at this stage.

With the ugly mottled silver parts in hand we then grab our favourite liquid mask and start applying a masking layer to the corners and edges where damage and wear would naturally occur, scratches and dots of pitting to help break up large surfaces in believable ways.

If you’ve never spent far too much time near large metal objects made for military applications or never done scale modelling of vehicles I highly recommend Painting & Weathering for Props and Replicas, Master Scale Modelling or watching any painting video on Tested with Kayte Sabicer to see how they approach highlighting the shapes of things with weathering.

Once your masking goop of choice is set, apply a primer coat for your colour coats.

Did I get many photos of the paint layers going down? No. I definitely set it and forget it while heading to a convention giving plenty of time for paint to cure.

Masking​

Next we dive head first into the world of masking off large areas for application of main colours and then further working toward small sections and decals later.

Having a selection of tape sizes and types is helpful and using them all on the paint test pieces will help confirm that no accidental adhesion issues will occur. My personal preference is to use the delicate surface Frog Tape for masked edges and then using a cheaper tape to hold plastic wrap to it in order to stop overspray.

For the most part on a Rakshasa suit you’ll be able to get away without any major masking processes and if you plan out parts separation well then you’ll be able to save on disposable masking supplies like tape and plastic wrap. For Racing Miku the only part that I needed to mask off for a main colour was protecting the white while teal went down on the helmet.

Decals​

I’m a sucker for painted on decals.

They look great fresh. They are more consistent for weathering than adhesive vinyl. They’re just the bees knees. Any project I can I pop open Inkscape, create a vector image and then send it to the Cricut vinyl cutter. Some of the small text can get tricky to weed out of the cut stencil but the effort is worth it for how crisp everything looks in the end.

Below is the sample sheet that I used for Racing Miku, most of the stencils are one colour spray, but some are layered and a little more tricky and need careful alignment and proper order of application. Testing paint opacity is always a good habit and seeing how many application layers to cover another paint is an important step. For this suit I needed to apply white over red which can be painful with certain paint brands but knowledge is power and following the instructions on the can is key.

I also had a set of waterslide transfer decals meant for the Goodsmile Racing 2010 Nendoroid on hand for some reason and the temptation to add a Miku onto the chestplate somewhere was real. Maybe one day when I have more Microsol and Microset on hand.

Once all the stencils and decals are applied, it’s time to remove all the tape, get out a trusty popsicle stick or similar flat surface and slowly but carefully remove all the chip masking.

Letting Him Cook​

More natural reflections are important when everyone is going to be looking at your cool shoes. With the chipping mask removed, a protective top coat is then added to protect the more delicate airbrush paint.

At this point I’d normally bring out the oil paints and powders but digital divas need to look their best and grime was limited. If you would like to see my usual weathering process for messy objects, please enjoy this nested excerpt from the time I got to work on a funny Warthog.

My NDA ended earlier this week and I think that paint land is the best area for this since that was the primary focus of the project that I was involved with.

Either way, there's a secret workshop somewhat local to me that was tasked with converting a rather dinged up Aria group converted H1 chassis with fibreglass and composite shell to make said Hummer look like a Halo 4 Warthog. Currently there are four of these in the world, one is a museum piece in the Petersen Automotive Museum, another is in disrepair and the final is in an undisclosed location. We had the task of turning this one into a motion sim and playable experience in Forza Horizon 5 (where you can drive a Warthog conveniently in first person) that would then be shipped to London for the Halo Infinite launch event and then subsequently to various events around the world.

We were limited in the amount of body work that would be allowed to be done to the vehicle because it still was required to be driven (it's big and loud but turns about as poorly as you'd imagine) while still having all the speakers, motion elements and PC/display elements contained within the body. A full removal of parts for batch painting wasn't possible due to the majority of the shell being monolithic pieces of GRP. This resulted in some creative adjustments from the H4 style to the Infinite appearance and removing the turret to add in a roughly one cubic meter UNSC crate into the bed to act as the power management and controls for everything.

I did some very late nights over the course of a week doing bodywork touch ups, base paint touch ups, airbrush shading, additive chipping and wear, oil and enamel washes, pigment dust weathering and decal work to transform the funny green and grey Tonka truck paint job it came to us as into something that looked a little more lived in and banged around Zeta Halo. One of the benefits was being able to have some very high resolution references for the Halo 4, Forza Horizons and Halo Infinite Warthog in case I ever want to build my own. One of the downsides was the sprint that it was to get this thing on a plane across the world for the event.

The rough process was
Body work (Bondo and other repairs)
Main paint touchups
Shading with inks
Chrome/silver/black chip damage
Oils and enamel washes
Clear coat lock in
Dry powders (scorch and mud/dust)
More clear

There was an initial trailer for the event in London and from there the last I heard the specialised platform crane and their loading points to get the vehicle into the Microsoft Store were damaged making it difficult to move the Warthog from Oxford Circus so it was kept as a permanent display instead of two months in London and shipped to join the HCS displays. Sorry Raleigh folks, you would have been able to be the first to play on it.

I couldn't take many photos other than references for myself on segments that I was working on at a given time (no cameras in certain parts of the shop) but I have a few that have any markings or labels that would give away the location of the workshop

Protective Coatings​

Once the hand painted details were on, clear coats were applied. If you have access to an airbrush I recommend you give Klear Kote a try. It’s good stuff. If you’re not brave, stick with one brand of paint and use the recommended clear coat.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 11: Vacuum Forming​

Tools Overview​

-Toaster Oven or similar heat source that will never heat food again
-1/4" MDF or similar
-1/8" Pegboard (easiest option, I'd suggest using hardboard and hand drilling smaller gauge holes)
-1/8" Hardboard
-Wood glue
-Shop Vac or other vacuum cleaner
-1/32" PETG or Lexan
-Binder clips or similar low profile clamps
-Large metal cooking pot
-Equally large container
-A candy thermometer (paddle type)
-Metal coat hanger or similar wire
-Paperclips
-Jacquard iDye Poly
-Airbrush and compressor
-Painters tape
-Alclad II Chrome

Safety Concerns​

-Cutting tools requiring ear defenders and eye protection
-Working with high temperature materials, safety gloves and handling procedures required
-Chemicals requiring use of a respirator and ventilation
-Chemicals requiring use of gloves
-Chemicals requiring use of safety glasses

Building a Forming Platten​

The basic goal here is to build a box the same dimensions or slightly smaller than the maximum size of your toaster oven so that you can slap your frame down onto the top of the box when everything is heated or get it to overlap and press over the edges of the box.

The top of the box is a simple rectangle of pegboard or hardboard with a grid of holes drilled through to allow air to be pulled through the box and into the vacuum. The bottom of the box is a rectangle the same size as your top but using the cheapest sturdy material available, I used hardboard. The four side walls are then built up using a slightly thicker material (1/4" MDF) cut to length to surround the box and have a height 1/4" larger than the diameter of your vacuum hose to allow for attachment to the box while minimizing air gap in the box which will keep everything working efficiently. Internally I added shaped XPS foam to allow for a bevel from all points on the upper face down toward the vacuum hose connection point to further reduce dead air space within the platten.

When assembling the box, hearty application of wood glue is necessary to make sure the fit is air tight. If you do have air leaks outside of the top grid, these can be plugged later with the handyman's secret weapon or a similar flexible gap covering tool. I use a combination of wood glue and nails to keep the top surface connected and ground any nail heads that were proud of the surface down flush.

Building the Frame​

For the frame that will hold the plastic inside the toaster oven I used hardboard cut into thin 1/4" bounding frames that are held together using binder clips. Using two frames and a sheet of PETG you want to make a plastic sandwich that you will clip in place. When heating up the plastic will deform and the clips prevent it from slipping free of the frame and falling onto the hot element.

Forming Plastic​

Because you're working with plastics and hot things at the same time, the concept of off-gassing comes into play here. You want a paint and pesticide rated respirator as well as ventilation when doing this. When heating up PETG it makes very unfriendly fumes. Heat resistant gloves are also nice to have too if you don't have the cold, dead and scarred hands of a cosplayer.

Yes wood burns but doing your homework lets you save money and use leftovers from building your former box. The ignition temperature of MDF is over 400°F and the magic number on most PETGs for forming is between 280°F and 320°F. That being said, hot things are hot and keep a fire extinguisher (ABC Dry Chem is always a good choice) nearby when working with things like this. With a visor buck ready to go, cut the PETG sheeting to the size of your frame and start heating up the toaster oven to your desired temperature. Most suppliers will have a data sheet with temperature ranges for working with their product but if not you can always look up the Technical Data Sheet of the plastic and look for the "Glass Transition Temperature" to get a good range to start working with.

Always have more sheeting than you need if you've never worked with a specific plastic before because you will bork it at least once or twice. You want the plastic to become malleable gradually and evenly so a slow approach to the transition temperature is usually a good practice. Set your heat below that temperature to let the plastic warm evenly and then set it to the known temperature and let the plastic begin to bow and droop down. Once your plastic is near the heating element like in my case, quickly remove the frame and plastic from the heat, turn on the vacuum and press the frame over the buck to get a nice copy of your visor shape. If there's some points that don't have all the details fully captured you can use a heatgun and careful stretching of the plastic to carefully fix any defects but it will introduce more of a beer-goggles effect from uneven thicknesses of material that you're looking through. It's usually best to retry and get another pull.

Always be careful with how you (or the supplier) stocks materials. PETG is hygroscopic and likes to do funny things such as boil off trapped water which can lead to orange peeling in places. Old stuff that’s been sitting in a basement in the temperate rainforest for… years? Sometimes does weird things.

For the Bunyip I did four pulls with two being “fails” that had a bit of a beer goggles effect and two that were “passes” that received chrome with one being installed in the final helmet and the other being a spare.

Dyeing the Visor​

Currently we have a nice copy of the buck in a see through material, but we want to have our faces obscurred and have an awesome colour that represents us. We need to dye the PETG. My go-to for colouring a visor is Jacquards' iDye Poly for Synthetics because it can all be done relatively easily on a stove top. I like to mix the poison soup with a small bit of vinegar and dish soap in a big pot that is never allowed to be used for food ever again. The dish soap helps break surface tension on the water which will limit webbing or streak lines while the vinegar helps for colour intensity and dye penetration of the plastic.

First off the dye needs to be dissolved into boiling water and then have a colour intensifier added. There will be a bit of smell with this stuff so having the range fan and an open window is advised. Also it's dye so don't get it on yourself or your clothes. Before you add your thermoplastic into the hot dye, let the pot of dye cool to at least 145°F or you'll have to go reform your visor.

Trim down the visor and leave a bit of flashing on the edges so that you can drill a hole that you can hook a paperclip through. Then hook the paperclip over a bent wire hanger so that you can dip your visor into the dye.

Dunk the visors in increments of several minutes making sure not to have the plastic touch the bottom of your dye pot (undissolved dye particulate may accumulate or if the temperature is still to hot you may get a flat surface pressed into your visor). Dunk the visors into an ice bath to and check the colour, if the colour isn't vivid enough keep on dunking. Once you're happy with the colour intensity let the visor sit in an ice bath to close pores of the plastic and trap the colour in while rinsing excess dye from the surface.

Then all that's left is to go install your super cool new coloured visor and impress all the other boys and girls with your handiwork.
There are several schools of though on the "best" way to have a reflective finish on visors and I've attempted the following to varying degrees of success

• Metallic spray paint in light mist (I was new to costuming and it seemed like a good idea)
• Mirror tint film (not usable for complex curves and sharp shape transitions)
• Krylon Looking Glass Silver (good opacity, difficult to coat evenly on curves)
• Alclad II Lacquers

I may be biased towards airbrushing things but the ease of use for Alclad II Chrome is fantastic. I used a scrap piece of PETG to make a test sheet to see the reflective finish and opacity at a different number of coats and different pressure settings on the compressor. Each section was divided by a strip of masking tape that was marked indicating the number of spray passes and pressure sprayed at. After playing around I decided eight fine coats with 16PSI was the combination I was after to obscure my face while not sacrificing too much clarity.

The outer side of the visor was masked off and the inside was coated with quick, even, light passes of the airbrush waiting for the lacquer to dry between coats.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 12: Fabric Selection and References​

This post is one half choosing materials and one reference images and associated notes for arguably one of the most daunting Halo sewing projects out there. Being the eager beaver that I was, I went to the local fabric store, scoured the halls for anything and everything that looked like it had the texture that I was after and then had the realisation that I was expecting. I live on an island and selection is often limited. This led to more shopping around and some online ordering but overall I got to look at a variety of options and settle on something that I found relatively easy to work with and in the end looks great.

Fabric Selection​

While at the local shop I was focussed in on duck cloth, cordura or other ripstop style fabrics that would have the right appearance to the Rakshasa flight suit and flak vest. Texture for appearance and light interaction was first, exact colour match was a very close second and ease of working with the material was way down the list. Luckily I encountered a bolt of Ottertex Waterproof Canvas in white and black at the local store along with a catalogue that showed orange as an option.

Fabric Wholesale Direct has swatch options so I ordered a collection of swatches for my best guess and some near neighbours to try against paint samples and other fabric items that were to be used on the suit. I highly recommend keeping swatches of materials with information if you plan on doing a number of sewing projects. Being able to catalogue and quickly reference things that you have some of but not enough for a full project later down the road, life changing.

With the main fabrics selected, I did what any person who can stick fabric together but doesn’t know how to sew does. I went to the magical seamstress/tailor/fabric sorcerer and asked some of their thoughts. In this case FANGS delivered!

Oh wow. Ottertex is no joke. I have a metric crap tonne of it here. I use it for my bag interiors because of the really great structure it has. I never have to add any further interfacing to the interior because of that structure. Of course, some bags still require a stabilizer, but that's different than an interfacing. You haven't asked for any of this, so feel free to ignore the rest of it. I just thought I'd share some of it my working knowledge of Ottertex.

I haven't looked at everything they offer in that line. I use the 600D waterproof canvas. It is a dream to sew with. I mostly just use my industrial but I've definitely used it successfully with my semi industrial and my domestic Juki. It just takes some tension adjustments. I do recommend a longer stitch length and a 90/14 microtex needle. You might even want to go with a heavier thread. You could go with a Tex 35 which will work on most domestics. My Juki and my semi industrial both will use Tex 45, which is the minimum that my industrial takes. This will give you that really lovely top stitching and given that it's some sort of bonded thread (either nylon or poly depending on the brand) your stitches will be nice and strong to deal with that heavy fabric. You can get a lot of Tex 35 or 45 from Amazon but watch the reviews for whether or not it's a quality thread. The challenge will be to find orange. But I own it so it is out there. Mine came from the US though (Wizardry Stitchery). You can also try Siah Swag Bags - I think she has Tex 45 in orange. There are lots of options to find Tex threads in the US but for some really bizarre reason the duty on thread to bring it in is like 8000%. It is the whole reason you won't find a lot of options within Canada. It's just too pricey. Definitely a drawback.

Obviously, if it has the coated backing, you'll want to do any ironing from the front. It gets super drapey when heated. I mist it with some water before using my heat press and that usually does the trick but deep wrinkles can be a little bit challenging to get out but they do come out with patience and time. Of course the water just pools on the top and doesn't go through but it does help for some steam to help release wrinkles from the front at least. If you find at all that it's fraying - it can a tiny bit - just run a lighter along it and it will seal the edges really nicely.

I made a cover for our fire table. The original one was torn to pieces just from the wind rubbing and pulling it along the corners of the table. The one I made is 3 years old now and while completely faded from the sun, there isn't a tear in it. The only other wear has been along the bottom edge of the hem. It's pretty impressive stuff.

For the puffy look that I see in your first photos, I highly recommend a foam stabilizer as opposed to quilt batting. There are several different versions of this stuff but the cheapest of which is headliner foam meant for car upholstery. It's usually pink or grey. You can also get a Pelon version called flex foam which comes in a few different versions with iron on capability or not - so if you're using a thin cotton for your inside you could fuse to that but you couldn't fuse it to the Ottertex. In that case I'd just use the sew in version, although you'll want to keep it out of your seam allowances. The sew in version is just a little cheaper. You can also glue it in with something like Beacon glue or a 505 spray basting spray just to keep it from shifting as you quilt. It likes to move around. You can, if you're concerned with it shifting in areas without the quilting, keep it in the seam allowances and the zigzag a few times over the edge just inside your seam allowance to squish it down. This will help reduce the bulk, but definitely keep it out of areas where multiple layers meet up as much as possible. There is also a brand called Annie's Soft and Stable. Also a good choice and much the same as the Pelon brand. Personally, I'd cut your fabric and foam larger than your pattern piece, quilt it and then cut out your pattern. Then zig zag around the edges to squish the foam before sewing it to other pieces.

You could probably get away with no lining at all and just quilt your fabric to the foam with the foam being next to you. It might get a little frisky though at seams where there will be lots of rubbing so be sure to wear an underlayer to keep it from rubbing you raw in undesirable places. I wouldn't at all recommend not having a lining if you're going to use quilt batting for your padding as it will just pull apart over time, and likely quickly leaving you without the padded look anymore.

At first it took a bit of out of sync blinking for my brain to click into gear and comprehend the astoundingly helpful info dump but she did not steer wrong even if my fabric selection was wacky.

All that was left to do was to turn a pile of fabric into a cool spacemens outfit. But first, more planning.

References​

I live and die by the little A6 notebook for projects like this. List making and small notes along with sketches help to organize a seemingly insurmountable task into bite sized chunks. Once crunch time hits, having that little check off list gives you a little treat of serotonin by scratching off a “to-do” item and making it a “done list” item. If anyone ever has recommendations for stationery and handy notebook items, I’m all ears.

The following is the digital collection of references related to the Rakshasa soft parts and the verbatim notes that I took regarding each section. If I missed any small detail, please let me know. The internal desire to fully understand this core is great.

This post is a lot of verbatim information, huh? Anyway, Rakshasa soft goods info dump.

Shins below kneepad​

-Four panels per leg
-Cuff at ankle

Pants below belt​

-Four panels per leg
-One riveted cable guide

Flak vest​

-Zipper front
-Outer edges finished with bias tape
-Font pattern per side 3 wide 4 high grid pattern above 12 wide by 1 high ribbed pattern
-Back pattern per side centre trapezoid plus two long panelsabove 12 wide by one high ribbed pattern
-Trauma strap at top of rear trapezoids
-Over Shoulder straps have a hard plate insert on top.
-Two sewn cable guides into chest plate
-Four tensioning belt loops per side.

Flight Suit Arm​

-Five panels total, center panel aligns with epaulettes
-Two inner arm panels surround cutout of inner elbow vent
-Two outer arm panels surround elbow padding
-Center panel has one visible cable guide at the elbow that is riveted. Cables extend along panel to the top of the shoulder underneath the flak vest and can have more cable guides hidden by the flak vest and shoulder bell
-Cable guide at shoulder bell front for crimped cable
-Simple hemmed cuff at wrist, can be a velcro or snap connection for better fit.

Flight suit torso -Freestyling because hidden​

• Front access zipper

-Epaulette panel and then two panels front and back that align with the arm sleeve panels.

Shoulder Bells​

-Large main rectangular portion
-Band that extends under the arm is segmented into 8 equal rectangular panels, bias tape surround and looks like separate piece.
-Rear webbing tensioning strap over buckle

Main Padded Belt​

-This is magic. Two layers with loops.
-Rear loops have grommets or snaps, four loops, two snaps or grommets each. -Looped connections for the tailbone plate
-Rear two tensioning D rings that are just there I guess?
-Pouches that are possibly mounted on the outer layer of the belt with loops
-Front of belt has four loops for the outer belt. No grommets or snaps here. Looped connections for the cod plate
-Velcro connection on inside of the belt, decorative outer belt buckle

Neck Seal​

-Four ribs on each side and a front/back panel that can be used for a velcro or zipper closure

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 13: Flexibles and Soft Parts - Pattern Creation​

Tools Overview​

-Rulers
-Tape Measures
-Tailors Chalk
-Painters Tape
-Scissors
-Fabric Scissors
-Weights (1-2-3 Blocks)
-Butchers Paper
-Sharpies

Safety Concerns​

-Repeated actions and repetitive motion that requires you to take care of yourself, take a break and stretch.

Pattern Making​

If anyone ever told you that I know how to sew, they are a fibber. I have a loose understanding of how to tame the wild magics that are sewing machines and the eagerness to rip things apart to figure out how they go together.

Some clothes were sacrificed to the crafting deities in the name of discovery and their efforts will not be forgotten.

Flight Suit​

The fight suit is the base of the Rakshasa form and thankfully it is best approximated with a pair of coveralls or similar. Yes, it can be made with a separable top and bottoms but for my purposes I wanted panel lining and colour matching across parts to be pristine. To achieve this clean and continuous look I first needed something to help me as a base. You might recognize these coveralls from the Traxus Dock Worker days because I had purchased a few sets at that time to make use of for a full local fireteam.

The coveralls had primary panel lines marked with the assistance of CplYapFlip, registration keys were added and all parts were separated.

At this point everything was transferred to paper which could be reused during the sewing process. As always, registration marks are important and labelling everything with clear, simple notes so that a con-crunching brain running on two energy drinks and a forgotten lunch can still produce the final product.

With easily measurable and defined patterns in hand, everything can be then transferred into the land of math and digital representations. For projects like this I am always the test dummy and with the tricky parts sorted out, an easily adjustable version with documentation is available to remove some of the head scratching aspects. Below is a sample workflow of transferring a series of flat shapes and measurements into something 3D. You know, inverse Pepakura unfolding.

The simple explanation of this process is what I can only assume tailors much smarter than me can do on the fly by taking key diameters, point to point measurements and building up a frame before smoothing out shapes into something visually appealing. After that it’s a series of splits and separations to form individual panels.

The bitter irony of the matter is that for these objects to be of any use, they then need to be re-unfolded. So at this point we’ve destroyed a 3D fabric object to make flat paper parts to make a digital 3D object that then needs to be flattened to be turned into scalable paper patterns for other people to use…

Going through the extra digital steps is by no means necessary, it’s only required if you’re making an absolutely everything file pack.

Flak Vest​

Compared to the Flight Suit, the Flak Vest is easier in a way due to the planned quilting method for the piece. It just ends up being a lot more little intersecting lines to figure out and then transfer to the fabric.

Padded Belt​

Honestly, this was the easiest part to template out. The only tricky part was the even spacing of the loops. If you’ve never attempted a large sewing project and you want to make a Rakshasa, start here.

The most complex portion of this belt is all six small pouches to be added onto the belt. Personally I wasn’t a fan of their appearance and lack of utility at their scale so I didn’t add all six and often don’t wear them.

Shoulder Bells​

As previously mentioned the Shoulder Bells have several precisely positioned components required for integration of the fabric and the hard parts of the armour. The basic design of the template was built around the measurements of the Bicep piece and additional greeblies for the proper appearance were added after. This is primarily a piece to simplify rigging and reduce strain on the wearer but it may as well look cool at the same time, right?

Strapping​

The Rakshasa has so much extraneous strapping, some of it being reasonable, some of it being nonsensical. All of it ties into the look and feel of the suit.

Of utmost importance are the straps supporting the chestplate, the straps from the padded belt to the thighs and the straps on the forearms. Everything else is just flavour that oozes cool aesthetic. After wearing the suit and seeing photos of the finished costume there’s certainly a few others that are easy to spot if missing but amongst the chaos of webbing, tape, zip ties and buckles if you can nail down those few strap lengths for yourself, you’re golden.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 14: Flexibles and Soft Parts - Assembly​

Tools Overview​

-Fabric Scissors
-Straight pins
-Wonder clips
-Fabric weights
-Tailors chalk
-Sewing machine of choice
-Sanity (optional)

Safety Concerns​

-Repeated actions and repetitive motion that requires you to take care of yourself, take a break and stretch.
-Poke and prod injury with pins and needles

The assembly of the Rakshasa undersuit follows a similar sequence to that of the previous post that showcased the patterning concepts. First the Flight Suit was assembled, followed by the Flak Vest, Padded Belt and Shoulder Bells. Once those were completed the interconnection of all parts was finished focusing on ease of suiting up and comfortable rigging of the armour.

Overall it was a fairly straightforward process of following the patterns, remembering order of operations for being able to access certain features and paying attention to the fine details.

To have an easy to adjust undersuit that looks tidy, is comfortable and washable I designed everything to work around simple segmented sewing that was easy to check measurements and alignment of features along the way. The waist panel is separate which helps with comfort adjustments related to height and limits some of the uncomfortable “death by liner wedgie” that some of the coveralls I’ve worn at work are known for.

To all the sewing adepts out there, I apologize in advance. My sewing knowledge is gathered in bundles and I mostly know how to do things but telling you what anything is called? Heh. Lots of hand waving to show what the fabric is doing.

For arguably one of the best sewing tutorials out there, I highly recommend indigoD0g’s tutorial for the glossary of terms and machine basics.

Just to further point out that I am a sewing novice, you'll be able to see a number of interesting weights used for the fabric near the floor table including 1-2-3 blocks, McMaster Carr boxes of bolts, literal aluminum barstock and water bottles. Make due with what you have on hand, especially for side hobbies within your main hobby!

Lining​

Due to the fact that I knew this costume was going to be sweaty I wanted a lining layer to help with airflow and separation from the outer layer. The design itself follows the method of bag-lining the top half and bottom half of the Flight Suit. To do this a simplified copy of the separated outer panels is created and sewn using a polyester lining material. I had completed a mockup using a moisture wicking sportswear but the overall comfort of the piece was not great. The skin-feel of material did not pass and that material was set aside.

As you can see the simplified patterns are just a matter of combining adjacent parts and reducing the overall number of panels required to be sewn together. Every little bit of time saved is more time to spend on other parts of the project!

Once a pair of pants and a stylish silky jacket are completed, they can be set aside for final assembly later.

Taking the advice FANGS offered I began preparing the Ottertex fabric and sewing sections together being mindful of access in subsequent steps to easily reach all required areas with the sewing machine. I wanted as little hand sewing as possible in this project. I’d say that working in manageable chunks like this is something that you can do one day at a time to progress the overall suit at a reasonable pace, I did not. The whole undersuit was the work of five very long days of sewing.

The Ottertex once wetted slightly with a squirt bottle and then heated beneath parchment paper with an iron presses beautifully and makes for top stitching and decorative parts very satisfying. If you choose to work with a fabric like this, take it slow and don’t overheat it. I didn’t cook anything but I was always careful of letting sleepy Turbo not forget about the iron being on.

Again, I don’t have any formal training on how to put garments together, I kind of eyeball it based on other items that I’ve encountered over the course of 30ish years of wearing clothes. To match the appearance of the game it made me look up the different sewing order for trousers, pants and jeans. In the end some of it stuck with me and I understand seam dominance a little better now and how the order effects durability of the garment and overall appearance.

With everything still relatively flat and the lining still separate, all loops and decorative guides were added. Again, this was to minimize hand sewing for hands that had also been sanding armour for the better part of a few weeks.

The bottom and top half were finished, at this point the lining was added by stitching at the wrist and ankle cuffs as well as at the collar. The colour divided segments were measured and a waistband was added that would create a continuous pattern of the white and orange. Adding in the waistband allowed for an exact measurement of the zipper to be taken so that it could be adjusted for comfort of getting in and out of the flight suit. Adding in the zipper finished securing the lining in place.

The Flight Suit feels like it could be it’s own costume with how much work went into it but we weren’t finished yet!

The Flak Vest does a lot of the story telling of the Rakshasa suit with all the panelling, loops, cooling hoses and other goodies that tie into the armour. I wanted to make sure that the spacing of everything worked well with the armour plates so there was a fair bit of measure, check, remeasure and adjust going on. When it came to strapping everything onto the costume later it was fairly simple of finding an intersection of a few known points, placing the armour there and then sizing straps to length.

Thanks to the way that these panels were set up as a large quilting project, it was a fairly simple task of transferring patterns onto the fabric and following along with the sewing machine. If there wasn’t the fear of running out of time before picking up people from the airport, I’d say that this was really fun.

The Padded Belt was again, simple math and dusting off the grommet punch from storage that I don’t recall using since building Link. All said and done with the power of a soldering iron to melt holes in the nylon webbing, the whole belt took maybe a little over an hour to put together. Big rectangles are easy!

The Shoulder Bells were another exercise in quilting to add detail that appears in the game. A ruler and painters tape is your good friend when marking things that you don’t feel like washing after. Again the grommets were used as mounting points to the biceps and help with the rigging to the harness that I wear underneath the Flak Vest.

The only odd part of these were the small fabric wrapped bleeder/top-up hoses that I assume are meant for the in-universe suit cooling system. They were made with a fabric tube sewn over a piece of flexible surgical hose and then a band of lock-wire was twisted around to kink the hose as shown in game.

​

The remaining cooling hoses are made using two ropes cut to length and wrapped in a fabric sleeve.

​

The Bunyip helmet has a series of elastic bands that run the length of the helmet for tacticool purposes. I used them to add some Miku theming and pink to the costume. Drilling into a 95% finished helmet sixteen times was more than a little intimidating but the final look is fun and I can swap the colours out later if I feel like it.

With the main fabric components of the Rakshasa finalized, it was only decorative strapping. I was most certainly not caught at the AirBnB of Otafest adding padding and straps to the costume after my IA MkVII had a catastrophic failure on day one of the event.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 15: Electronics​

Tools Overview​

-Soldeing Iron
-Helping Hands
-Fume Extraction Fan
-Wire Strippers

Safety Concerns​

-Working with high temperature materials safe handling procedures required
-Chemicals requiring use of a respirator and ventilation
-Chemicals requiring use of safety glasses

Arguably, the electronics setup on the suit is very simple and can be broken into four separate zones.

1. Helmet - power for three fans
2. Microphone
3. Voice Amplifier
4. Light Sticks

Helmet Fans​

Two fans are placed in the cheek panels blowing out towards the neck opening and one is placed blowing down across the visor to minimize fogging. These are all simple 4020 and 4010 fans that are ducted to help with directional flow. If you have a 3D printer you probably have a handful of spares laying around. All of them are 5V and can be operated off of a USB powerbank that is either within the helmet or run as an umbilical cable into a pouch within the chestplate.

UHF Microphone​

The microphone is compact, rechargeable and most importantly UHF and not Bluetooth. I generally use Bluetooth for music in the costume or other simple controllers so having this feature is a plus.

Velcro loops sewn to nylon webbing and then velcroed into the helmet allow for removal for charging and adjustment of the microphone as required.

Voice Amplifier UHF/Bluetooth Rx​

Even with typos in the Amazon advertisement, you know it’s good. It is a small form factor with a battery life that is longer than the average convention day and it can play from SD card, Bluetooth and UHF inputs all at the same time. Knowing that you can do more than a few shenanigans.

Light Sticks​

These were added all because of word association with Kingblade Lightsticks from Brace of Blades the attachment in game.

They are very useful for concerts or for guiding people around a dark convention hall.

Music Control​

Combining a Raspberry Pi Zero W with a Pimoroni Display Hat Mini gives a compact screen with four tactile buttons that oddly fits within the screen shape of the FOX 2449. With a few libraries and some tinkering you can get a handy little device that displays and can control the playlist of the suit while walking around without fishing out your phone.

For a slightly cheaper method with a smaller footprint, this guide is perfect.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 16: Otafest Glamour Shots​

The most important part of armour making is being able to take it out for a spin with a bunch of friends. Here’s to another Otafest build and all the cool people who travelled all the way to Calgary to be gremlins together!

How the suit was revealed to social media…
Grippers with MrJamin

Stacking up all the Vocaloids in the parkade

Cryptid sighting of two Mikus

Immediately finding a cool Itasha at the con

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

Max Verstappen noises

Summertime Fun with the gang

Family photo with Baron080 and MarrowofStar

Figma promotional pose as requested by GalacticWombat

Having fun at HCS Worlds

Telling people on broadcast to just hot glue stuff to your skin

Class photo with the cool kids

It’s always a JoJo’s reference

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 17: Future Additions and Longevity​

This post is reserved as an editable reference and index for future updates as needed.

Post Otafest Patch Notes​

Overall the notes for this suit are very positive. It is a warmer SPARTAN than I'm used to thanks to all the material around my core but the trade off in flexibility and ease of suiting up is welcome.

Updated bicep rigging​

The current chest harness is borrowed from my MkVII suit and is most definitely not safety pinned and hockey taped together to be functional. A custom chest rig with adjustable strapping is the top priority for making suiting up more comfortable.

Updated boots to slightly smaller scale for easier use of wheels in Heelies - Completed​

Already completed. The boots have been scaled down and remounted to the Heelies. Seattle was wet and the convention centre did not want wheeled shoes indoors so a later event will be the test run for gliding around as Racing Miku.

Updated decorative strapping​

The circumferential thigh strap is not on this costume. One day I may add it for completeness even though I don’t like the way it looks.

Changed gloves for a closer colour match​

The quest continues for an exact match. One day I may just break down and sew my own gloves using leftover Ottertex.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Post 18: Signing Off​

I hope that this thread will be found as a useful resource for all those who are thinking of taking on the Rakshasa core, those who are design minded and are interested in seeing how others work or for those who want to observe each small portion as an example to better their craft. You may have noticed that the spacing and partitioning of this thread is a little different than usual. I wanted to create a set of small tutorials for each major stage of the design and development process which can easily be referenced by those who wish to better their craft and grow as a maker.

This was designed as my capstone project for the 405th.

Almost nine years ago to the day I joined the 405th in a quest for knowledge. I observed, I read and I talked with others. This forum has been a place that I actively enjoyed and participated in for more than a decade as first a lurker and then an overly active member.

I met people from around the globe, made lifelong friends and valued my time here.

My guiding principle was always that the 405th was at its core a community that believed in education, self expression and the betterment of others. That guiding principle in my opinion is being eroded and the public opinion of the community is in danger of irreparable damage due to choices being made in the upper levels of the organization.

Consistency and clarity for the members was all I asked for. Clarification and correction of guiding documents was all that was needed.

In my heart of hearts I want to see this place that I have called home continue on as it has so that we can still create together but like many have said in a much more eloquent fashion, I simply cannot stay in a place that does not value me for me and I must do what I can to take care of my family and those that I love.

This is not a call for others to leave. This is purely my assessment of the situation against my moral compass. If you are comfortable being part of a group that is headed by one person who can, has and will most likely again undo the work of many volunteers due to disagreement with those who keep the community vibrant, you are more than welcome to stay and enjoy your time. If you are comfortable being a part of a group that is tied to actions that can only be perceived as hurtful to the wellbeing of a large contingent of members, you are more than welcome to stay.

I’m leaving this collection of tutorials as an explanation for others in their quest for knowledge on how to better their abilities. I've always strived to share with others the knowledge I gained back with new approaches or blending of methods. I'll continue to do so, just under a different flag for the foreseeable future.

None of my assets that are linked as free resources will be removed by me and I do not ask for anything that I created for the community to be taken away by forum administrators as a collective punishment. I want the 405th membership to succeed and grow in their creative endeavours. If you have read this far, thank you. I hope that something that I have posted over the past nine years will help with your costuming journey.

This is TurboCharizard signing off.

See you planetside.

 

[Benton188]

I regret nothing. Billboard advertisement weaponry is the way of the future.