Walking polygons

[Jeckulz]

Right.
Ive been having a browse through the creation discussion and I was just wondering how you get your pep armour so that it doesnt make you look like a human polygon rendering?
It seems to be quite common place to see bumpy armour, but I wanna get it as close to the Chief's as possible.
Can this be done with pep, or am I trying to polish a turd?

 

[Xavier]

very simply, the way pep "thinks" everything has to be a flat surface, and to make what seems like a rounded surface, it makes several lines. what pep does is take a circle and make it a decagon, or, it brakes it into flat edges, the only way your going to get better than slyfo currently is with bondo, after youve finished resining and glassing.

 

[AoBfrost]

After you fiberglass and resin and are almost ready to paint, get out a cheap sand block with rough sandpaper and sand the crap out of everything on the outside, first spray the peice with some cheap base color, white,grey,black all works, it shows imperfections and angles, sand the edges, pointy spots, round it all down, thats how I did my helmet and it came out very smooth, not 100% smooth, but better than no sanding.

 

[Jeckulz]

So youre saying layer the EXTERNAL side with FG matting then sand.
Ive read that this is a bad idea?
How long would it take for instance, to complete a helmet in this way?

 

[dwoo]

So youre saying layer the EXTERNAL side with FG matting then sand.

Actually you are to paint a coat of resin on the external to strengthen the cardstock for the next step -- FG/resin the INTERNAL. Once you have completed the FG internal step you can now sand away the cardstock "skin" in those bumpy spots and still have significant thickness in those spots thanks to the FG.

NEW IDEA:
I paper mache'd my kids armor for Halloween and dealt with the deformation brought on by the paper mache paste but it gave me an idea. Before you pull out the resin, you can massage a little paste (diluted white glue works) onto the cardstock to soften the paper and "relax" the bumps to create rounder surfaces to make for less sanding later. I assume the dried paste/paper will not inhibit the resin of the following steps.

-dwoo

 

[AoBfrost]

res outside
resin inside
resin outside again
GLue fiberglass inside
resin over fiberglass
sand outside
reresin outside lightly
Paint.

Thats what I did.

 

[Sean Bradley]

Polygons.... too many polygons.


You can use body filler and a palm sander and make short work of those polygons.... but I have a feeling that most people grow to love the clean look of the straight lines alll over their armor... and remember how long it took to make all those folds ... and can't bring themselves to sand them out...

 

[Barkode]

heh

 

[AoBfrost]

I like the lines, except on the back calfs, front chest peice and helmet, I sanded them out, left everything else polygon'd.