Armorsmith Designer Beginner's Guide

[Sean Anwalt]

Omg theres keybinds!!!

*There're key binds.

 

[PlanetAlexander]

Looking to get Armorsmith, but the reviews for Gumroad seem all over the place. Have people who have used Gumroad (especially for Armorsmith) had a good experience with it?

 

[CMYKey]

I could use a little help scaling my ODST armour for a foam build. My avatar is all set up, I have an idea of the armor proportions for my build, but I'm still struggling to grasp how this might translate to the actual scaling of the armour pieces. I don't have an athletic build, I'm quite slim, so I guess it's the circumference that's throwing me off. The forearms for example, if I uniformly scale these so that the length of the armour is appropriate, the circumference becomes too large. It would fit the length of my forearm, but it would be too large around, it wouldn't fit snug to my forearm.

Basically, I'm looking for a bit more detail and insight for scaling the armour when uniform scaling won't cut it. What is the best practice is for non-uniform scaling? How much can I stretch and pull the armour pieces before they look distorted? Should I stick to one axis? Any tips and pointers are appreciated.

Also, because I'm doing a foam build and need to account for the thickness of the foam, how snug should the armour pieces be scaled to my avatar?

 

[he4thbar]

Forearms are gonna hang a little off your body so just use some foam to hold it in place. Also they come to an end where you might have to just cut off the front piece or make it just wide enough to slide your hand through. Or Dremel it until it fits.
Also don't forget you can change the opacity on armor to see how close it sits next to your body

 

[CMYKey]

Forearms are gonna hang a little off your body so just use some foam to hold it in place. Also they come to an end where you might have to just cut off the front piece or make it just wide enough to slide your hand through. Or Dremel it until it fits.
Also don't forget you can change the opacity on armor to see how close it sits next to your body

Thanks for the tip. How should I go about scaling circumferences though? Like the thighs for example. If I scale it up uniformly so that it properly covers the length of my thigh, it'll be too big around.

 

[he4thbar]

Thanks for the tip. How should I go about scaling circumferences though? Like the thighs for example. If I scale it up uniformly so that it properly covers the length of my thigh, it'll be too big around.

Scale non uniform. when you do that you can scale it in x, y, and z directions. that's what I did to make my thighs tall (because i'm tall) but not too lankey.
To do this, click on the part on your avatar. then right click, hover over scale, and select non-uniform scale.

 

[CMYKey]

Scale non uniform. when you do that you can scale it in x, y, and z directions. that's what I did to make my thighs tall (because i'm tall) but not too lankey.
To do this, click on the part on your avatar. then right click, hover over scale, and select non-uniform scale.

I did that, but I'm afraid of it looking deformed. I might just be overthinking this.

Any other tips for a newbie? Pointers for getting a good fit on the avatar before printing? Things I should keep in mind or look out for?

Thanks, I appreciate your help.

 

[he4thbar]

for a tight fit. you will want it pretty close to the body, and you can look at my thighs, I think they don't look too deformed.

big tip: use the contact/registration marks in the 2d print out.

 

[PaiganBoi]

Your best bet is to scale non uniform. Adjusting the X, Y and Z axis will give you a more accurate fit.
I'm 5' 8" and and skinny as well. While using references and getting opinions from everyone on the forums I was able to scale my ODST.

Post some pics of how your armour is scaled now and we can give help you scale better.

 

[CMYKey]

Your best bet is to scale non uniform. Adjusting the X, Y and Z axis will give you a more accurate fit.
I'm 5' 8" and and skinny as well. While using references and getting opinions from everyone on the forums I was able to scale my ODST.
View attachment 287814
Post some pics of how your armour is scaled now and we can give help you scale better.

Should I be bothering with the "Free Form Deformation" tool? I think maybe that's where I'm getting caught up.

I'll spend a bit of time getting my avatar rigged up the best I can and post it here. Greatly appreciate the help, thank you!

 

[PaiganBoi]

Should I be bothering with the "Free Form Deformation" tool? I think maybe that's where I'm getting caught up.

I'll spend a bit of time getting my avatar rigged up the best I can and post it here. Greatly appreciate the help, thank you!

I don't like using the freeform tool. Its a little wonky in my opinion.

Just to give you an idea, here's how my forearms are scaled.

 

[CMYKey]

Alright, I hope we're not getting too off-topic here. Here's my first attempt. Helmet is a placeholder cause I haven't decided what approach I'm taking for it (and I planned to do it last anyway). I left out the boots because I'm planning to just use a pair of tactical boots on their own (and then I can re-use them for other things)



I used this method to get my proportions, with a bit of tweaking. The torso base was a weird one for me because I have some pretty broad shoulders. So I used the aforementioned method to get the initial scale, which wasn't wide enough to cover my shoulders. So I used the non-uniform scale on the x-axis to make it wider; however, this means that the head hole is no longer circle, it's more of an oval. I'm not sure if it'll be that big of a deal. But it also doesn't seem to be slim enough in the waist, so I was wondering if the better approach would be to uniformly scale the whole torso base to match my shoulders, and then use the free form deformation tool to slim it down near the waist, and shrink the height a little so the whole chest piece sits where it's supposed to length-wise. Unless that just ends up deforming it more.



And here is my gap in the forearms, as discussed earlier. Again, I'm not really sure how much room I should be leaving to accommodate the thickness of the foam.




Another concern is still with the thigh piece. I scaled it uniformly so that the small opening near the knee was appropriate, and then scaled it non-uniform along the y-axis to make it longer to fit the length of the thigh. However, the top opening still seems too big.

The last concern I have is with the length of the torso base - it seems a little too short to me.

Thanks again for the help.

 

[PaiganBoi]

The Ovid shape of the body armour is not nomething to worry about too much. Remember you are using foam. The material is flexible. It's not necessarily going to take an oval shape.
With the forearm there are a couple of things you can do. Like he4thbar mentioned before you can line it with foam to make it fit a little more snug or you could scale it a little more snug and alter the part by making it a two part piece so that it opens up to allow your hand to slip through.

 

[CMYKey]

The Ovid shape of the body armour is not nomething to worry about too much. Remember you are using foam. The material is flexible. It's not necessarily going to take an oval shape.
With the forearm there are a couple of things you can do. Like he4thbar mentioned before you can line it with foam to make it fit a little more snug or you could scale it a little more snug and alter the part by making it a two part piece so that it opens up to allow your hand to slip through.

Okay, I see what you mean with the forearm now. I might be overthinking it. I think I just need to start printing and assembling the paper templates to get a better idea of how it all comes together. Any thoughts on the proportions? Am I on the right track here? I think my shoulder pieces might be a little big.

On a slightly unrelated note, I noticed you and he4thbar both have the bicep "armband" on your builds, which is missing from my files. Is there a file for it somewhere?

 

[PaiganBoi]

Okay, I see what you mean with the forearm now. I might be overthinking it. I think I just need to start printing and assembling the paper templates to get a better idea of how it all comes together. Any thoughts on the proportions? Am I on the right track here? I think my shoulder pieces might be a little big.

On a slightly unrelated note, I noticed you and he4thbar both have the bicep "armband" on your builds, which is missing from my files. Is there a file for it somewhere?

The armband/shoulder mount is actually located in the pepakura files for the ODST.

 

[PaiganBoi]

As for proportions of the forearms, shorten them a bit. If you look at your mannequin the part is right against your wrist and elbow. You will not have great range of motion (I speak from experience, that's why I'm currently in a complete rebuild of my ODST). Your shins as well shorten them a bit. So you can walk, go up/down stairs.

 

[he4thbar]

Related to what paigan said. You can now modify the avatar arms to bend. I highly suggest bending and arm and leg when scaling.

 

[PaiganBoi]

Just saw this on Instagram. A mobile viewer version is coming to mobile.

 

[he4thbar]

This is gonna make building so much easier for me

 

[FalseShepherd]

Is there a way to change the thickness of the pattern lines when printing straight from armorsmith? Similarly, is there a way to export the patterns back to a file that can be read by pepakura? My precision is so low cutting in the really thick armorsmith lines...