Halo Legends: Spartan Daisy-023

[TurboCharizard]

Last time we talked about the helmet it was a fancy solid chunk of 3D model waiting to be turned into a wearable bucket. My usual order of operations for this is to make two supplementary shapes, a visor cutout and a neck cutout, take them all into Blender and do some magic BECAUSE MESHMIXER DIDN'T FEEL LIKE COOPERATING.


In Blender I first import the main body of the helmet and under Modifiers I select the helmet and Solidify to create an interior hollow of the helmet to the desired thickness. For a correctly scaled 3D print I'll usually go for a 5mm thickness to allow for two outer walls of 1.2mm (three perimeters) and small section of infill to help keep weight down. With this hollowed out helmet I then import the two cutout shapes and selecting the now hollow helmet form and one of the cutouts under Modifiers again I use Boolean > Difference to make a pair of openings in the helmet.


The new Blender 2.8 Beta is really nice and I highly recommend giving it a try. The UI is greatly improved and there's definitely a bit more processing power to do some of the more complex tasks. Unfortunately my models were a bit to high poly or there was some sharp angles and intersections that threw Blender for a loop and made a bunch of weird internal faces. Normally I'd be perfectly fine with that as long as everything was printable because I'd just run it through Azure 3D Printing Tools to quick fix the mesh and get something that works. For this model though I wanted to make it available to everyone on the forums for free so I had to go in and clean up the mesh to guarantee the .stl file works for every slicer without issue. SketchUp is a hero here and using the Solid Inspector extension any internal faces or holes in the mesh are easily identified and quick* to remove.


Printing was rather painless with two printers chugging away. I had done all the slicing and hollowing after scaling the model on my Armorsmith avatar so I already had a pretty good idea that everything would fit. I also got to do my best Viper 466 impression with a cheapo version of his 'Ronto Trooper as well as test the shoulders for collisions.


It's very close fitting which is good for the slim anime stylings but not so great for the impending sense of claustrophobia this helmet will likely impart if the air gets stale and it gets warm. Luckily the cheeks and the ridge allow for plenty of space to tuck fans into. I haven't checked to see if I can tuck my microphone into the chin yet but I'm thinking it may be a bit awkward in the space.

Everything was glued together using Devcon 5 Minute Epoxy and clamped together working from top front, top back, bottom back, chin to allow clamping surfaces to be accessible through the whole process. Welcome to the family little guy!

*I still spent about 6-8 hours cleaning up the helmet so quick is relative.

 

[Dirtdives2424]

How do you clap rounded off pieces?

 

[TurboCharizard]

How do you clap rounded off pieces?

Foam chunks as a wedge between the part and the clamp. There's also the option of band clips depending on the shape of the object you're working with but I just use simple bar clamps and scrap foam because it's less fiddly.

 

[ReClaimer8015]

For this model though I wanted to make it available to everyone on the forums for free so I had to go in and clean up the mesh to guarantee the .stl file works for every slicer without issue. SketchUp is a hero here and using the Solid Inspector extension any internal faces or holes in the mesh are easily identified and quick* to remove.

Haha, didn`came to my mind to use Sketchup for that! Haven`t done anything in that programm for a while! But Sketchup + Photoshop make a great combo for early concept pictures, atleast for me. Thanks in advance if you make the file available, especially when making the extra work of cleaning it up for easy slicing.
Do you have enough space left for inner padding of the helmet? Or is that what clamping surfaces are? (Google translates into weird german terms)
That really does look like a tight fit.....at first i thought you might use a moveable lower chin piece to get that extra space to get in
The pic in the first post of this thread makes it seem like there is a seperate middle part.
I`ll keep watching this.....

 

[ReClaimer8015]

Well, you didn`t model it that way - i just saw that. But it is so easy in cartoon or anime to imply deep mechanical features, cause you don`t have to work it out in the end
Or you could make an invisible seam in the model which seperates the back part for easy removal and quick access in any case of repairs.
Easy to say when i "don`t have to work it out in the end"

It is a fetish of sort, Dead Space had those cool helmet animations and Blur took it to halo in that H4 ad where you see Johns suit up, or in the Awakening the Nightmare DLC of Halo Wars 2 where those 2 Brutes fight off the Flood.

And thanks again for all the tips in this thread, a tutorial will be a nice addition.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Haha, didn`came to my mind to use Sketchup for that! Haven`t done anything in that programm for a while! But Sketchup + Photoshop make a great combo for early concept pictures, atleast for me. Thanks in advance if you make the file available, especially when making the extra work of cleaning it up for easy slicing.
Do you have enough space left for inner padding of the helmet? Or is that what clamping surfaces are? (Google translates into weird german terms)
That really does look like a tight fit.....at first i thought you might use a moveable lower chin piece to get that extra space to get in
The pic in the first post of this thread makes it seem like there is a seperate middle part.
I`ll keep watching this.....

The photos are kind of misleading on the interior space since it's not padded yet but there will be room on the top and at the cheeks for foam spacers to help with the final fit. The helmet does slip on and off in a single piece currently but for someone with a wider head than me may want to scale up the model to save some headaches.

I'll be making a separate thread in the 3D Modelling section of the forum and linking it in the Free Model Index likely early next week once I get out of this short period of convention crunch time.

If there's any other Halo: Legends stuff you're looking for I'm already tasked with some other projects from the series so throw your ideas into the wild.

 

[ReClaimer8015]

If there's any other Halo: Legends stuff you're looking for I'm already tasked with some other projects from the series so throw your ideas into the wild.

Guess that is the moment where i casually mention how i like the armour style in the episode "the package"......

 

[TurboCharizard]

Teaser post to tide everyone over for when I have video clips uploaded to YouTube and images sorted out for the next big updates.

29 pieces of armour plating over the course of 56 print jobs.

 

[Sean Anwalt]

That's a beautiful sight

 

[SI3RRA 117]

Awesome stuff. Im sorry this threads fallen thru cracks for me. Finally caught up and looks like I missed a few big updates. Love the write up on using blender and other programs. Does using the solidify modifier work better when the model is whole? If been using this last after all the cutouts and sometimes it does funny things. I glad you posted this. Makes me rethink some of my processes.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Awesome stuff. Im sorry this threads fallen thru cracks for me. Finally caught up and looks like I missed a few big updates. Love the write up on using blender and other programs. Does using the solidify modifier work better when the model is whole? If been using this last after all the cutouts and sometimes it does funny things. I glad you posted this. Makes me rethink some of my processes.

I like running it through Blender as a solid model to first get a consistent wall thickness. In some of the higher poly models with sharp transitions between planes you can get some funny internal geometry created but it's not too difficult to clean up and make printable on any slicer.

I've been having more luck with the Blender 2.8 Beta over the current official release, the calculation time seems much quicker and the results much cleaner.

 

[TurboCharizard]

Dear MoeSizzlac, have I ever mentioned how much I appreciate all your hard work in getting the base of the Halo 3 torso print ready? No?

I'm thinking about getting this as a tattoo.

Daisy is however not a base MJOLNIR Mark VI Gen I wearing SPARTAN-II, no. She wears the finest of MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armour/C variant produced by Beweglichkeitsrüstungsysteme. If you fine folks of the 405th haven't noticed my love for the CQB aesthetic, I hope you're ready for the results of ~25 hours of me showing my dedication to the armour set.

Using a mix of the Halo 3 game rip .obj files available in The Armoury to get a proper scale as well as reference pictures from in game and Google-Fu I built a scale that fit the torso base.

Through the course of an afternoon and evening chatting on the 405th Discord I managed to put together the chest piece in Fusion 360. This was rather easy and chatting with the folks there is always a good time.

Since I these files press fit into the existing MoeSizzlac files, I'll be checking on various slicers to see if everything is guaranteed printable and uploading the CQB variant as a free download for 405th folks. Maybe through a Google Drive link? I'll figure out something and provide a link once everything is sparkly clean.

Now to the eagle-eyed reader, an afternoon does not equal twenty five hours. Playing with Blender to create a printable object, that was the trouble. To make a long (15 hour and several failed attempts) story short, I had a surface perfectly intersecting the cutting surface of MoeSizzlac's torso base I was building on which made for a zero thickness surface. I noticed this big no-no of 3D printing well into several repair attempts in SketchUp and once repaired, everything ran smoothly. Take my headache as a word of warning folks, no amount of lo-fi hip hop radio - beats to study/relax to can keep you from spewing expletives at your own stupidity after wasting several sessions cleaning up files for naught.

Several parts were broken off of the main model for ease of printing and surface prep. I'm inherently a person who would rather put more effort in so that a machine can make my life easier further down the road (that computer engineering lifestyle, design robots to do your work for you) so the snack cylinder, combat knife and sheath were all split and printed as their own objects for ease of printing and sanding. There was also the added benefit of being able to pipeline printing by sending these smaller pieces to the smaller printer while the Tevo Tornado tanked through armour plating.


After a few days we got to a wearable state and something that I'm really proud of. The excitement is real to finally suit up as Daisy-023.

I've already gone through plenty of sanding and body work, so for the next few posts I'll be covering a few of the things that have happened in the past. Apologies to the folks that I send photos to as teasers (Delta Battalion), there's a few longer posts still to go that cover stuff you may have seen already.

Until next time, watch out for Needler rounds!

 

[SI3RRA 117]

Looking great man!!How many pieces were you able to print the the main torso in? And I’d like to see your orientations of the pieces as well if that’s possible?

 

[MoeSizzlac]

Sweet Tat Turbo!!!

 

[TurboCharizard]

Looking great man!!How many pieces were you able to print the the main torso in? And I’d like to see your orientations of the pieces as well if that’s possible?

The torso base is twelve parts completed in eight prints. The CQB U/A was eight parts completed in five prints. The majority of my gcode files with bed orientation are still saved on my PC so I can do a few screen captures for the prints and include them in the printlog post that I have drafted.

Sweet Tat Turbo!!!

Thanks friend, I had a feeling you'd like it.

 

[Schankerz]

I see you too are well learnt in the ways of Google-Fu, I'm most impressed

 

[TurboCharizard]

Looking great man!!How many pieces were you able to print the the main torso in? And I’d like to see your orientations of the pieces as well if that’s possible?

Ask and you shall receive good sir. Along with some other information about the whole build.

Red are failed prints.
Yellow are successful prints that were rescaled to provide better fit.

It's fun to spot blips where I needed the printer for other projects, had a parts failure of the printer or where I was in convention crunch mode. The period of time from the first week of February onward the dates were only filled in thanks to the powers of Google Photos and me taking progress photos.

Yes, I said a wall of data was fun, fight me. The big questions I get frequently are "How long did that take" and "How heavy is it". For the first question, approximately 45 continuous days of machine up time. For the second question it's somewhere under 10kg because of support material but that will change due to all the resin I'm adding.

For the sake of SI3RRA 117 I went through and screen grabbed the majority of my print jobs to show their orientation on the printbed. The white/blue screens are in Repetier Host which I use for my Tevo Tornado and the cyan/yellow screens are in Cura which I use for my Wanhao Duplicator. Yes, one program could be used but I'm lazy and switching printer profiles takes longer than opening up a different software suite on my taskbar. All images are sequential to the big ol' list above. Many of the print orientations place plane cuts along the printbed for better adhesion but on occasion I'll change orientation if I can see a way to print an object in a quicker manner or reduce support requirements. When in doubt though, play it safe!


Any other requests for information about the printing process?

Body work with Bondo Body Filler and Bondo Glazing Putty were finished this week in secret so you fine folks can keep having big update posts.

Today I finished the TurboCharizard Slush'n'Brush Method™ and started the outer coatings so look forward to some photos of shiny armour pieces before they get sanded some more.

 

[Dire]

Yeah...3D printing is cool, but all the sanding,and trial and error, but you make it look great!

 

[SI3RRA 117]

Ask and you shall receive good sir. Along with some other information about the whole build.

View attachment 267196
Red are failed prints.
Yellow are successful prints that were rescaled to provide better fit.

It's fun to spot blips where I needed the printer for other projects, had a parts failure of the printer or where I was in convention crunch mode. The period of time from the first week of February onward the dates were only filled in thanks to the powers of Google Photos and me taking progress photos.

Yes, I said a wall of data was fun, fight me. The big questions I get frequently are "How long did that take" and "How heavy is it". For the first question, approximately 45 continuous days of machine up time. For the second question it's somewhere under 10kg because of support material but that will change due to all the resin I'm adding.
View attachment 267195

For the sake of SI3RRA 117 I went through and screen grabbed the majority of my print jobs to show their orientation on the printbed. The white/blue screens are in Repetier Host which I use for my Tevo Tornado and the cyan/yellow screens are in Cura which I use for my Wanhao Duplicator. Yes, one program could be used but I'm lazy and switching printer profiles takes longer than opening up a different software suite on my taskbar. All images are sequential to the big ol' list above. Many of the print orientations place plane cuts along the printbed for better adhesion but on occasion I'll change orientation if I can see a way to print an object in a quicker manner or reduce support requirements. When in doubt though, play it safe!
View attachment 267154 View attachment 267155 View attachment 267156 View attachment 267157 View attachment 267158 View attachment 267159 View attachment 267160 View attachment 267161 View attachment 267162 View attachment 267163 View attachment 267164 View attachment 267165 View attachment 267166 View attachment 267167 View attachment 267168 View attachment 267169 View attachment 267170 View attachment 267171 View attachment 267172 View attachment 267173 View attachment 267174 View attachment 267175 View attachment 267176 View attachment 267177 View attachment 267178 View attachment 267179 View attachment 267180 View attachment 267181 View attachment 267182 View attachment 267183 View attachment 267184 View attachment 267185 View attachment 267186 View attachment 267187 View attachment 267188 View attachment 267189 View attachment 267190 View attachment 267191 View attachment 267192 View attachment 267193 View attachment 267194

Any other requests for information about the printing process?

Body work with Bondo Body Filler and Bondo Glazing Putty were finished this week in secret so you fine folks can keep having big update posts.
View attachment 267197 View attachment 267198

Today I finished the TurboCharizard Slush'n'Brush Method™ and started the outer coatings so look forward to some photos of shiny armour pieces before they get sanded some more.

That’s awesome man! You’ve definetly got this down to a science! I appreciate it. I like to see others methods with this stuff. I always just have this nagging feeling of, maybe I could have done this piece better if I did something different. I feel that 3d printing modeling has so many variables and so many methods of accomplishing things. Im just trying to take in as much as I can. Thanks again!

 

[TurboCharizard]

Yeah...3D printing is cool, but all the sanding,and trial and error, but you make it look great!

The sanding isn't too bad honestly. Earbuds go on under the ear defenders, put on some music and just go. I'm about 30 hours in on sanding everything so it's just about doing several hour chunks at a time and getting into a good rhythm.

That’s awesome man! You’ve definetly got this down to a science! I appreciate it. I like to see others methods with this stuff. I always just have this nagging feeling of, maybe I could have done this piece better if I did something different. I feel that 3d printing modeling has so many variables and so many methods of accomplishing things. Im just trying to take in as much as I can. Thanks again!

I wouldn't say I have it down to a science, just that I'm going ahead with something a little different than usual and I take a lot of pictures along the way

There's definitely an infinite number of variables when printing even the same two objects so it's a case of find something that works well for you and stick with it. If you want to improve, change one thing at a time and have a method of proving the results are better or worse.