Custom Darth Vader WIP

Hello everyone, i have dabbled in pepakura as well as many other forms and media of model making and replica creation for most of my life on and off and have finally given in to the call of my passions and taken up my beloved hobby full time as well as decided to start a business making the things i love for people who will love them as much as i do. As a high function autistic, i am also using costume and prop replicas as a learning platform to teach myself skills i will need to develop several more "serious" projects. Skills ranging from 3d modeling to all of the fabrication methods ad techniques we all know and love which will be used in the creation of the physical prototypes. Software design and various programming skills will also be on my list in the near future. this project is what you could call my "midterm exam" to show what i have learned so far. I am combining several of my particular favorite fandoms into one awesome build which i hope will be greater than the sum of its parts.
for this build i am creating my own take on a beloved classic, Darth Vader. While Darth Vader is not my absolute favorite caharacter, he is in my top 5 and possibly top 3, my number ONE favorite character is actually a droid in the Extended Universe with designs of being George lucas' SkyNet. Cant remember which story he was in though.
what i am doing in this build is presenting the idea "what if Stark Enterprises manufactured Sith battle armor?". i have looked at each of the various components of his suit and am in the process of making changes and substitutions which when combined will be readily recognizable as Darth Vader but present a completel;y overhauled and fresh look at this cherished creation. and now to the GOOD stuff:
First off i have replaced the shoulder armor with a MMPR Green Ranger Dragon shield to which i have added the chest plate from the "heartbreaker" iron man variant. furthermore i have modified a hulkbuster back plate.

well so far ive managed to fix a few issues with the model i hadnt realized were present to start off with. as it turns out the MK17 "heartbreaker chest plate wasn't actually fully symetrical which was playing hell with getting everything lined up. after zooming in i discovered that the midline was actually shifted slightly off due to a slight difference in the size of the parts on either side of the midline which shifted the center of mass. i selected the left side which was slightly away from the midline and inverted the selection and deleted the entire right side. after that i applied a boolean modifer to mirror the left side and made sure clipping was turned on to limit the inward edit and fixed the model so that now everything lines up correctly. i have further begun editing the dragon shield. so far i removed the center diamond which would not be seen anyway and begun planning where to do specific edits to facilitate merging the MK 17 and dragon shield.

well i applied a Boolean "difference modifier" after seeing that it actually did EVERYTHING i wanted it to do regarding the inside parts i was going to get rid of as well as cleaning up the interaction of the chest plat and shield. it did however delete the entire center of the chest plate. i removed the modifier BEFORE i applied it and duplicated the chest plate and hid the duplicate then re added and applied the modifer. the next step is to unhide the extra chest plate and select what i still want from the chest plate and fill in the chest. i attempted to do this with the back but it wont do what i want it to do so its probably going to end up with me having to do a bit of manual editing. as i have made all three parts completely symetrical i will probably be able to delete half of the model and apply a mirror modifer to the fine tuning and save myself half of the work in getting the alignment correct

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when i applied the modifier i ended up with what amounted to a total duplicate of the dragon shieldwith the chest remenants attached which will allow me to delete the original dragon shield object from this completely and make selection easier. still not sure how or why it did this but by pure luck it saved me a couple hours of work.

you can see here how after eliminating the center diamond of the dragon shield and seeing where the middle part of the chest lines up i have made it much easier to merge the edges into one coherent flow. i am going to experiment with the manifold edge tool and see if this will fix it automatically but i will aslo be doing a completely manual edge edit as well and see which i like the look of better

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you can see here how the middle flared piece and the sides of the heartbreaker chest do not actually meet. i am still deciding if i am hoing to eventually ad some sort of LED accenting but for now i will be also closing these gaps while still retaining the alignment by basically adding a "wall" between the edges of these tow pieces which should have been there all along

I will be watching this build...

Well ... seems you have some great skills available already to pull this of ... and a great mind to learn new tricks of the trade ... keep on going

Chaim

Great idea,
Can't wait to see the finished result!

well had a bit of a hiccough when i went to import the OBJ into pepakura. for some reason it kept using the version with the full peak in the back for the dragon shield when i had deleted and refined the edge bounding what was supposed to be open to expose the MHB backplate. then it combined the three parts into one object which i got listed as three separate objects again yet still acted as one object, as wells as a whole host of other attack bunnies (Monty python and the search for the holy grail joke, google it or watch the damn movie if you dont get it) who decided to fart in my general direction and otherwise cause minor issues which each was pretty much nothing yet in their totality would take me more time to fix than i had already invested so i started over. decided that i wasnt going to try to figure out how to use the boolean modifier on the back plate/dragon shield intersection so i finally got around to learning the knife tool. the NEW model is pretty much the same as the original but due to a slight difference in sizing i was able to get a much better interaction between the back and shield so i could see the diagonal line i wanted to use as a land mark much better. i also realized during the whole process that trying to make a pepakura pattern of the ENTIRE build at once is going to be a bigger nightmare than i had anticipated so will ultimately be only using pep designer with the FULL build to make my reference model for measurements and send each of the three parts to simplify the actual unfold. i also picked up a kinect camera at the local pawn shop for about 20 bucks so i can start doing 3d scans. im going to create a model of myself so i can start doing alignment and scale. its the version with microsoft's "special" connector so im going to have to do a bit of wiring adaptation but i found several detailed giudes on converting this version to usb.

Sym-Cha said:

Well ... seems you have some great skills available already to pull this of ... and a great mind to learn new tricks of the trade ... keep on going

Chaim

Click to expand...

As a high functioning autistic, I have a bit of an advantage in that the "talent" it grants me is an ability to learn enough from study to have skills that surpass my knowledge. I am still learning how even some of the most basic tools and functions of Blender even work, but I do know that things like the Boolean modifier is used for the type of thing I wanted it to do and got lucky that it did so the way I wanted it. I know generally what to usr even if I dont exactly understand why or how YET. Once I am able to find one video or other explanation which helps me understand clearly enough how each function works, my skill level will improve exponentially with each new understanding.

Check your email, I have sent a good amount of pep files to you. Hope you enjoy...

well, havent been able to get any actual construction done as i had to get my computer working again after a misadventure while trying to partition my hard drive for dual booting but now its back up and running. ive been looking at the overall design and im trying to decide betwen going with the mk 4 iron man back (the original red/gold) or the hulkbuster back. the mk 4 back presents a much easier build overall and looks like i will be able to edit the green ranger shield to fit along it better. the way that i would have to edit the ranger shield to smoothly integrate with the HB back gives it a scalloped edge which will be a bitch to assemble while the mk 4 back will require a smoother edge which will give much better structural strength although the hulkbuster back with this just looks sooooo much more badass that the end result would be much more impressive. the fact im going to be wearing a split style cloak does come into play as the back plate wont be seen as much as the rest so i have to decide between awesome details that wont be seen much or a less impressive but still bad ass overall build. the other major change is that instead of using the modified Daedric helmet as the "bell for vader's helmet, im looking at putting the vader facial details onto a stormtrooper helmet, probably an episode 4 trooper if i can find the pep file for it again, and then have it open like an iron man with a deadpool color scheme.

further update, i found a simplified boba fett helmet that i think will work much better. the structure of this helmet will allow me to design a hinge system a lot easier than what i had in mind originally and i think will end up looking much better overall

well i ended up starting the helmet over because i screwed up and saved an erroneous version over my original but was able to re do what i wanted it to do as well as made a few improvements. i separated the "whiskers" and the pred mouth out so i could reposition the whiskers and add in the vader mouth. almost finished with the unfold of the edited pred helmet that has the dome section from the mando bucket rather than the sloped top it originally had so i have that interesting reverse widows peak to use as an accent detail

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the torso model is on hold for a bit while i get the helmet done and then work on the support frame so i have something to attach the armor to in the first place. i will be using the iron man Mk 4 back as it has cleaner lines and makes a much easier melding for the dragon shield and back.