Tom's completed Death Trooper Costume build

Hi there fellow RPF members, here is my completed Rogue One Death Trooper Costume.



As soon as I saw these awesome Death Troopers in the Rogue One trailers, I said I have to build that costume!

I do a lot of 3D printing and prop building and built my own Kylo Ren costume for the 501st last year so I thought this will be an awesome challenge.

So I started looking for some STL files online so I could start printing. I came across a company that sold them. The files looked ok so I purchased them, they weren't as accurate as I wanted but I started printing the helmet and armor. Well let's just say the helmet was a disaster and looked like a bobble head and the armor was ok but was going to need some major mods once it was all printed to make it screen accurate. I am learning to 3D model at the moment however my skill level was not up to this challenge. So I pressed on and printed all the armor and helmet.



A great friend of mine who is an Industrial designer saw the files for the helmet and armor and saw what I had paid for them. He said "Mate I will design our own files and get them as accurate as possible, and show you how to do it along the way". I said "That would be awesome, thanks"

Here are the full 3D renders of the helmet and the armor that we can up with





The next step was to start the under suit, well this was going to be a challenge, going by the London 2016 Celebration pics. There are gaskets all over the costume and of varying sizes, Shoulder, elbow, knee, waist and shorts.

So will ref pics in hand I went to every fabric store in Melbourne Australia that I knew and unfortunately with no luck. There was a heap of discussion on the detachment and Facebook forums regarding what type of material it was and no one could identify it.

I finally came across a black waxy denim that was very close in look and texture, so I grabbed a sample and discussed it with a lady I know who is an awesome seamstress. She wiped up a sample by sewing cotton drill on the back and a bunch of straight lines 9 mm apart on the front. I had seen someone else modify their TFA TK gaskets with 4 mm irrigation tube so I tried the same. It looked perfect however it was too stiff and If we had gone this way I would not have been able to walk. So I tried medical 6 mm elastic tube, this was super flexible however there was to much tension in the rubber tube and it bunched the material up. So I finally went to the fabric store and bought some #4 cotton piping cord to do a test and it was perfect So I went and bought another 150 meters of it.

I did some drawings of what I thought the gaskets would look like and how to make them. (sorry I don't know why they wouldn't load correctly)





Here is my tutorial video on the gaskets

[video]https://www.facebook.com/100007031235190/videos/1828393757404981/[/video]

So things where starting to take shape and I had completely reprinted all the armor this time from our files and the looked great.



The process I went through here was to fiberglass resin the front of the print to reduce the amount of sanding I need to do, I also reinforced the back side of the armor with fiberglass resin and matting. I then sanded until smooth primed, painted and weathered the armor.

Here is a video I did explaining what I did for paint and weathering.

[video]https://www.facebook.com/100007031235190/videos/1828376190740071/[/video]

During this time we also worked on the Death Trooper E-11D blaster, it was also 3D designed and printed.



Here are a video on the LED's for my blaster and helmet and the strapping I put on my armor.

[video]https://www.facebook.com/100007031235190/videos/1828434987400858/[/video]

[video]https://www.facebook.com/100007031235190/videos/1828417284069295/[/video]


So with the Rogue One IMAX premier approaching rapidly it was all hands on deck.

The under suit was completed the day before but some adjustment where needed to the knee gaskets only hours before the premier.

All the parts had been printed, painted and strapping had been applied, all the LED had been added to the blaster and helmet...............what was I missing..........oh that's right I hadn't done a full test fit.......D'oh.

So everything was put on, Velcro was added where needed and some duct tape.....the costumers friend.

And it looked fantastic....woohoo



So it was off to the Imax Rogue One premier, with fingers crossed that nothing would break or fall off.........................all good.

Thanks you for looking at my Death Trooper costume build.

Cheers Tom

This looks fantastic, great job on the Trooper!

Rip the LED's out.

That looks amazing Tom, well done! You've pushed me one step further toward going off the deep end and investing in a 3D printer...

That looks awesome! I am seriously considering going this route, ie. 3D printing etc, rather than waiting and paying through the nose for a prop manufacturer to offer it as I am sure the full costume will be offer the charts if we are guided by the current Anovos 615$ helmet.
For starters can you recommend a 3D printer?


Thanks and well done (again)!

Nice work!

Hi Guys, thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it.

3D printing is the way to go for props these days you can make what ever you want and scale it to fit you.

I have 3 large format printers 400x400x500 WOMBOT Modus, 250x250x330 WOMBOT Exilis and a 300x250x300 Creatbot DX. If you want to be able to print a full helmet or large armor pieces in one part you will need something like the WOMBOT Modus. I printed all my large parts on this. I have a few friends in the US who just purchased the Formbot Trex 2 400mmx400mmx470mm they love it so maybe check them out and see what you think.

My main worry with 3D printing would be the large scale finishing work required on the printed parts. In my limited experience (a 3D printed blaster) the object came out with very rough surfaces and required an infinite number of sanding and putty spray painting to get it marginally acceptable and even then the nooks and crannys still had the tell tale signs of the 3D printing.
Was it the quality of the printer or something we just have to live with?

Cheers,
Christopher

and thanks for the heads up on the printers although I have not yet found a EU distributor.

That is amazing! Great job!!

Gosh what an awesome build!

Awesome build, looks truly fantastic!
What did you use for the visor? I've been searching around for some recently and have found some pretty cheap motorcycle Visors, wondering if you used this, or another material?

TTLego said:

Awesome build, looks truly fantastic!
What did you use for the visor? I've been searching around for some recently and have found some pretty cheap motorcycle Visors, wondering if you used this, or another material?

Click to expand...

For the lens, I used a shade 3 welding visor. When my helmet was, 3D rendered we made a template to cut out the lens. I have 8 small holes on the inside of the helmet where you screw I a M3 nut to hold the lens in place.



- - - Updated - - -

I did a photo shoot the other night here are some of the photos.

That's awesome, thanks for the information! I didn't know you could get varying tints / shade levels on Visors, this is something I'll have to definitely investigate myself! Thanks for the information and diagrams! The visual breakdown looks awesome too me!

Wow, that looks really great! Nice job.
Any plans for sharing the (helmet) files? It's the most accurate one I've seen.

I am a big death trooper fan, this looks great!


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That looks awesome I'm also printing a Death Trooper costume, by now I just finish printing the helmet but I still have loads of work to do like put all the parts together, sand them and paint them. A just add you to Facebook so I can see all the details of your post!

Already saw and commented your build on FB...well done.

Are the measurements of your E11D based on pics/ specs of the correct S&T Sterling or did you model it solely based on reference pictures?

You will share an STL file for that blaster with me (Waves hand)