for body armor i would recommend that you try to model it using a human body for a refrence.
so far looks good, looking forward on seeing the whole thing

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The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
-Albert Einstein

The problem is, I really don't have any clue how to start.
What modeling-technique should I use? Reference or by heart?
Where to start? Do you have any ideas?

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Looking good. Is that cellular your using for a bump map? Drag a copy of your bump map to the specular level slot and play around with that a bit.

By the way is that a ES-35 in your avatar?

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Chris

It's a noise map actually. And I'll try that.

The guitar is an Epiphone Dot, the copy of the ES-335

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Looking good, Like altopais said getting some human reference to model the armour is essential.
You could even grab a generic human model from the internet to have in the scene and model against it.

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Have you used this site?
[Link to www.the-blueprints.com]

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Chris

I have two questions now

1) Does anyone know where to find a good male model (free)?

2) I'm thinking of making it a Templar Knight. They wear chainmail with a tabard.
How should I do the Chainmail? Plane-model it and then texture, or should I actually model chainmail?

Hope you can help!

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You could get a reference image from the site I linked above and apply it to a plane, then pose a male biped to fit it.

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Chris

I have done a similiar project like you do now, for a dutch soccer club.

[Link to i193.photobucket.com]

Maybe you can get some reference out of it..

A male model? [Link to artist-3d.com] is great when it comes to all kinds of models.

Depending on what lightning technique you are planning to use on the chainmail, you could either alpha map it [ project ] , model, or bump map it out.

John

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I still can't seem to find a human model that'll do the job.
And I guess I'll do the chainmail as easy as possible, but what's the easiest way?

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Bump map Is my guess

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And how do I do that? Just model a plane, pick a color and assign a chainmail texture to the bumpmap slot?

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You would need to model the chainmail though...alleen de vorm, niet alle randjes. dus zeg maar gewoon als armor..

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probably the easiest way is just with a texture map in both the diffuse and bump slots.
Model the form of the chain mail and use uvw map modifier or unwrap uvw to get the mapping right.
If you want actual chainmail geometry you could experiment by scattering a single link onto the modelled surface. make a single link and a surface to scatter to. pick the link and go to compound objects>scatter>then pick distribution object. then mess with all the scatter options.

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i dont think just bump and diffuse will do though.... make it gleam, maybe a specular map as well, and you could always try an opacity map to get the holes in the chainmail....it seems like a tough task, but i bet it'll make a difference if you're looking for a close-up...
or scatter it like tyson said, i think that's your best bet instead of mucking about with all sorts of maps....

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Cogito, Ergo Sum

Thanks for the replies, I'll try and see where I get.

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The scatter thing isn't quite working out. Once I turn the 'copies' up to around 500, my pc can't cope anymore,
and 500 isn't near the number of rings I'd need. Any other ideas how to approach this?

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You can try switching Proxy mode on and turning down the display ratio. That way it will only show a few in your viewport but render them all.

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Please support us and post a [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com] on your website.

--Matt

If you can't lower the detail on the individual rings, I'd suggest you take desade's advice and use a combination of maps. An opacity map will be particularly important in this case.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

how high res are your links? you should be able to do more than 500 if you make them 3 sided with 6 or so corners. plus you will want to use the display options to only show say 10% of the total rings.

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oh and on that topic (memory-usage), is it easier on the system if something's a primitive (with all its parameters intact) or if it's converted to a mesh/poly? cos i encountered severe memory issues, which led to those black buckets in mental ray, and i had to sit and convert each of the hundreds of objects to editable mesh, and that solved the problem.... although later i discovered there's a max utility just for that, which would've saved me a day

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Cogito, Ergo Sum

I've never really tested that but I have noticed that editable mesh is very slightly less burden than editable polygon meshes. Making everything you can instanced rather than copied can help.

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