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Richard Eyre-Pugh





Joined: 26 Jan 2010

Posts: 4

PostPosted: Tue 26 Jan, 2010 2:40 pm    Post subject: Help! Looking for a push in the right direction.         Reply with quote

Hello! You guys seem to have a very pleasant and professional forum here, and I stumbled across it by chance. Having had a read over one topic here, I thought I should register and ask you guys for some help.

I do love history, but my understanding of weapons and armour is fluent only for the modern era, if you go back far enough I can only recognise and name a few things like a Zweihander, Gladius, longbow.... horse.... you get the idea.
Anyway; the point is that I am doing a games design degree at the moment. My final year 3d project, given what my more senior friends have told me, will be a short animation to visualise a game concept.

Of all the things I thought of, in terms of technical requirements, coolness and theme, I have settled on a rather controversial sci-fi concept. Basically set in a galactic war between religious fundamentalist civilisations. So I am curious as to named and dated examples of crusader and also muslim nation's armour, to use as reference to mix and meld to produce nice looking armour for robot soldiers for this concept. I found a topic here talking about Islamic armour, and how nothing was uniformly "muslim", just as western or indeed eastern armour wasn't uniformly "christian". More of the major Muslim or Christian nations.
So, could you guys be so kind as to point me to any typical or unique examples of the major christian and muslim nations? I see there's a fair few albums here, so I'll be downloading lots of pictures for reference from them. But as I say, I'd like some good examples that I can have named and dated, so I am aware of what is what, and thus can have a good intellectual basis for creative elaboration on the theme I've developed.

I think the animation in the end would look very good, but as with any artistic work; I need to find and understand a good deal of reference material to base my endeavour on.

Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks Happy
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P. Cha




PostPosted: Tue 26 Jan, 2010 3:01 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

For your endeavor, getting too academic can be bad thing. I would think that basing it off a movie like the kingdom of heaven maybe a better idea as they use the cultural ¨iconic¨ images of the two cultures in question. Otherwise what you intend to show may get lost in academia (which is a good reason why movies aren´t very historically accurate Happy ).
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Sander Marechal




Location: The Netherlands
Joined: 04 Dec 2009
Reading list: 17 books

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PostPosted: Tue 26 Jan, 2010 3:23 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Are the religions in your game/animation based on real religions or fictitious? If the latter, I would not look at the crusades themselves too much for inspiration. Just look at armour styles in general and create armours that are really different and that distinguish themselves.

I think many sci-fi productions already draw inspiration that way. For example, in Wharhammer 40K the space marines armour looks 14th century to me, especially the ones with the houndskull-like helmets. The Cylons from Battlestar Galactica remind me of gothic german armour with sallets, especially the ones from the old TV series. Etcetera.

PS: I'm a (game) developer myself. I'd like to see what you come up with in the end.
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Lukasz Papaj




Location: Malbork, Poland
Joined: 09 Mar 2009

Posts: 59

PostPosted: Wed 27 Jan, 2010 12:39 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Somehow the theme seems quite similar to Frank Herbert's "Dune"
As a designer of sorts (did some 3d work of now defunct game project with similar themes, architecture is the job) i can advice this : it's OK to look for inspiration, but it is the mechanics of the thing you need to get right.
For example in Dune the theme is civilization where all computers are banned, and the invention of "shield" brought back the bladed weapons. It works as a system.
WH40K's Marines are both bio-engineered and use powered armours. It sorta works, but when you look closely you'll see that the suits leave vital spots (stomach area) suspiciously open to damage, while oversized pauldrons only works when arms hold bolter near waist (try to do attack from von tag animation in the thing, or try fencing moves with chainsword Happy ) Those are details, but can turn animator's work into nightmare.
Also one need to consider phylosophical implications of given religions (say Muslim stance on body "mutilation" beyond circumscription, Roman-Catholic stance on in-vitro etc etc) Would both sides use similar technology?

So may 0.02$ advice: think how things work, how they will move . Existing historical "stuff" has the advantage that they are proven to work in their environment. But you'll be changing environment, right?
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Sander Marechal




Location: The Netherlands
Joined: 04 Dec 2009
Reading list: 17 books

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PostPosted: Wed 27 Jan, 2010 1:30 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Lukasz Papaj wrote:
try to do attack from von tag animation in the thing, or try fencing moves with chainsword :) Those are details, but can turn animator's work into nightmare.


Good point. IIRC there are various free 40K animated models available on the internet (e.g. Doom and Quake series player models). You could have a look at those to see how the animators solved the problem.
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Richard Eyre-Pugh





Joined: 26 Jan 2010

Posts: 4

PostPosted: Wed 27 Jan, 2010 8:33 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll take them all into consideration Happy I'll be working on concepts before long. I have few weeks until I need to actually get down to working on it, but I am very keen to get the conceptualisation started.

The religions will be presented as somewhat demonic iterations of major world religions. For now to limit my potential workload and to cause as much controversial humour as possible I'm keeping the two factions which will appear as broadly Christian and Islamic. If I want to produce a good quality animation for my time constraints then I would say I'll not be making more than 2 different soldiers per side to appear, but we'll see how it goes.

I definitely know what you mean of 40k, and recognise what you're talking about with the cylons.

The choice of armoured soldiers was simple; there isn't a need to attempt to produce realistic fleshy creatures (which take too long to do, and would require a technical skill I am not confident I have right now), I streamlined this further and thought I'd make them androids... cuts out the needs to use cloth modifiers as well... but at the same time allowing for some detail beyond the armour in the form of robotic wires and mechanisms.

I'll keep you guys posted as this progresses; anything else you think of or can link to is greatly appreciated still!
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Lukasz Papaj




Location: Malbork, Poland
Joined: 09 Mar 2009

Posts: 59

PostPosted: Thu 28 Jan, 2010 12:07 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

As for styling: if one went with real conflicts on the line you're proposing, then we have three major times when the conflict was.

First is of course are the crusades: (and subsequent fall of Byzantium)
http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=18570
http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=12417
Also I think one can suggest looking into "Arn" franchise, though I haven't seen those movies, so I cannot tell how accurate it is.

Second: Reconquista in Spain (Ended with fall of Grenada 1492)
http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=14147

Third is XVII century, with siege of Vienna (1683) as main point

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=18502
http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=16804 (style of Indian armour from period in first page)
http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=9391
Hussars feature spotlight

And the general thread:
http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=4427

Of course thats just apetizer, use search on forums , also look into "Features" section.

Actually, humans are not that hard to model. Dunno what soft are you using, but there are some good tutorials out there, .. actually one guy just started a video diary of human sculpt few days ago on blendernation.

Will be great to see what you've made Happy
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Richard Eyre-Pugh





Joined: 26 Jan 2010

Posts: 4

PostPosted: Sat 30 Jan, 2010 4:18 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Thanks very much Happy Interesting how much of the likes of Ottoman armour seems directly inspired from mogul armours. Although given the lack of variation of full plate armour on the Islamic side I will probably have to be a fair bit creative to make such stylised.
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Richard Eyre-Pugh





Joined: 26 Jan 2010

Posts: 4

PostPosted: Tue 23 Mar, 2010 10:44 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

As promised; a look at how things have gone. I opted to exaggerate features from specific designs.



Any ideas on how to make a ball and socket joint look more robotic, engineered and not toyish?
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Sander Marechal




Location: The Netherlands
Joined: 04 Dec 2009
Reading list: 17 books

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Posts: 671

PostPosted: Tue 23 Mar, 2010 11:11 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Why not hide the joint under some pauldrons?

Edit: Alternatively, look at industrial robots. Currently there is no real ball and socket joint used in big industrial robots. It's too complex and fragile. Instead, they use multiple actuators together to get movement with the same freedom. You can do that as well.

But big, mean pauldrons are cool too Big Grin
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