Designing an armoured shoulder-pad: Blender Challenge Answer

Demonstrating how to design an armoured shoulder pad for power armour, both using non-native add-ons and without.
You can find the information on the challenge here: • Blender Challenge: Sci...
Other Blender challenges:
Challenge 1 - Sword: • Blender Challenge 1: ...
Challenge 1 ANSWER - Sword: • Designing a sword: Ble...

[@Malak1000]

The part in this video about projecting a logo onto a curved shoulder pad should absolutely be its own video. This is probably the one part of the entire Internet I have looked at the most regarding blender..

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Glad that its useful and sorry it wasnt easier to find. I'll have to make a separate video on it at some point 👍

[@jimbob1017]

my favourite shoulder from the hit wargame conflict mallet 69420

[@ArtisansofVaul]

🤣 That's brilliant 👍🏻🤘

[@aclabonte]

I think it speaks to the maturity and professionalism of this fanbase that this video has been up for a year and no one has mentioned your comment that "this is the first time you've used a paid-for hard on" at 8:20. Well. Until now. Sorry.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

🤣🤣🤣 Lmao thats SO BAD! Can't believe I did that!. Well I can, Im always getting tongue tied, I just cant believe I didnt catch that in the edit.

[@BrailleScale]

Great video! I love all the tricks to make blender far more precise in terms of multiple measurements across all axis. Thank you as well for showing the common mistakes and errors along the way to explain more than just the how, but the why

[@ArtisansofVaul]

No worries and thanks for all the kind comments. Doing exact measurements in Blender does require a few tricks but generally it's very possible. 👍

[@noliverk]

This is exactly the sort of video I've been wanting since I started messing around in Blender.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Great! Glad I can be of help and I hope you find more thats useful for you on the chanel.

[@shanester1832]

I'm going through your challenge vids by date, they're clear, to the point and each adds little pieces of sustained knowledge and shows things I haven't saw before like the cast modifier. for my attempt I did use a quad sphere since UV didn't solidy well. removed faces leaving main shape, set dimensions, boxcutter grid snap inset to .5 (though that did affect inner faces and actually was .25) ngon knife cut arrow, cleaned up vertices, extruded along normals. It was decent and had no shading issues but your method was superior. This short video brought several new techniques to light. I can watch other channel's 30 minute videos and not really learn anything. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite blender channels.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Thanks so much for giving it a try and it sounds like you found it useful to try out different methods and compare them, which is totally the point of the videos so its great they are being used that way. Thanks for taking the time to comment as well, it really helps me know what's working well 😁👌

[@harkbreadbox2706]

Great video! I learn so many tricks just by watching how you solve challenges. I will have to look out for ways I can use shrinkwrap like this in the future.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Glad it was helpful. I like to leave in little issues as they are normally the biggest barrier to being able to use techniques and they can come up in other situations, so knowing how to fix them is one of the more important things with Blender.

[@joshsteffens2115]

at 9 minutes when you use Shift+s and set the origin to the cursor - that's actually somethign Hardops adds - to do it without hardops, you need to set the cursor to the edge, then set the object origin to the cursor. Took me about 30 minutes of research to work this out - and was following your tutorial without hardops for the most part!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

You can do it without Hard Ops. Machin3 Tools is the way I normally do it (with shift+s). You can also click the object, then use the Object menu and then Set Origin. (Sorry for the delay replying, KZbin has been not showing me all the comments made on my videos so I have been going back and trying to find ones it has missed)

[@_i_m_]

That is an incredible tutorial, thank you man!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

No problem at all. Happy people are finding it helpful 😁

[@wgalloPT]

This is a very important tutorial. Thank you for this.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

No problem 😁

[@Saddy_Longlegs]

I'm digging this series - you've earned my sub ♥

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Cheers.

[@RUSirius]

Love this tutorial. It's interesting doing this and then seeing how you did it. I was able to do the shoulder pad but for the life of me could not figure out the arrow. I was determined to do it with out watching other videos. I started with a UV sphere and quickly determined that that would not work so went with a sub-d cube. I have machine tools but didn't know about the quad sphere 😀 For the border of the shoulder pad I selected faces and extruded along normals and scaled to 0 to get the faces flat. I've learned so much from these. Thanks!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Glad it's been helpful. Doing trim was one of those things that I found a total bugger when I started, so I thought it would be good to include it. I'm happy people seem to be enjoying the format

[@SkonkBot]

I 3d print a lot of shoulder pads for friends and my usual goto is to use the sculpting tools to emboss out the symbol they want. This works OK but doesnt wrap around as much as I'd like. So what I've just been experimenting with is creating a vertex group to limit the area of effect and then UV unwrapping the external shoulder area (fixing its rotation and scale in the UV editor). Then using a Displacement modifier to push out the symbol and using the UV map to wrap the greyscale image correctly around the pad (eliminating the "stretch" effect that you would usually get from a more directional projection of the image). Scaling/squashing the UV map in the editor as need to position the symbol correctly. Seems to work ok though its a bit more messing about :)

[@ArtisansofVaul]

That's really cool. Interesting process for sure. Have you got any pictures of the results?

[@SkonkBot]

@@ArtisansofVaul I replied with some dropbox links but seems they got removed? I'll try Facebook.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@SkonkBot Yeah they don't seem to allow links like that. Thanks a lot. Or you can find my email address in the channel details. You're awesome!

[@lordofhyphens]

This might rate a Short for you, but I found out that if you do a Subdivision Surface on a plane (to get enough geo), then run Conform Object on it to drape it onto something else, you can then Solidify the result without the mesh going super wonky. I wanted to replicate the little bit of extra armor striping on the new 30k marine shoulder pads for custom sigil pads (the new shoulders are slightly bigger than the old ones).

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Hmm.... That's interesting. I might have to have a play with that.

[@danielkelly4256]

great tutorial

[@ArtisansofVaul]

😁 Thanks so much.

[@Playingmusic2]

Fantastico !!!!!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Thanks 😁😁

[@MartinJamesLittle]

I find a combination of these worlds better (for me). Having the inner part of the pad as a separate mesh when projecting the arrow on avoids the issue you saw with the edges "snapping" to the trim because they are closer. I might have also made the inside of the pad completely solid and used a scaled down copy of the original shape as a Boolean cutter. Not sure which would be quicker and both have their place depending on the situation. I can't recall what I did first I Blender, it was either nameplates or shoulder pads. Both are probably the most popular thing for people to cut their teeth on 3D printing though. Nameplates are pretty simple now, but maybe a tutorial on those would help someone out.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

All good points. I did originally think about using a scaled down version as a cutter (you can set it on the stack to be after the inset so that helps) but when you want a specific thickness its a lot more of a faff. Agree on the inside being seperate, that can really help (so using the non-HardOps method and then Booleaning together after) but I wanted to bring the two designs together as the video was already getting a bit longer than people typically are willing to sit down and watch, lols. Thanks for all the feedback! (I also agree on the nameplate idea)

[@jaklindi]

Great, thank you!

[@ryeloafbreadmen1080]

When I do your second method of separating the trim from the pad in bool tool, 12:19 it makes that smaller piece that we want, but the larger piece doesn’t have the related chunk cut out of it. It stays the same

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Thats really odd and I cant say Ive ever had that happen. You might want to try changing between the "Fast" and "Exact" methods in the modifier panel to see if that sorts it.

[@ikema7887]

At 3:49 Can anyone help with this? I can't see the wire frame without turning off optimal display? Also I can't select vertices within the cube/sphere because it has the original cube shape around it when I switch to edit mode, so I can only select the original lines of the cube?

[@stormycatmink]

So, I had to try this out, because I've been wanting to make my own chapter insignia on shoulders for a long time. I've mostly been doing vehicle modeling for spaceships or more real world aircraft so far, but this got me to go back and try a shoulder pad. Mostly I wasn't sure how to get the dimensions proper, and you gave me the answer. However, with all the other work I've been doing on blender, I figured I might be able to get an even better fit of the arrow. Now, I'll preface this with saying this is me being a bit of a perfectionist and probably isn't worth the effort for most miniature wargaming model stuff, but I've always been a bit unsatisfied with how objects project onto others, or outset/extrude shapes from curves, like a flat map of the world. And to be fair, this is tricky; most methods of projecting a plane onto a sphere are kinda terrible, and the best ones are very complex (think map projections of the globe, but in reverse). I think your example is pretty good, but there was still a bit of distortion. So, all that being said, your method was almost exactly what I'd do, save there's some odd limitations of the shrinkwrap modifier. So to tweak it a little more, I used the SimpleDeform modifier along the axis to curve it over the shoulder, first (before the shrinkwrap in your modifier stack). I used about -40 degrees along what I think is your X axis. This lets you control how much pin-cushioning you get on the arrow. The amount of deform will depend on the scale and rotation of your arrow and the proximity to the surface, so you have to fiddle a bit. I couldn't get it quite perfect, but I was able to tweak out some of the pincushion. Ideally the arrow sides (pointy bits on the sides) would look level with the ground from the side, like the perspective of another marine, while not looking distorted much from above, either. Could use a SimpleDeform taper or stretch as well to try and tweak that last bit, or play with the origin of the arrow's geometry to try and get it perfect, but it gets more and more work for less and less benefit. Doing this with just project instead of target normal project for the Shrinkwrap gave me a little better results for getting the arrow larger without spilling onto the edges, but still had some issues on the top of the arrow. Could probably sort it out with more experimentation and fiddling, if I really wanted. Anyhow, thanks for the great video! Got me doing a lot of tinkering, thinking, and in the end, I now have a nice shoulder pad blank and a metho to put whatever I want on it.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Thats a good idea about the simple deform. The shoulder pad is a really complex shape so I imagine on something with a more basic curved shape your idea would work pretty much perfectly. Im starting to think that there may be a way to get it perfect using some of the functions contained within Geometry Nodes, I just havent found the right combination yet.

[@stormycatmink]

@@ArtisansofVaul I hadn't even thought of using geonodes. That may be even better yet. I'm also starting to work with vertex groups more, and now there's this face maps feature (I think it's like face groups?). I've been using this stuff to try and do procedural paneling with geonodes, where I can give it a hull surface, and have geonodes construct panels, where the edges of the panels are defined by specific edges I select on the model, or even another object (like a curve or simpler model of just panel constraints). Like those indentations on the inside border of the shoulder pad you have on your more recent video about fixing the shape of a curve. Create a geonode to make those automatically, based off some face selection/vertex group. I saw one person doing WWII aircraft panels with shrinkwrap to a base aircraft body shape, then shrinkwrapping to planes on each edge, then manually tweaking to get these very nice, perfect panels. The whole body was just plate objects, dozens (hundreds?) of them. A bit overkill, and tons of work. So trying to see if there's a way I can make the computer figure all that out for me. I'd love to see any ideas you have on using geonodes to sort this out. I need to draw up a curve for my insignia, then I'll be trying to sort out the best way to get it on the shoulder. Then there's all the other fiddly bits like cords, chains, and who knows what else I may want to add.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@stormycatmink That idea of working off edges is really cool. Hows that coming and have you seen any videos on it?

[@stormycatmink]

@@ArtisansofVaul Was something a friend of mine and I have been working through. I can see if I can find any videos of the idea or if my friend knows of any. Once I get it sorted, I could probably do a screenshot of the node graph, at least.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@stormycatmink That would be really appreciated. Always trying to learn more geonodes

[@ole-henningundrum5698]

Great video! The different methods are really well explained :) have you ever considered making a full on course for 3d modelling a space marine (or anything close to a space marine)? The way you explained everything in this video would be perfect for something like that. Would be an instabuy from me :)

[@ArtisansofVaul]

It's something I'm considering for sure. Though it would either still be on KZbin or on the Patreon.

[@ole-henningundrum5698]

@@ArtisansofVaul patrion sounds like a good fit :D

[@kreapton446]

Very useful as usual! By the way, what addon/setting are you using to make your edges look whiteish/clear like that? It looks very pleasant to me

[@ArtisansofVaul]

I like it too. I thought people might like to know how to do it so Ive made a video of how to here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fZSxeY1_gbCfaas

[@Perchpole]

I’m guessing you use a similar approach for your titan weapon trims? Some of those a far more elaborate so I hope you can show the process.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

They are similar in some ways but you cant make the rim in as simple a way because of the complex shapes. I do need to work out how to do a video on it but explaining the logic of the cutter hierachy is a bit tricky (I think its the bit people get wrong or cant get their heads around so it needs to be "right").

[@richardokeeffe8375]

I think you see blender how Neo sees the Matrix. The arrow addition looked a bit ‘guess worky’ (no offence) is there a more process driven way to do it?

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Lmao. Im not sure thats quite true but after a while you do start seeing how to go about getting what you want out of shapes, it just takes practice. Unfortunately there isn't really a process focused way to achieve it that I am aware of, there are a few too many variables so there needs to be some manual input, though maybe if you bent the arrow around a curve (using a curve modifier) it could work, I just haven't found the need. And no offence taken, I was doing it quickly as a demo so it may be a bit off perfect.

[@stormycatmink]

Also, another thing I have not looked at yet, but I'm real curious about, given some of the limitations of the shrinkwrap modifier projecting onto the border thing on the shoulder.. I was wondering if there was a way to add it on after the fact? I set up mine so I have two faces deep lined up on the 1mm (1 blender unit) line, scaled the edges flat and all, so I had this nice edge. But with the shrinkwrap issues, doing it after the fact would have been better. Ideally through another modifier on those faces set at 1mm out. Maybe another Solidifier mod at the end (after shrinkwrap) on that vertex group (of the 1mm border)? I don't know, still learning the tricks on things like this. I might give it a shot later.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Not quite getting what you're meaning here. Are you trying to shrinkwrap on the border/edging?

[@stormycatmink]

@@ArtisansofVaul When I was using shrinkwrap to put the arrow on, as you showed in your video 25:04, making it hard to get the bottom of the arrow close to the bottom edge, without it sort of sticking onto the border, if you use the normal projection method. My first instinct was to make the border a seperate object, but I wondered if you could fiddle with vertex groups, then use solidify to thicken that border out, but after some fiddling, it gets real difficult to get it all to work nicely and give good sharp, flat edges. Had to add several extra edge loops and also get them perfectly flat and parallel. Probably easiest to just make it as a separate object. I selected edge loops from the original curve and flattened them to make sure they're exactly vertical and horizontal, and lined up on the 1 unit boundary from zero. At that point I could duplicate those faces out to another object, then thicken it up 0.5 in each direction with solidify. I started out with a surface that was 0.5 thinner overall. Compared with the one I made following your directions here, the two methods come out practically identical, surface wise. I've not yet fiddled with adding the arrow, and I don't know if it's really worth the extra work. But, just another method to add that edge border.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@stormycatmink You could definetly use vertex groups. The only issue with vertex groups with a latice is it tends to create a less smooth deformation (at least when I have tried it) where the method of having two of the lattice cuts between what you want to protect keeps everything nice and flowing. But there are other ways of then sorting that out so I think theres a lot of potential options there.

[@stormycatmink]

@@ArtisansofVaul Yeah, makes sense. Also last night I learned how to use the bridge edge loops tool. I think that would yank all those points off the outer skin back to the inner one, if you set the Merge Factor to the correct side (0 or 1) to pull it the direction you want. At least, it seemed to work in one instance I tried. It seems a bit fiddly.

[@glennmore]

Really good, thank you! One question but why do you work in meters and not millimeters? I'm working in millimeters and it does make some of the toosl tricky.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

I seem to find Blender creates less issues when the scale is larger. I don't know if this is purely anecdotal nonsense but it seems to be the case for me. Also the scale doesn't really matter to the exporting process as you can state what 1 "unit" is when bringing it into something like 3D builder and I actually find it less of a pain having 1m is 1mm when exporting, it seems to work without having to do any conversion when bringing it into Lychee or other slicers. I think thats just an oddity of Blender.

[@glennmore]

@@ArtisansofVaul ah ok makes sense thank you. I have been finding the tools work better at full scale. So I’ll stick with it.

[@shadergod]

I know this is definitely a necro thread at this point, but I've gotta ask... What plugin / setting are you using to get those various buttons in the modifier panel? It's definitely super useful!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

No such thing on KZbin, any interest is always appreciated. You can find those settings here (and some other info for quick applying modifiers): kzbin.info/www/bejne/ioPPcmuhhamMfLM

[@shadergod]

@@ArtisansofVaul Cool! Thank you so much for the prompt reply! Really unexpected, but SUPER appreciated!

[@NerdLegionInc]

For those that don't have the option to set origin to cursor when you shift S, just do shift S then cursor to selected, go back to object mode, right click and do origin to cursor. Also Artisan how do you get that menu like yours so I don't have to do the round about way??? lol

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Great tip man 👍🏻 Thanks for taking the time to write it out. This is one of the menus afferent by Machine Tools (free addon).

[@NerdLegionInc]

@@ArtisansofVaul weird. I have machinetools but not that menu for some reason. Does it have to be enabled?

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@NerdLegionInc Yeah. I'm not at my computer but it's "something and origins" pie

[@NerdLegionInc]

@@ArtisansofVaul I found it thanks!

[@communitycollegeofharvard6198]

Where do I get machine tools?

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Gumroad has it free

[@darkzeyd]

amazing tutorial but the apply all button does not appear in my blender UI.. how can i enable that?

[@ArtisansofVaul]

You just have to activate it. I've got you covered here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ioPPcmuhhamMfLM

[@darkzeyd]

@@ArtisansofVaul yo thanks man! love the channel btw

[@Nicho9]

For some reason i cant slice the arrow with the knife tool. Can select the top and bottom, hit enter but nothing happens

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Id suggest trying it in both front on view and if that doesn't work normal view. That normally sorts it out for me.

[@Nicho9]

@@ArtisansofVaul Cheers that fixed it. Now when i try and solidify the arrow it looks like its haemoraghing through the shoulder pad

[@Nicho9]

Sorted it, edge overlaps where causing the issue

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@Nicho9 Good job! Glad you got it all sorted.

[@Totorus]

Great tutorial, at 9:07 you moved the origin to the edge, is that option only with the payed addon?... Greetings.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

I dont think so. Im wondering if its because I have Blender 3.2 if you dont? Otherwise if you go to the top right there is an Options dropdown where you can select to have transformations affecting the origin only so you can do it that way too.

[@Totorus]

@@ArtisansofVaul Thanks for the answer, yes i have 3.2 too, and i searched for that special option in the pie menu and is not there. I don't know why. Greetings.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@Totorus Oh damn, I totally misunderstood what menu you meant. I must have been really tired when I replied to that. That is an option in Machin3 Tools. Its a free add on and REALLY worth the time to download. I'll be going through some of the things you can do with it (including that menu) in the video on Friday.

[@Totorus]

​@@ArtisansofVaul Oh, that's what i though, but i installed the free version of Machin3 and i don't have it yet, let me check one more time. Greetings. Yes, just checked and i have Machin3 Tools installed and i did the same Shift S and this is what it shows in my Blender 3.2 i.postimg.cc/gjKLgtyy/image.png .

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@Totorus For a lot of the options you have to select them to be on. If you go to Preferences>>Add ons and find machin3 tools in the Activate section go down to the Pie Menus and click Cursor and Origin Manipulation on.

[@godDIEmanLIVE]

My vertecies are not showing up like in 3:55. I am in Edit mode and Vertex select mode. So I can't even select and delete the vertecies like you do. I'm on 3.4.1. Instead I see just four dots connected to each other (on each of the sides of the cube / sphere. EDIT: Ahaaa, I had to convert the cube to a mesh first. Very strange, I did everything you did to that point. Am I doing something wrong? Maybe something changed with the new versions?

[@ArtisansofVaul]

It shouldn't have changed at all in the new version so thats very strange, I've never heard of that before 🤔

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Glad you got it sorted 👍🏻