Nice cracks and deformations in the surface. Can you show us how went about it?
Ok… enough for today… it’s 4:14 AM here and I just got back from work about an hour and a half ago.
First of all, as for you comments:
Prayer - Glad you like it. If you have any questions, post them here and I’ll answer so that other people can read as well.
gpegger - Thanks 
coye - I hope so, thanks 
nicolasdelfino - Hopefully you’ll be able to soon
crossbones - Thanks. If enough people will show interest I’ll make a short tutorial showing the methods I’ve used throughout the creation of the armor. no problem.
Ok, here’s the breast plate. Only the topmost third of it will show so I didn’t really put too much time into it.
[attach=38310]BreastPlate1.jpg[/attach]
As always, opinions are most welcome.
p.s.
The lefthand text says “Gardening mishap” and the Table of Despair is a common thing in the IDF where soldiers count down the last 9 months of their service by marking squars on their belts
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Another update.
Guys, I’ve been an idiot and here’s a little piece of advice to all of you who, like me until recently, haven’t figured it out yet:
Change all not 16bit channel map files to JPG and make them as small as possible without losing detail.
For some reason I was under the impression these things only affects memory handling and had little effect on rendering time, but here - I rendered this image and it took 27 minutes as opposed to 30 minutes it took me before just for the head and the 3 pieces of armor around it.
Stupid me.
here’s the render:
[attach=38311]Parts1.jpg[/attach]
Starting to get a bit a shape, yea?
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yeah, thats obvious , but you lose stuff in the conversion. 16 bit has more information in it.
+he serves only 9 months ?, damn him.
It looks cool overall. Great textures.
Some crits:I personally think he looks a bit out of proportion. I think you could make the head/face bigger. It looks very tiny compared to the hand (maybe make the hand a bit smaller). Maybe the head is a bit small compared to the helmet aswell…
Dogbite - in diffuse and b/w mask layers the bit depth is unrelevant, so i don’t mind converting the files to 8bit formats.
and it’s the LAST 9 months, that’s the nohal
MrLearner - thanks. The proportions are in sync with the original design.
Here’s a higher res render from today - also fixed some issues with the face materal, though still very unpleased with it.
[attach=38312]Parts3.jpg[/attach]
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i thought you refered to the discplacement map, if its anything then that then its ok.
i still dont like the head, it needs more work.
yeah, but you need to count all the months you served and not just the nine at the end.
maybe you should put his name and fill it with slices of colour like the jobniks do…:]
+poor guy, one months from retirement and hes in the middle of a battle that would prolly get him killed…
When I first looked at it, I couldn’t figure out what was bothering me about it. But it just hit me after looking at it again. I wasn’t feeling the weight of the enormous gun. I think thickening the tube with the holes a bit should add some visual weight and make the gun appear like a heavy weapon. Right now that piece looks like sheet metal.
Everything else is really looking awesome!
Very cool model! 
There’s no need to forget about SSS. I dont know if you are aware of the new version of VRay 1.5. It comes with a fastSSS material. It can be worth trying it. 
I guess you could render that image in about 10 or 15 min maybe. Things which can kill your rendertimes:
- High number of glossies subdivisions
-High QMC settings in antialiasing section and under qmc settings. - HIgh number of subvidisions in vray light
-Area shadows
-HDR image as the main lighting source
You can try to deactivate your displacement in general options and render again. This way u’ ll see if the slow rendertimes come from that. If that is the case, i bet your gi calculation is taking more time than it should. That could because of a large displacement bitmap. If you have used 4000X4000 try to create a low-res version of that and see if it’s enough. That would chop rendertimes too.
Ok, hope it helps!
Keep up the good work! 
i REALLY LIKE THE TABLE OF DESPAIR YOU PUT ON HIS PLATE
WoW!!!
Ciao Luca
Hey everyone.
Even though I haven’t finnished the model, I did some fixing:
- Like everyone commented, I changed the heat sink in the gun into a heavier piece of metal… stupidly I didn’t notice the old version wasn’t hidden when I renders so we have both of them in the new render
- Changed face pose a material a bit + decided to do an SSS pass in MR. more to come.
- made the gun dirty.
- some material changes.
As for you comments:
Kraken - thanks - as you see, I’ve changed that, but rendered the old version too by mistake
Panthon - thanks alot man. I’ll look into these thing though many I’m afraid I can’t ommit, such as area shadow. Might just down the samples. Anyway, very helpful, thanks
Loraine Howard III - Cheers
Senzadread - thanks man hehe
Ok, so even though I’m not done, here’s what I’m planning for the composition - this is a very rough draft, but this is the general Idea (I might down the sand storm a bit).
Everything except the additional figures I plan to do in 3D with some good old ps compositing.
[attach=38353]Layout1.jpg[/attach]
So as usual, artistic and technical critisizm would be most welcome.
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I think this so incredibly close be being completed. You have had an excellent execution and you are fast as crap! I can see that you have thickened up the blast guard on the gun. I really think that the reason the gun might not be working for some people is because it’s not totally anatomically correct. The way you have you’re gun now, from what I am assuming (making an ass out of you and me), is the the round the is fired will be shot out the top of the gun. If that is the case, then there’s this HUGE mother of a gun shooting a BB out the end of it because the middle of the middle of the firing barrel tapers. The other part of it is that the blast guard is usually found at the tip of the gun and not the middle. There’s nothing wrong with having it really long it just needs to be moved to the front and not the middle. The middle usually contains grips and the grips can have holes in them, like the M4, but there are only a few of them. Move some stuff around and buid it up to really sell it. The composition of the piece as a whole is stunning and the detail in your armor is very convincing. This is going to be certainly worthy of top row man. Good work. small_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamond
been lurkin this thread. gotta say… suh-weet! love it dude!
Hi guys.
Firerbert - Thanks for the comment. If I had designed the gun it would look different but since this isn’t my design I’m limited in these issues.
And as for the technicalities, I’m well aware of the workings of contemporary weapons. I spent 4 year in the military.
pete330 - Thanks
Ok, now I was hoping by now I could show a render of the final model with it’s textures but unfortunately my computer crashed shortly after I left for work leaving it to render the image - so what I’ve done is render the shoulder pads and composite them into the image in photoshop, which is cheating and also means that this isn’t the exact colors and lighting (GI and all…).
So here’s the composited image:
[attach=38386]parts5.jpg[/attach]
And here’s another advancement, I’ve changed the head’s shape (slightly), the teeth and head material, and added stubble and eyebrows. Test render:
[attach=38387]head5.jpg[/attach]
So that’s it. 3:03 AM here - time to sleep after leaving the computer to render… hopefully in about 6 to 7 hours I’ll post the render it’s done.
G’night!
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Touché my friend. Not picking a fight, just stirring up convo.
Nice composite despite your self-criticism. At least you’re hard on yourself about it, which is always a good thing in this industry. A professor of mine said, “Your friends and family are there to encourage you and tell you your work looks beautiful. I am your instructor, not your friend, and I am certainly of no relation to you.” He would then proceed to rip most of the drawings off of the wall and say they were crap. It was a blast!
Everyone should think that way when viewing their own work. So cheers to you mate for not allowing yourself an inch, but also appeasing the masses with another post 
I hate it when I batch render and the computer gives me runtimes or fatals. At least I haven’t seen any BSD’s in ages. Those were the worst.
What are you rendering with engine wise, beceause it’s looking hella tight!
NM on the render engine. read back a bit and saw MR. ooops.
Hey I was trying to figure how you made the double layer armor with scars under the armor. Is there any kind of way you could explain the process in more depth, since z-brush 2.5 is not out yet.
Hola.
Bad news - the 2k resolution image I let my computer TRY to render during the night crashed my comp.
Good news - the error message sound, which I went to sleep expecting to hear, woke me up, and like a zombie I reduce resolution to 900.
Also - today I shall get another extra GB of ram - this is outrageous!
Firerbert - Thanks again pal. BTW, rendering with VRAY, not MR… I dislike MR profoundly, especially that most of the renderer features I’m using here would have taken me ages in MR (Displacement, glossy reflection, GI, high AA).
Loraine Howard III - I was asked to explain the process and if there’s enough request I make a short tutorial.
In the meantime - ZB 2.5 would have improved this work and saved me ALOT of time with it’s Extract feature… unfortunately this is simply displacement done with tight edges.
So here’s the render (touched up a tad in PS). I’ve since changed slightly the position of the close shoulder pad and scaled it down a bit as well.
Looks amazing! I can’t wait to see a completed composition.
I’ve not tried Vray, but you’re right, MR sucks, I have to use it at work every day.