Male Armor Woes...
onimusha
Posts: 210
For some reason, content creators have only been making medieval fantasy armor for males with major body parts exposed. The most common type of armor you see exposes the entire abdomen.
For example, none of the armor that's come out for the Genesis 8 male centaurs, realistically covers anything well. Seeing this trend yet again has spurred me to create this post. If it hadn't been for one specific product that just happens to be the exact type of thing I need for a very specific project I'm working on, I was going to skip the Genesis 8 centaurs entirely. I was that disappointed with the offerings for the Genesis 8 Male Centaur.
Maybe there's just no market for the kind of thing I'm talking about and content creators have to make what sells. I guess I'm just kind of baffled that only beefcake armor sells for males, when there are several suits of full coverage armor available for Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 females. I have a project I have been putting off forever because the last set of real armor I've seen out there is only for Genesis 2.
Maybe one day this trend will change... for now I find it very frustrating...
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Comments
A lot of that reason is that armour is a complete proverbial to get to work well within the limitations of 3D modelling.
A solid plate that doesn't bend when the character moves, but also doesn't either clip into the character or have the character clip through them? For that to be easy for an artist to rig, would take Daz having serious physics calculations to work out where the plate should sit, with soft body simulations to squash the character's shape where appropriate. Given the complexity, it explains why it's done more often for women - female content just sells better.
To be honest, for full plate, a more practical solution would be in most cases to actually have the entire suit of armour as a separately rigged model that the figure is then fitted to (mostly just "frankensteining" their head on to it, with enough shaping dials on the armour to approximate their body type). With that in mind, a Genesis 2 full plate model is actually still a very usable resource once given Iray shaders. You don't really want your suit of armour to have to yield to advanced G8 features like corrective muscle morphs, because it's really the inverse that should be true; the body should fit inside a full suit of armour, not the armour fit over the body.
They simply are trying to avoid the extra work involved in rigging the armor between the various bones.
waiting on a set of middle eivel cod pieces for a 2020 calendar
and a tarot card project
Thanks for the insights. I guess armored abdomens are hard. It does beg the question why you see female figures get full armor but male figures don't. Is there a technical problem with the male figures that makes it more difficult?
Oddly the complaint is usually about the lack of coverage in female armour.
In the case of the centuars I think it's largely down to their mythic Greek origin.
Not really - the male and female bases are rigged fairly similarly; their geometries are just slightly more optimised for the basic body shapes.
My best guess is that female products tend to sell better, and are more likely to justify the time and effort spent on a difficult and tedious task.
https://www.daz3d.com/old-world-knight-for-genesis-2-males
this one was rather good but as Misty has pointed out we need the codpieces
??? It's... the other way around. You picked one outfit that was not a full armor outfit for the centaur, and I would bet that having torso armor on a centaur is especially challenging. You are far, far, far more likely to see similar sets for male and female figures where the male has full armor coverage and the female set does not. For the centaurs, even the Forest Maurauder and Forest Queen are a great example of similar armor sets with more exposure on the female set, even though both leave a lot deliberately exposed.
How about this?
https://www.daz3d.com/battleworn-armor-for-genesis-8-male
I think it is also worth pointing out that most of the armor you see for sale in the store is intended to be fantasy based, not historical. And thanks to the many fantasy artists over the years, that usually means the outfit was intended to be pretty or even sexy over practical.
This is also the reason why something like the Dark Guard HD Armor looks like a plate set that no normal human would be able to move once they had it on. :)
One way to get around this is to use something a geometry shell or something like the No Suit for Genesis 8 Males under the armor and then apply something like Traveler's Medeival Armor Shaders on the surface to look like they have a suit of chain or something under the armor plates.
You can always offer suggestions, of course. But from history we know that the vendors will tell us that their sales of the prettier / sexier armor can be twice what they get for a more practical piece, and both require similar amounts of time and effort to create.
Back in the early, and now current days of World of Warcraft, huge shoulders became a meme. It wasn't until I watched a video by, I believe it was Sickleyield, when I found out how hard it was to model specifically shoulder armour. Our PAs are pretty smart, and between them they have all the low-hanging fruit covered and thanks to their passion, a lot of the high-hanging stuff, too. If you don't see something, it's probably because it's way, way more trouble than it's worth, and it's not worth doing badly, just to have people complain. Besides, the swashbuckling light armour guys get all the really hot 3D babes.
It's always worth requesting, but don't hold your breath.
https://www.daz3d.com/knight-champion-outfit-for-genesis-8-male-s
https://www.daz3d.com/paladin-hd-mmxv-for-genesis-2-males-s
https://www.daz3d.com/battleworn-armor-for-genesis-8-male
https://www.daz3d.com/knight-eisenfaust-for-genesis-3-male-s
https://www.daz3d.com/orleans-armor-for-genesis-8-males
You know what would be cool?
If they could create new posing limits that went along with the armor. If you know the chest piece will bend incorrectly, then limit the character's ability to their abdomen and chest bones bend that way. It would get around having to have the 3D shell of the armor "slide around" relative to the bones of the body that is wearing it. And, to an extent, might end up with more realistic poses as well.
All good suggestions and I own a bunch of them... totally forgot about the Battleworn armor, for example.
I also wish Orleans armor would render in 3Delight. I've posted about it before, but it's literally the only item I've ever bought for DAZ Studio that crashes the renderer to the desktop and it doesn't come with templates to easily make my textures for it.
Is there a way to make your own templates I wonder?
My main armor complaint, is that everyone hangs chain mail the wrong friggin way. But yeah I looked at that armor and was like, not sure if I will ever use it all by itself, I'll probably add a breastplate from somewhere.
Thing is full armours need not be the latest Genesis
in fact you could hide most the figure and apply a fabric shader to what is visible of it
because superior posing etc is moot in an armour
just the iray conversion factor
Great point, JonnyRay. I re-watched Excalibur for the zillion-and-first time the other day. Platemail severely restricts range of motion, principally along the centerline. With all the talk of IK in Daz, I wonder if you could just zero and lock these bones?
Couldn’t you just use the actual textures as your template?
If you want to create a template from the UVs, try this:
This is certainly not the only way to gain access to the UVs for a template, but this won't cost you any money. And though it appears the Pro version will never be available again, the Classic version is still a valuable tool for your toolbox.
The Orleans Armor for Genesis 8 Males doesn't have textures. It has a lot of material settings for IRAY. That's probably why it crashes DAZ to desktop when I try to render it in 3Delight. I've tried using shaders to no avail sadly.
Thanks for the how to on UV mapping. Will try that.
it does in fact have texture maps but you probably need to redo the shaders for 3Delight
just applying a preset conversion script crashed it for me too so it may be a painful manual process sadly
wow that is just weird
I applied a Supersuit shader to all with ctrl clicked and ignored maps and it still crashed
@RichardHaseltine might need to look at this one
DAZStudio.exe caused ACCESS_VIOLATION in module "E:\programs\Daz\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4 Public Build\dz3delight.dll" at 0033:00000000C4427276, Dz3DelightDll::DSlo_DetailtoStr()+2442742 byte(s)
it could be the texture maps themselves maybe, the compression and tdlmake don't agree
4.7 works
OK that 4.7 scene file resaved in the latest beta works too
I put it here if you are missing assets by any chance it should still load, you may want your own tweaks anyway, this is just the base male
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/uploads/FileUpload/8d/6acf7cfb6e402acb2e61ec76c69e6b.duf
Something not in 4.7 obviously
whatever it is is now absent in my resaved file, at least for me, others would have to test it (the duf I posted) to see if it's unique to my save on my machine
the egrayne dance is pretty kewl.
i watching Knights Tale for the umpeenth time LOL we will rock yoo, luv Chaucer
all middle ebil movies be better with dragons and sean conneries in em
Wow, I really appreciate the legwork you put in. When you say 4.7, do you mean DAZ Studio 4.7? I'm running 4.9 and I'm not sure if I could install 4.7, or if I could even get a hold of an installer.
Going to try your .duf file to see if I can finally use this armor after all this time.
I too am not sure if I ever put in a ticket for the Orleans armor. I have posted about it before but I don't remember what the conclusions of those threads were.
Well that .duf rendered for me... so progress?
Well not really but it might hold the clue
I might need to see if notepad++ compare can show me the difference when next on my PC
yes I use DAZ 4.7 as my nonBeta build as it plays better with some older plugins and has a different FBX exporter when I need it
I do however mostly use the latest beta otherwise
at least the male armour isn't ruined by high heels.
tho that would be pretty funny. a knight teetering on stilletos