Armor is not carefully considered by artists
rampart_1576840087
Posts: 504
Something I have noticed in so many sci-fi armor content items.
There always seem to be no armor in the most important areas of the human body.
The arteries and veins in and below the croth area will cause bleed out and death very fast if lacerated. - male or female
Yeah... I know it's like gravity in space. People don't pay attention.
Still it seems to me with all that armor poked all over the character body someone would think about vulnerabilities.
Post edited by rampart_1576840087 on
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...yeah been a vexing issue for myself. I create cyber dystopia scenes and most of the "armour" that fit's with the genre would find the character on the ground bleeding inside and out as gut shots are often fatal. The torso is the biggest target on the body yet seems to get the least protection (especially for female characters). I don't know whether this is just for style's sake, or if there really is some sort of difficulty with designing an armour mesh which covers the vitals area and can move with the character when posed.
Look at the flak vests the police, SWAT and military personnel wear in RL, those cover the vitals properly.
I have similar issues with a lot of female upper body clothing which doesn't fall below the belt line or tucks in leaving the belly exposed (especially bothersome in period clothing like from the Old West or in "business/office" wear).
I realize there are many who probably care less about this, which is their call.
It just seems abit out of place since Daz3d is continually promoting and producing more lifelike characters and content.
Some forum members have already started talking about the new generation of Daz3d character of even higher quality.
Not ragging on anyone.. the pictures are Yura, but I only used because these items are new and conspicuous.
I didn't seek out other artists.
LOL... yes the poor female characters have it hard. They have to be sexy, show alot of skin and still be warriors.
I choose not to use sexual warriors, wearing scanty panties and practically topless.
I don't care what the artist calls these content items... Battle characters need to wear battle gear.
With those armors, a swift kick to the family jewels could incapacitate someone. My favorite for impractical armor is the exposed midrif which is pretty common in female armor here.
It's the armour Kim Kardashian would wear. Form before function. Who cares if it actually keeps you safe, so long as you're a sexy gutlesss corpse?
From a modelling/rigging standpoint, I think it might be harder to design armour to effectively cover bendy areas without the supposedly solid material bending like cheap rubber when posing. Still, should be able to kit-bash a codpiece of some kind if you otherwise like the armour.
...
Aim for his crotch... If you don't kill him, you'll make him wish he was dead. LOL
I know there are ways to do this. Maybe a convex armor to allow for bends, or two piece armor in some spots, or characters in armor don't have the flexibillity of one in cloth.
+1
At least with armor like the two shown in the OP, you can suspend disbelief and assume the undersuit is made from some sort of high-tech fabric that's impervious to most weapons. I think it's the dystopian/apocolypse stuff that leaves me shaking my head. The guys have clothing that covers up almost everything, and the gals have stuff that leaves very little to the imagination! If it were me, I'd dress the same way the guys do. I guess that's why I like Luthbel's Urban Survivor sets and Luthbellina's Diana and Jones and Nomad sets. Thank goodness for auto-fit!
That's really understandable. I've seen items that stretch to accomodate a pose, when in real life, the cloth would move up and wrinkle, or pull so tight it restricted movement. I wonder if a morphing codpiece would sell... where the morphs would mimic how the item would really move with the various poses... Probably not.
There are some sorts of laminated fabrics which have a core which is flexible normally - actually it's a liquid - but when subjected to a sudden pressure they turn rock hard. Name brand of one I'm familiar with is D3O, you can google it, there are some videos showing it in action. So in your world, it might look like cloth but is really a very advanced sort of flexible armor.
..indeed even though they are not "armour" those are nice "practical" clothing sets for "roughing it". I especially like the backpack from the Nomad set.
For SWAT, Heavy Security and HTR team personnel in my cyber future scenes I tend use several of Xurge's modern/futuristic armour suits. If Gen4 footwear were not an issue with autofit I'd also use Major Cache for M4.
Having done a few of these I can understand why some areas are avoided, There are 3 main areas where the legs go into the hips the inner thigh will stretch to hell and the side top of the thighs just get crushed with side way movements. Same with the collars but you have the added front and back movement to to contend with as well. the third place is under the chest it's another bad one. With the new rigging for G3 it's a nightmare as you only have one weight to use on all 3 axis and the only way to fix them is with JCMs. You have to be smart where you put the armor. Sometimes what looks best isn't practical, so you have to really plan the amor first or it could turn into a total mess.
Yeah, those are by Yura. Disappointing and kind of unfinished-looking. Especially in comparison to the female release in the same bundle which at least has some detail even if it is sexualized.
That suit It is basically just some rounded plates stiched onto a suit at weird areas none of which makes much sense and a really small helmet I'm not sure how anyone can wear. Very b-grade looking. Honestly, I've stopped buying Yura's content. The textures are usually really plastic looking and odd to me. Which is too bad. He/She makes sci-fi garments.
Not trying to be disagreeable, but I've bought a lot of Yura outfits. And they either clip, or look unrealistic in iray. I just don't have the cash for to spend on content that doesn't have the realism I need in my renders.
Luthbel's Cyclops armor is my current favorite. Hellfish also makes some good sci-fi armor for men. I know that good sci-fi garments can and do exist because of the great sets they have made. I pass on stuff like this. It doesn't have the quality or detail I need.
Ever consider that maybe the design WAS carefully considered by the artist and that look that you don't care for is what they wanted
As an alternative, here you go, just what you need
http://www.daz3d.com/the-abc-s-of-3d-modeling
Most armor are also designed the way they are because they are targeting the skimp wear market. Skimp wear is King & Queen in the market.
The challenge is that clothing is falling behind the curve in realism and there really is becoming cognitive dissonance when viewing 3d characters wearing garments because the outfits just don't look convincing compared to the realistic skin and faces
Thinking about it, what I'd like is the 'multiple collision' thing, where you have several rigid pieces and if the pose intersects armor and flesh, the flesh bends.
I suppose you might be able to do it with VWD, come to think of it. But it'd be tricky and, again, wish you could collide multiple items. Maybe use deformers. Hrm.
(I'm imagining a rigid chest piece with perhaps one or two moving abdomen plates)
...real armour is bulky and restrictive. Even the flak vests the police use interfere with movement.
I was in the SCA, OK not totally known for "historical accuracy", however even the leather armour I wore made even simple movements more difficult if not in some cases impossible because of the increased rigidity and the fact it didn't bend in the same places as normal clothing did (one had to actually spend time just learning how to move around in it). Chain Mail (which I wore a couple times) may have been more "supple" but movement was still somewhat hampered by the heavy cloth and sometimes even leather often worn underneath (as well as the heavier weight).
The general rule of thumb is the more protection you received, the less mobility you had.
Yeah not aesthetically "stylish" or flexible enough that you could do back flips, cartwheels, or run the four minute mile in it, but better than taking an arrow, sword blade, or bullet, to the gut.
I just try to convince myself that the armor is high tech and has force fields protecting the vacant areas. The fields probably also have the beneficial side effect of stimulating and/or tickling the sensitive areas too when it's turned on.
Well I went shopping for a space suit today and you can actually google and download authentic ones from USA's NASA site but as I'm trying to get somewhat the look of a spacesuit in a cartoon I saw I bought the spacesuit for Leo 7 / G3M in the DAZ Store.
I know its off topic but are we sure the future is going to be totally gray or rusty? I am seriously thinking about turning the buildings baby blue and pink and lime green and ..... But then you wouldn't know it was an earthling future, lots of gray shotty metal and smog are earth's furture apparently. Bright and perky and the ability to manufacture anything but sheet metal and gray paint are secrets that shall forever be lost to us poor humans. If you have something in the shot that it looks likes someone would work to pay for it just screams you found planet utopia cause we are not gonna have anything but a total fixation with the color GRAY. Done ranting now, sorry.
And yet, the size of the "unprotected area" is really only a risk in exploration situations. I would be far more worried about a fragmentation grenade or "bouncing betty" boobie-trap wearing such an armor than I would be about someone hitting me there with a gun of some kind. ;)
...that too as well. However, as I mentioned, the torso is still the largest and easiest target on the body to hit, and most fantasy/sci-fi 3D armour tends to leave the most vulnerable sections unprotected.
Think of that officer in the Future Cop Armour looking down to see a red dot or two on her exposed belly (and that technology is accessible today). Now imagine firearms that would exist in her day which could be outfitted with more sophisticated "smart" targeting systems and recoil compensation, a shot to the vitals would be all that much easier and not even "telegraphed" like a laser sight does. She may as well just wear a cloth uniform as she would be no worse off.
Luthbel's Cyclops is probably the single best futuristic-looking armoured suit in the store. Serves just as well for combat themes as simply being a way to believably encase a human being in protection against a hazardous environment (even for underwater depths). I don't know how they did it, but it's pretty much perfect, shape-wise. Hope they do much more! It's probably the closest in design to what's depicted in the last two 'Mass Effect' games - better, even. I would have done away with the forearm-scanner, though... More than one character wearing it in a single scene would look strange all showing the same display on them. :)
My problem with a lot of the futuristic sets is that they often look like skin-tight spandex with some rigid metallic glued onto them. It never looks right and breaks my willing suspension of disbelief every time. For female characters, there are sometimes high heels, too, which would be fine if they were optional morphs, but never seem to be. I can never use those for the serious scenes they would otherwise be ideal for. There are two or three otherwise excellent costumes like that, where I've almost hit the purchase option, only to notice that and can't justify the price as a result, becuase I know I simply wouldn't be able to use them for most of my own projects.
On the other hand, it's nice to see that female characters have finally been getting options for historical/fantasy armour with at least options for believable protection or seductive exposure, too. I really appreciate being able to choose between them.
To be fair, it's probably a) too much work and b) doesn't sell as well as "skimp wear". Some PA products do consider both the look and practicality. Just look at Chris' (mighty_mestophales) store.
http://www.daz3d.com/mighty_mestophales
I can agree on this one. I must have missed it when it came out.
A side note - This is a gen 3 male HD Suit, coupled with a gen 3 male character and you have about 200K poly final character
Why not rig the suit and have removable or interchangeable heads?
Seriously, I would really like to read why this isn't done.
Mestophales figured that out long ago. (rig the suit)
I do video, and large poly counts are difficult to work.
I always decimate, but something like this is difficult to decimate and still have good quality.
I agree 100% with this statement. I too have noticed that the giveaway often isnt the skin or the human, but the clothing and other environmental elements. It feels like starting over.