As a 3D / game designer I do understand the bending issue though. This will get long, and have a lot of info, but not nearly enough to completely explain it, just to give an idea... And I ABSOLUTELY understand that the review of an armor from a game has to look at these things as they are, not as they could be. Makes it more interesting to watch, and you learn more about how real armor works, so this is by no means to try and change the view on the armors. Just to explain the design side for people who like to know ;) If you want armor to be physically correct, you have to design everything separate, and have it animated individually. Sounds simple, but there are 3 things you NEED to keep as low as possible: 1: textures. More / bigger textures means you need a LOT more RAM. And it stacks up VERY fast. 2: vertices. The "pixels" so to speak, that hold 3D models together. 3D shapes are made up of triangles. The points are called vertex (vertices for multiple). If you have too many of them, it REALLY slows down the system, because it needs to calculate every triangle separately. 3: Physics calculations. These calculations slow down your system a LOT. If you have more independent pieces, you have to design the model with more "bones" to define how each piece can move. Every piece has its own texture. And since it's a separate shape, the computer has to calculate the triangles of that shape, AND of the model underneath! Sure, it might be invisible, but the computer doesn't know that if it doesn't calculate it. And every extra piece needs its own physics calculations. And really: designing it accurately is often a LOT easier than designing it optimized for performance.
That's how I imagined it working. Plus all that detail would mainly pay off during movement like combat. And during combat, you are not watching tassets move around. I suggest to do this more realistically you'd need a way to do an animation efficiently that 'pretends' they are moving. Maybe just a blur, or jiggle. Maybe if you could find another thing already modelled and mirror it?
In FFXIV, this leads to the funny effect that taller shoes make your character's legs shorter. (or more accurately, the shoes are part of the leg and the leg keeps its lenght)
If I may add to that: if each pieces of armor are independent models, they have to be rigged for animators to move properly with the body while also not clip (phase) through each other. The animators are then restricted in their range of motion. But the catch here is: it's motion captured animation. The actors are in tight mocap suits and are not moving with a huge accurate armor on them. So making the armor a single mesh (skin) that can bend with the body, while still unrealistic, will let the actors motion be transfered to the armor. On the other end, I think a full physics driven armor would no only be hard to render in real time, but pieces may start clipping or flipping in every directions they can when the tension builds up while actors are moving in directions not physically possible for solid objects.
The way I think about armors in cases like this are that they are "suggesting" what the armor is when you look at it but from a practical standpoint the in game armor will have to bend and mold like a skin. Going for the look without the function in game for all the reason you point out
I do a lot of the same making items in the virtual world "Second Life", and the combination of skeleton and vertices is at the heart of it. And, if you see the mesh of vertices as skin,. and the bones of the skeleton as as rigid, you need extra data to define the effect of the muscles under the skin.. You would have the same to define how a knitted sweater moves. In a game a character might never take off a sweater. In a virtual world you can have several layers which have to work together. "Second Life" also uses textures and vertex meshes of varying level of complexity, to allow for a range of viewing distances. There is a lot of jargon. And a lot of what happens in games has been a staple of films. Is a director saying, "I want to this" and different? The tools have changed.
True - but they were animating individual hairs in Shrek in 2001. I have to figure 20 years on, it should be doable if the programmers or the engine is up to it. The graphics card manufacturers' marketing departments keep insisting their hardware is capable.
@@ssgtmole8610 The main difference is Shrek is a film and Baldur's Gate 3 is a game. That means it is more limited as it has to animate everything in real time, even if it was made 20 years later.
@@ssgtmole8610 You confuse movie rendering with gaming rendering, Shrek was not rendered in real time, not even close. Film level renders are really time consuming( or require truly massive computing power( often both)). Plus with Shrek if something rendered goofy, they threw out the footage and tried again. It's the classic situation of Fast, high quality, and affordable. You can make it fast and high-quality, but then it'll only run on hardware that no end user would have . Or fast and runs on a reasonable hw spec, but then quality suffers , or high quality and runs on realistic hardware - in that case you are either doing pretenders video, or willing to live with horribly low FPS. As tech improves, and software gets better, and people get smarter at hiding the janky bits it gets better, but it's going to be a while before it gets there
@@ssgtmole8610 Oh, it's doable, but is it worth it? Or, rather, can player computers support it? Mega gamers perhaps, but the broader game playing base is more questionable. And even if a computer can physically handle the graphics, how much will it slow down the game and hinder smooth play? Shrek was one movie. Get it all animated and then everyone sees the same thing. Like a cut scene in a game. But for game play it's a whole extra level of work and system taxation.
10:00 To answer the question: Yes, the armor is very much magical. It gets beamed onto her by goddess magic in a cutscene. Also, being an Aasimar (she's the daughter of the goddess Selûne) means she has wings. Yay, mobility! Although her leg armor being weird is a funny headcanon explanation as to why she is so prone to falling over in combat. (Pardon the pun XD)
This is objectively correct. Besides she's an immortal so the armor's aesthetics might be more important than their function. edit: she has that priestess girlfriend to impress after all.
Came to say exactly this! As a side note, in D&D there's actually a type of magical armor, called cast-off armor, where its entire gimmick is that it comes off magically. Point being; The idea of armor that is designed to be taken off and put on magically isn't unique to Baldur's gate. Obviously, having armor that you don't have to worry about 'putting on,' and that you could just have on whenever you need it, allows for some very unique designs that would probably be even more effective than real armor.
@Necroes Cast-off armor: "For when you want to give your players magical armor but don't want to deal with the 23 AC Warforged Paladin." Or someone wants to play a literal heavy metal magical girl. 💫
Loved the armor review. What a delightful christmas present. I would like to suggest a new tier just below "I'd wear it", called "It's magic!" for armors that look beautiful and you'd wear it but it would require magic to exist and and a transformation cutscene for you to wear it
Why I absolutely love it, animating different armor pieces moving without it being just a clipping mess is hard (you might be thinking you've seen clipping mess and it was ok, but no, you've seen good enough non clipping mess). Which is why you get so many breastplates expanding and contracting with just the idle's breathing. And yes, that armor is put on with moon magic. It just shows up on her.
not to mention how usually these ''clothes'' are made as one model to improve performance? add a tasset to the hip? congratulations that's now going to need thickness or it will look wrong, rince repeat for all the armor pieces on a character and suddenly one background NPC' has more geometry then the entirety of skyrim
Basicly the disconnect of design and craft. As a tailor i see designes all the time that look stunning but cant be done as depicted. We learn how to interpret it and make the closest to the design but that only really works when design and technical teams communicate. In a Videogame you can get away with the raw design, only when someone looks with a technical eye on it does it fall apart
When I was an apprentice, we were taught "Straight blades for curved lines and curved blades for straight lines." It might come in handy in future Cardboard Aided Design videos.
Regarding the tassels, that's a limitation of the game engine. Your starting point is to animate someone in pants and shirt moving their limbs with the clothes moving very plastically. Then you ask whether it's worth adding support for free flowing bits. There's so much shit to build that mid-budget isometric games which BG3 is will say "no". Which doesn't stop the artists from painting free flowing bits but the accepted convention is to pretend they are free flowing
Heres how i interpret that armour: It's a big padded catsuit. The scales are stretched into it, as normal, but the large plate appliques have metal loops on the inside and cloth straps, where scales would be, stitch the plate segments to the catsuit, like overgrown scales. The front plate segment and blue ribbon hide the buttons where she squeezes into the suit every morning for at least 3 hours.
I'm a simple woman, I see a Jill video, I must support for the cheese gods demand it. However I would happily watch many more videos of Jill does cardboard armor demo, this was really fun and thought provoking for me as someone who has taken the time and is still learning to smith armor.
As a one-time member of the SCA who has helped folk with their armor, usually when you have overlapping plates like that there is some form of strapping behind them that ties them all together (in the SCA it is often a leather belt). The attachment points are often hidden under the overlap. The leather strap that the thigh armor hangs from is often hidden and protected by the tasset. Admittedly SCA armor does not have to deal with edged weapons and the possibility of those straps being cut, but I can see a magical fantasy version that can succeed at that.
I LARPed and a friend and I used car hoods and old appliance shells to make fairly full suits of armor for us to wear at events. The helmets we bought from someone with skills and more tools than a few hammers a drill and some aviation shears. Other than we did not understand how to make articulated breastplates (resulting in some chin bleeds because we also didn't have an edge roller...) we did the best we could to follow drawings and photographs of actual plate armor. We made many of the pieces in cardboard first also, then traced that result onto the metal. Our tassets and pauldrons were articulated with straps un the underside of the metal (we used a LOT of pop rivets). We even had knee and elbow caps, though we made a few mistakes mounting them at first. - Counting the rivets, the sandpaper, and the many bottles of gun-blue we used to combat rust, we spent maybe $50-75 for two suits, as the metal was free from the town recycle pile. I ended up selling mine some years later for (IIRC) $100 to a friend about my size.
Merry Christmas cmm5542/Bernadette! (Although I DO like your actual name as well.) I'm proudly sitting upright and typing whilst dealing with a cold. Or flu? When your nose stops running while you sleep, which is it? = ) I have not exercised in a couple of days and IT IS unsettling. Hope your holiday with your family is going amazingly well! Seeing the festive sights! Eating your sister's cooking!
Love this video! The fun and whimsey of just getting down and contructing something out of cardboard to wrap your mind around it is just hilarious! Videos like this is what makees your channele special!
While I am totally invested and entertained by the breakdown of this armor/skinsuit, I do feel like it is worth noting that she doesn't put the armor on, but rather magically materializes the armor onto her body thanks to the power of her mother the moon goddess. That being said, I do appreciate the need to break it down and understand the functionality (or un-functionality) of it regardless of it's lore
Seems like an ideal task for using a jigsaw? They are, after all, meant to cut thin wood (fairly similar-ish to thick cardboard) and follow intricate curves, etc.
Thanks for the video! Keep up the good work! I'll admit that I skip over the ads whenever I can; still, after the Demonetization Saga, I can't help but see their presence as a victory 😊
My late wife was involved in the fringes of the Society for Creative Anachronism and had friends in the Florian Society. Medieval groups in Brisbane. She introduced to a couple of armourers and they showed me what went into just making a mailed glove…. I decided to stick to model kits! Have the greatest respect though.
Funny is that your problems are the reason I found you back. Years ago I saw a video about a sword in a dress. And didn’t immediately subscribe. But it stayed in my memory. But didn’t know the name of the channel. And now I not only found you, but also discovered that your whole channel is full of stuff I like.
1:45 I'd guess that was a decision to save on rendering resources. I know it's small but having a bunch of those would add up. Especially the physics elements.
especially because even if you made them all separate parts it would look wrong as they would have the thickness of less then a micron, like, you look at the tasset sideways and it completely disappears even whist looking trough a microscope thin because that's how faces in 3d geometry work... so you'd have to make it thicker which at the very minimum makes each piece have 4x the impact it once had on performance
It definitely feels like the armors are designed more as separate "skins" for the characters rather than animated "clothing". Which, means they all feel very... "skin tight"....
It looks sprayed on - like what the uniforms were supposed to be in the first Star Trek movie before the physique of the original series actors were examined. Kirk and Scotty would have had skintight bulges. Spock and Bones were still fairly close to their 1960s selves. Sulu would have rocked it. 😁I would have embarrassed myself with my reaction to Uhura. 😳🤯Chekov would have had a console to hide behind but wouldn't have needed it.
I'd like it to be considered that Dame Aylin can fly thus changing her needs for mobility in the legs, she really only needs her legs to be able to move in actions that assist her sword fighting and therefore could probably have rather structured leg armour. I'm not saying the armour design is done acknowledging this but rather as a thought for how a winged assimar would have different requirements.
Loved this video! I like the 'maybe it's magic' comment. Given there's a whole transformation cutscene from her wearing basically prisoner's clothes to being covered in that armour, 'maybe it's magic' may go a long way here!
I fought in the SCA for years until my health made me stop, and this video really takes me back to the days of cutting cardboard patterns and duct-taping them on to see what worked and what didn't, then making the armor in steel and leather and often finding out that the armor often didn't work as well as the cardboard suggested it might and having to start again. Frustrating and wasteful, and some of my fondest memories.
Thanks for going the extra mile and recreating this piece of armor. That being said, I expect nothing less in every video from hereon out. This and more cheese, obviously.
She is an angel, daughter of a god, and can sprout wings on command. I’m not really sure the armour bending incorrectly to is going to be where my suspension of disbelief falls apart.
I feel like I always learn a lot whenever I watch your videos. It's cool seeing how one of my favorite looking armor pieces in the game holds up to real life standards. Obviously the gaming art form has certain limitations that hinder it's potential but I always like seeing your breakdowns on these kinds of things.
I am all here for the cardboard and sticky tape armor! I love the visual in-depth breakdown of each piece. Thank you for sharing how you conceptualize the deconstruction reconstruction of what you are seeing. Please make more of these
From a gameplay perspective bg3 not giving them helmets was great, because it pushes the player to think about finding equipment for the companions right from the very start.
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned it, but the shape of the pieces look very much like the muscle groups of the thigh! So if that’s the inspiration, they should be held on with ligaments and tendons. Lol.
How much fun will Halloween be for Jill's kids? My dad once made a pirate costume with a real peg leg. People asked how it was so realistic and I said, "We cut my leg off." Granted, that was not the reason my leg was amputated, but it was how the peg leg looked realistic. It was actually a real peg leg.
Okay, I love, absolutely love that you tried out the armor design with cardboard, that was brilliant! It would be a lot of fun for you to take some of those iffy I would wear it armors you've reviewed before and use the cardboard to find ways to make it work.
My biggest issue with almost all fantasy armor is the degree to which artists can't seem to help themselves adding as many wingy bits and horns as they can find room for. Most of it seems designed to deflect blows TOWARD the wearer instead of away from the wearer. Magic keeps her from getting cloven in twain, I suppose.
ah yes, the problems of motion capture: the motions captured are sans additional layers, like armor pieces. Aylin's armor is magnificent, but yeah some realism is lost due to the nature of how it was made. Still gorgeous, though!
I would love to see you in full cardboard armor! Imagine if you had 10 days to make this video! Total side note, when my wife was teaching Sunday School, I build a full "Armor of God" out of cardboard. The kids had a hoot putting it on
Yeah, you got to be forgiving with video game armor. If they articulated every single panel of armor it would take ages to make the armor sets in a game.
Not really. The amount of technical detail put in the armor in game is generally enough. The biggest problem here is that the skeleton the model is rigged to doesn't have bones for the tassets. Because of that you get the oddity we see in game.
and then there's the issues of performance, if you separate the tassets you now not only have a hole you need to fill which takes more geometry (when 9/10 times it will be covered up by the tasset) but also that tasset is less then paper thin, so that takes even more geometry to add thickness... repeat for every piece of armor on a character and suddenly your background guard has more faces then the entirety of skyrim
Enjoying the continued critic of real world armor suitability against fantasy armor! For a suggestion, just because it wasn't brought up, find a cosplayer who is no doubt attempting cosplay this exactly armor set / character. I'm sure it would be a very interesting discussion of the melding of fantasy armor design and practical, or impractical, costume construction and wearing of costume. I kind of want a Adam Savage view of how it'd be done now. This engagement comment brought to you by the number remonitization and the letter cheese.
There's a few games out there that have done tassets really well, but like the pinned comment mentions bits like these are always difficult and you have to consider what you're willing to sacrifice for optimization. Usually in games where tassets are rigid physics objects flapping about on straps, they're made to only interact with the legs and phase through everything else, which is frankly good enough and avoids a lot of potential issues.
Noticed the little Tardis in the back for the first time, always great to meet a fellow Whovian! Also, can you maybe review a few of the Witcher sets from Witcher 3(and the Kaer Morhen set)?
Ok so here's my thought. The scales for the scale mail mount to what is effectively chainmail underneath right? So potentially one could leave out a scale and replace it with hooks or belts which could be used to attach the metal plate directly to the scalemail. This could have the additional benefit of letting each of the plates move independently of each other while still staying on the leg for better mobility.
Im so surprised noone mentioned the should thingies! Love your cardboard armour. 10/10. I would watch entire videos of you making armour out of cardboard 😂
Most of this is probably in order to save memory since so many animations would make the game run slower. This lack of movement is consistent with the rest of the game since most clothing and hair have limited physics. Also Dame Aylin and her armor are not seen much in game in comparison to other characters(Let me explain). First of all some players might not even see her in her armor(or at all) depending on the route they take(Dark Justiciar Shadowheart, Shadowheart is killed by Lae'zel). Dame Aylin is not animated in her armor that much she has four cut scenes with it on her: transformation sequence, removing the Shadow Cure(Mostly quick shots with lots of sparkles), Dialog after final boss of Act 2 and her reunion with Isobel. She has some dialog at camp but she does not move much and her lower body is not really visible. Because of the top down zoomed out view of combat in the game it is hard to see any details on characters armor so animators don't animate details so space is not wasted on things the player will probably not see(Complicated animations would also diminish clarity). I like Bg3 but the clothing design can be hit or miss. I love your videos and I'm glad your back.
Having spent so many hours with this game as well.. Can you convince me that she's not basically sailor moon? She is the daughter of the moon goddess, has a magical girl transformation sequence, and she fights evil.
It is magic armour that her moon goddess mother beams directly onto her in a kind of magic girl anime cutscene when she's released from 100 years of imprisonment by her lovers father. I really appreciate your commitment to demonstrating the physical practicality of extremely impractical armour though. It makes for great entertainment. Edit, also Merry Christmas 🎄🎁 I'm happy everything got sorted before the holiday started.
How it goes on? If you can't "Sailor Moon" it into place, at the very least you should recruit a squire :) Maybe the outer plates are welded together and connect to the cuirass under the tasset? Then the inner plate can be hinged and connect to the outer plate via locking hook? OR, Occam's Razor, the thigh scales are simply worked into metal of the cuisses and aren't actually an underlayment. That still leaves her with a skin-tight scale cod, which sounds about the least comfortable thing to wear in or out of combat
I believe the panels are embossed dyed leather and are integrated enrichment of the scalemail britches. So probably have laces/straps on the back that weave through the scale.
The scale mail will have a flexible cloth or leather backing to hold the scales, so it would be easy to add hooks or studs for attaching the larger plates.
What are the bloody odds that I was just playing through the scene where Aylin gets her armor, and thought "I wonder how the well known helmet lover Jill Bearup feels about this armor. Wish I knew.", and then when I close the game, this is waiting
"Magic!" High level character with fancy armour that wouldn't work in a mechanical way, then magic made it work. Also known as, the graphic designers didn't have the time to make it work in a practical sense, so they made it into a skin.
I feel like the fact that you were so captivated by this armor that you had to build it and try it on definitely and literally qualifies for a ranking of "I'd wear it"
i think it is all one armor and the bigger peices have tabs with holes in them on the inside so it attaches directly to the scale. there might be a separation between the pants section and cuirass / upper body section. but then i don't have any idea how you would get the upper section on
About the only non-magical way I can think off for that thigh section to work and stay together is that the scale mail attaches to edges but not underneath the plate sections, I hope my meaning was clear. As for the cuirass I imagine those blue colored side pieces to be stiff cloth or leather.
As a 3D / game designer I do understand the bending issue though.
This will get long, and have a lot of info, but not nearly enough to completely explain it, just to give an idea...
And I ABSOLUTELY understand that the review of an armor from a game has to look at these things as they are, not as they could be. Makes it more interesting to watch, and you learn more about how real armor works, so this is by no means to try and change the view on the armors. Just to explain the design side for people who like to know ;)
If you want armor to be physically correct, you have to design everything separate, and have it animated individually.
Sounds simple, but there are 3 things you NEED to keep as low as possible: 1: textures. More / bigger textures means you need a LOT more RAM. And it stacks up VERY fast. 2: vertices. The "pixels" so to speak, that hold 3D models together. 3D shapes are made up of triangles. The points are called vertex (vertices for multiple). If you have too many of them, it REALLY slows down the system, because it needs to calculate every triangle separately. 3: Physics calculations. These calculations slow down your system a LOT.
If you have more independent pieces, you have to design the model with more "bones" to define how each piece can move. Every piece has its own texture. And since it's a separate shape, the computer has to calculate the triangles of that shape, AND of the model underneath! Sure, it might be invisible, but the computer doesn't know that if it doesn't calculate it. And every extra piece needs its own physics calculations.
And really: designing it accurately is often a LOT easier than designing it optimized for performance.
That's how I imagined it working. Plus all that detail would mainly pay off during movement like combat. And during combat, you are not watching tassets move around.
I suggest to do this more realistically you'd need a way to do an animation efficiently that 'pretends' they are moving. Maybe just a blur, or jiggle. Maybe if you could find another thing already modelled and mirror it?
In FFXIV, this leads to the funny effect that taller shoes make your character's legs shorter. (or more accurately, the shoes are part of the leg and the leg keeps its lenght)
If I may add to that: if each pieces of armor are independent models, they have to be rigged for animators to move properly with the body while also not clip (phase) through each other. The animators are then restricted in their range of motion.
But the catch here is: it's motion captured animation. The actors are in tight mocap suits and are not moving with a huge accurate armor on them. So making the armor a single mesh (skin) that can bend with the body, while still unrealistic, will let the actors motion be transfered to the armor.
On the other end, I think a full physics driven armor would no only be hard to render in real time, but pieces may start clipping or flipping in every directions they can when the tension builds up while actors are moving in directions not physically possible for solid objects.
The way I think about armors in cases like this are that they are "suggesting" what the armor is when you look at it but from a practical standpoint the in game armor will have to bend and mold like a skin. Going for the look without the function in game for all the reason you point out
I do a lot of the same making items in the virtual world "Second Life", and the combination of skeleton and vertices is at the heart of it. And, if you see the mesh of vertices as skin,. and the bones of the skeleton as as rigid, you need extra data to define the effect of the muscles under the skin.. You would have the same to define how a knitted sweater moves. In a game a character might never take off a sweater. In a virtual world you can have several layers which have to work together. "Second Life" also uses textures and vertex meshes of varying level of complexity, to allow for a range of viewing distances.
There is a lot of jargon. And a lot of what happens in games has been a staple of films. Is a director saying, "I want to this" and different? The tools have changed.
The magic of CAD -- Cardboard Aided Design 😁👍
😄😄😄
A cosplayers most valued resource or so I'm told.
#manualCAD, not #autoCAD
i thought it stood for Cardboard And Duct-tape
Bravo 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
1) Experimental armor evaluations make me happy.
2) I’ve seldom been more pleased to see an ad.
3) Merry Christmas
4) Cheese
All hail the cheese!
....
Also merry christmas!
First time I’ve ever been happy to see stupid and annoying ads glaringly interrupt a video. Congratulations on being remonetized!
I feel like some of the bendy armour is due to engine limitations. Separately animating every last fold and bit is extremely taxing.
True - but they were animating individual hairs in Shrek in 2001. I have to figure 20 years on, it should be doable if the programmers or the engine is up to it. The graphics card manufacturers' marketing departments keep insisting their hardware is capable.
@@ssgtmole8610 The main difference is Shrek is a film and Baldur's Gate 3 is a game. That means it is more limited as it has to animate everything in real time, even if it was made 20 years later.
@@ssgtmole8610 You confuse movie rendering with gaming rendering, Shrek was not rendered in real time, not even close. Film level renders are really time consuming( or require truly massive computing power( often both)). Plus with Shrek if something rendered goofy, they threw out the footage and tried again. It's the classic situation of Fast, high quality, and affordable. You can make it fast and high-quality, but then it'll only run on hardware that no end user would have . Or fast and runs on a reasonable hw spec, but then quality suffers , or high quality and runs on realistic hardware - in that case you are either doing pretenders video, or willing to live with horribly low FPS.
As tech improves, and software gets better, and people get smarter at hiding the janky bits it gets better, but it's going to be a while before it gets there
@@ssgtmole8610 Oh, it's doable, but is it worth it? Or, rather, can player computers support it? Mega gamers perhaps, but the broader game playing base is more questionable. And even if a computer can physically handle the graphics, how much will it slow down the game and hinder smooth play?
Shrek was one movie. Get it all animated and then everyone sees the same thing. Like a cut scene in a game. But for game play it's a whole extra level of work and system taxation.
@@ssgtmole8610all movies are pre-rendered and can spend seconds to even minutes per frame. Games need many frames in a second.
10:00 To answer the question: Yes, the armor is very much magical. It gets beamed onto her by goddess magic in a cutscene.
Also, being an Aasimar (she's the daughter of the goddess Selûne) means she has wings. Yay, mobility! Although her leg armor being weird is a funny headcanon explanation as to why she is so prone to falling over in combat. (Pardon the pun XD)
This is objectively correct. Besides she's an immortal so the armor's aesthetics might be more important than their function. edit: she has that priestess girlfriend to impress after all.
the goddess who also is her mom
BDM tss! 😂👏
Came to say exactly this!
As a side note, in D&D there's actually a type of magical armor, called cast-off armor, where its entire gimmick is that it comes off magically. Point being; The idea of armor that is designed to be taken off and put on magically isn't unique to Baldur's gate.
Obviously, having armor that you don't have to worry about 'putting on,' and that you could just have on whenever you need it, allows for some very unique designs that would probably be even more effective than real armor.
@Necroes Cast-off armor: "For when you want to give your players magical armor but don't want to deal with the 23 AC Warforged Paladin."
Or someone wants to play a literal heavy metal magical girl. 💫
I appreciate Jill going full Mythbusters on the armor. I would love to see more of this.
Loved the armor review. What a delightful christmas present.
I would like to suggest a new tier just below "I'd wear it", called "It's magic!" for armors that look beautiful and you'd wear it but it would require magic to exist and and a transformation cutscene for you to wear it
Second this hehe!
I support the addition of this new category
Why I absolutely love it, animating different armor pieces moving without it being just a clipping mess is hard (you might be thinking you've seen clipping mess and it was ok, but no, you've seen good enough non clipping mess).
Which is why you get so many breastplates expanding and contracting with just the idle's breathing.
And yes, that armor is put on with moon magic. It just shows up on her.
I think the magic user should watch out for the Squire's Union. Labor action may be called for. 😂
not to mention how usually these ''clothes'' are made as one model to improve performance? add a tasset to the hip? congratulations that's now going to need thickness or it will look wrong, rince repeat for all the armor pieces on a character and suddenly one background NPC' has more geometry then the entirety of skyrim
Basicly the disconnect of design and craft. As a tailor i see designes all the time that look stunning but cant be done as depicted. We learn how to interpret it and make the closest to the design but that only really works when design and technical teams communicate. In a Videogame you can get away with the raw design, only when someone looks with a technical eye on it does it fall apart
This! I've been trying to make a cosplay for a video game character but so many things just simply are not possible in real life!
When I was an apprentice, we were taught "Straight blades for curved lines and curved blades for straight lines." It might come in handy in future Cardboard Aided Design videos.
Hell yeah, the armour reviews remain my favourite of your videos. Whether it is one with several armours or one like this. Both are nice
Regarding the tassels, that's a limitation of the game engine. Your starting point is to animate someone in pants and shirt moving their limbs with the clothes moving very plastically. Then you ask whether it's worth adding support for free flowing bits. There's so much shit to build that mid-budget isometric games which BG3 is will say "no". Which doesn't stop the artists from painting free flowing bits but the accepted convention is to pretend they are free flowing
Heres how i interpret that armour:
It's a big padded catsuit. The scales are stretched into it, as normal, but the large plate appliques have metal loops on the inside and cloth straps, where scales would be, stitch the plate segments to the catsuit, like overgrown scales. The front plate segment and blue ribbon hide the buttons where she squeezes into the suit every morning for at least 3 hours.
I love that there is background music from the game continuing while she's working/assembling. Chef' kiss.
I noticed that too! 'Down by the river' 😄
I'm a simple woman, I see a Jill video, I must support for the cheese gods demand it. However I would happily watch many more videos of Jill does cardboard armor demo, this was really fun and thought provoking for me as someone who has taken the time and is still learning to smith armor.
ALL HAIL OUR CHEESE OVERLORDS! MERRY SWISS-MAS!
As a one-time member of the SCA who has helped folk with their armor, usually when you have overlapping plates like that there is some form of strapping behind them that ties them all together (in the SCA it is often a leather belt). The attachment points are often hidden under the overlap. The leather strap that the thigh armor hangs from is often hidden and protected by the tasset. Admittedly SCA armor does not have to deal with edged weapons and the possibility of those straps being cut, but I can see a magical fantasy version that can succeed at that.
I LARPed and a friend and I used car hoods and old appliance shells to make fairly full suits of armor for us to wear at events.
The helmets we bought from someone with skills and more tools than a few hammers a drill and some aviation shears.
Other than we did not understand how to make articulated breastplates (resulting in some chin bleeds because we also didn't have an edge roller...) we did the best we could to follow drawings and photographs of actual plate armor.
We made many of the pieces in cardboard first also, then traced that result onto the metal.
Our tassets and pauldrons were articulated with straps un the underside of the metal (we used a LOT of pop rivets).
We even had knee and elbow caps, though we made a few mistakes mounting them at first.
-
Counting the rivets, the sandpaper, and the many bottles of gun-blue we used to combat rust, we spent maybe $50-75 for two suits, as the metal was free from the town recycle pile.
I ended up selling mine some years later for (IIRC) $100 to a friend about my size.
Great to have armour reviews again! 🎉
Merry Christmas, everyone! 💞
Merry Christmas cmm5542/Bernadette! (Although I DO like your actual name as well.) I'm proudly sitting upright and typing whilst dealing with a cold. Or flu? When your nose stops running while you sleep, which is it? = ) I have not exercised in a couple of days and IT IS unsettling. Hope your holiday with your family is going amazingly well! Seeing the festive sights! Eating your sister's cooking!
@@classicsloverI am! Sorry for your cold; get well soon and have a Merry Christmas! 😊
@@classicsloverI am! Sorry for your cold; get well soon and have a Merry Christmas! 😊
@@classicsloverI am! Sorry for your cold; get well soon and Merry Christmas! 😊
@@classicsloverI am! Sorry for your cold; get well soon and Merry Christmas! 😊
No idea who the character is or anything but seeing you make it from cardboard made me very happy…as did the ads, which I watched in full 💕💕💕
Love this video! The fun and whimsey of just getting down and contructing something out of cardboard to wrap your mind around it is just hilarious! Videos like this is what makees your channele special!
While I am totally invested and entertained by the breakdown of this armor/skinsuit, I do feel like it is worth noting that she doesn't put the armor on, but rather magically materializes the armor onto her body thanks to the power of her mother the moon goddess. That being said, I do appreciate the need to break it down and understand the functionality (or un-functionality) of it regardless of it's lore
4:50 as someone who likes to work with cardboard occasionally, I love seeing you try to cut it. I see you have mastered it about as well as I.
Seems like an ideal task for using a jigsaw? They are, after all, meant to cut thin wood (fairly similar-ish to thick cardboard) and follow intricate curves, etc.
@jaelwyn sounds good
And the scale goes...all...the way under. You'd think that would be uncomfortable all bunched up in your bits. And the Christmas socks are amazing!
Thanks for the video! Keep up the good work! I'll admit that I skip over the ads whenever I can; still, after the Demonetization Saga, I can't help but see their presence as a victory 😊
My late wife was involved in the fringes of the Society for Creative Anachronism and had friends in the Florian Society. Medieval groups in Brisbane.
She introduced to a couple of armourers and they showed me what went into just making a mailed glove…. I decided to stick to model kits!
Have the greatest respect though.
Armor craft time with Jill! I love it 😄
Yea Jill back with adverts - happy new year and have a very happy Christmas and thank you for all your videos
Seconding "never been so glad", or relieved, to see an ad.
Congratulations 🎉
And cheese 🧀
Perhaps for breakfast 🙂
Funny is that your problems are the reason I found you back.
Years ago I saw a video about a sword in a dress. And didn’t immediately subscribe. But it stayed in my memory. But didn’t know the name of the channel. And now I not only found you, but also discovered that your whole channel is full of stuff I like.
Hearing cuirass pronounced as "kweeras" made me realize that I have never actually heard that word spoken aloud before 😅
And even then, I've heard people out lout say 'cure-ess' as well.
From the older alternate spelling "Qurious"
Ahh the beauty of english, where you can't tell how a word is spoken based on how it is written. Even though that's half the point of writing
Welcome back, glad everything got sorted, always a delight to see another armour review!
1:45 I'd guess that was a decision to save on rendering resources.
I know it's small but having a bunch of those would add up. Especially the physics elements.
especially because even if you made them all separate parts it would look wrong as they would have the thickness of less then a micron, like, you look at the tasset sideways and it completely disappears even whist looking trough a microscope thin because that's how faces in 3d geometry work... so you'd have to make it thicker which at the very minimum makes each piece have 4x the impact it once had on performance
It definitely feels like the armors are designed more as separate "skins" for the characters rather than animated "clothing". Which, means they all feel very... "skin tight"....
It looks sprayed on - like what the uniforms were supposed to be in the first Star Trek movie before the physique of the original series actors were examined. Kirk and Scotty would have had skintight bulges. Spock and Bones were still fairly close to their 1960s selves. Sulu would have rocked it. 😁I would have embarrassed myself with my reaction to Uhura. 😳🤯Chekov would have had a console to hide behind but wouldn't have needed it.
Glad to see youve got the Adsense schenanigans sorted out.
👍👍👍👍😎😎😎😎
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you.
🎄🎄🎁🎁🎄🎄🎊🥳🥳🎊
I'd like it to be considered that Dame Aylin can fly thus changing her needs for mobility in the legs, she really only needs her legs to be able to move in actions that assist her sword fighting and therefore could probably have rather structured leg armour. I'm not saying the armour design is done acknowledging this but rather as a thought for how a winged assimar would have different requirements.
The remonetization is at hand! I love Dame Aylin's armor and just basically everything about her. Thanks for giving her weird magic thigh armor a go 😂
Loved this video! I like the 'maybe it's magic' comment. Given there's a whole transformation cutscene from her wearing basically prisoner's clothes to being covered in that armour, 'maybe it's magic' may go a long way here!
Merry Christmas Jill! May Father Christmas bring you the cheese of your dreams
very nice to see armour test in real life!
Merry Christmas and happy new year, Jill! So glad to see you back. 😊
I fought in the SCA for years until my health made me stop, and this video really takes me back to the days of cutting cardboard patterns and duct-taping them on to see what worked and what didn't, then making the armor in steel and leather and often finding out that the armor often didn't work as well as the cardboard suggested it might and having to start again. Frustrating and wasteful, and some of my fondest memories.
Thanks for going the extra mile and recreating this piece of armor. That being said, I expect nothing less in every video from hereon out. This and more cheese, obviously.
She is an angel, daughter of a god, and can sprout wings on command. I’m not really sure the armour bending incorrectly to is going to be where my suspension of disbelief falls apart.
Yay. Back to the business of armor reviews.
I feel like I always learn a lot whenever I watch your videos. It's cool seeing how one of my favorite looking armor pieces in the game holds up to real life standards. Obviously the gaming art form has certain limitations that hinder it's potential but I always like seeing your breakdowns on these kinds of things.
I am all here for the cardboard and sticky tape armor! I love the visual in-depth breakdown of each piece. Thank you for sharing how you conceptualize the deconstruction reconstruction of what you are seeing. Please make more of these
Aylin is definitely pretty magic haha
Great video
From a gameplay perspective bg3 not giving them helmets was great, because it pushes the player to think about finding equipment for the companions right from the very start.
So fun! I haven't made armor pieces out of cardboard since I was in 3rd grade!
Good thing you're back with your both interesting and fun content. 👍
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned it, but the shape of the pieces look very much like the muscle groups of the thigh! So if that’s the inspiration, they should be held on with ligaments and tendons. Lol.
Informative and entertaining.
Delightful as always.
As are those fabulous socks.
How much fun will Halloween be for Jill's kids?
My dad once made a pirate costume with a real peg leg. People asked how it was so realistic and I said, "We cut my leg off."
Granted, that was not the reason my leg was amputated, but it was how the peg leg looked realistic. It was actually a real peg leg.
Okay, I love, absolutely love that you tried out the armor design with cardboard, that was brilliant! It would be a lot of fun for you to take some of those iffy I would wear it armors you've reviewed before and use the cardboard to find ways to make it work.
I am so glad you are back! I loved your test of corset armor.
Your Xmas socks are amazing! Thank you very much 🥸
My biggest issue with almost all fantasy armor is the degree to which artists can't seem to help themselves adding as many wingy bits and horns as they can find room for. Most of it seems designed to deflect blows TOWARD the wearer instead of away from the wearer. Magic keeps her from getting cloven in twain, I suppose.
Merry Christmas to you, Ursa Minor and Nemo
ah yes, the problems of motion capture: the motions captured are sans additional layers, like armor pieces. Aylin's armor is magnificent, but yeah some realism is lost due to the nature of how it was made. Still gorgeous, though!
I would love to see you in full cardboard armor! Imagine if you had 10 days to make this video!
Total side note, when my wife was teaching Sunday School, I build a full "Armor of God" out of cardboard. The kids had a hoot putting it on
Maybe a NerdForge collab? Well, there's an idea...
Awww yeah! An Armour of God is classic! Nice work!
Merry Christmas, Jill. 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄
Yeah, you got to be forgiving with video game armor. If they articulated every single panel of armor it would take ages to make the armor sets in a game.
Not really. The amount of technical detail put in the armor in game is generally enough. The biggest problem here is that the skeleton the model is rigged to doesn't have bones for the tassets. Because of that you get the oddity we see in game.
and then there's the issues of performance, if you separate the tassets you now not only have a hole you need to fill which takes more geometry (when 9/10 times it will be covered up by the tasset) but also that tasset is less then paper thin, so that takes even more geometry to add thickness... repeat for every piece of armor on a character and suddenly your background guard has more faces then the entirety of skyrim
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. This was a wonderful virtual present. Thank you.
Your christmas socks are quite nice, well chosen.
Enjoying the continued critic of real world armor suitability against fantasy armor!
For a suggestion, just because it wasn't brought up, find a cosplayer who is no doubt attempting cosplay this exactly armor set / character. I'm sure it would be a very interesting discussion of the melding of fantasy armor design and practical, or impractical, costume construction and wearing of costume. I kind of want a Adam Savage view of how it'd be done now.
This engagement comment brought to you by the number remonitization and the letter cheese.
There's a few games out there that have done tassets really well, but like the pinned comment mentions bits like these are always difficult and you have to consider what you're willing to sacrifice for optimization. Usually in games where tassets are rigid physics objects flapping about on straps, they're made to only interact with the legs and phase through everything else, which is frankly good enough and avoids a lot of potential issues.
time to get into EVA foam cosplay armour builds...
Noticed the little Tardis in the back for the first time, always great to meet a fellow Whovian! Also, can you maybe review a few of the Witcher sets from Witcher 3(and the Kaer Morhen set)?
I wonder if there is any armor in Doctor Who that is worth analyzing? 🤔
@KlingonCaptain Ice Warriors maybe.
Sontaran armor, Cybermen, Daleks...
Commenting for the algorithm ! Happy holidays to all. Love the cardboard !
Merry Christmas, everyone! It was lovely to see your armour review! It's interesting to see 😃
Ok so here's my thought. The scales for the scale mail mount to what is effectively chainmail underneath right? So potentially one could leave out a scale and replace it with hooks or belts which could be used to attach the metal plate directly to the scalemail. This could have the additional benefit of letting each of the plates move independently of each other while still staying on the leg for better mobility.
Im so surprised noone mentioned the should thingies!
Love your cardboard armour. 10/10. I would watch entire videos of you making armour out of cardboard 😂
Merry Christmas Jill. Thanks for all your videos
Merry Cristmas Jill! Thanks for a surprisingly detailed review. I was not expecting you to break out the cardboard for this one! 🎄🤗
Well Jill, cardboard armour and cardboard weapons may be fun...but we should all avoid having a cardboard horse. Fording rivers would be unpleasant.
Most of this is probably in order to save memory since so many animations would make the game run slower. This lack of movement is consistent with the rest of the game since most clothing and hair have limited physics. Also Dame Aylin and her armor are not seen much in game in comparison to other characters(Let me explain). First of all some players might not even see her in her armor(or at all) depending on the route they take(Dark Justiciar Shadowheart, Shadowheart is killed by Lae'zel). Dame Aylin is not animated in her armor that much she has four cut scenes with it on her: transformation sequence, removing the Shadow Cure(Mostly quick shots with lots of sparkles), Dialog after final boss of Act 2 and her reunion with Isobel. She has some dialog at camp but she does not move much and her lower body is not really visible. Because of the top down zoomed out view of combat in the game it is hard to see any details on characters armor so animators don't animate details so space is not wasted on things the player will probably not see(Complicated animations would also diminish clarity). I like Bg3 but the clothing design can be hit or miss. I love your videos and I'm glad your back.
Having spent so many hours with this game as well.. Can you convince me that she's not basically sailor moon? She is the daughter of the moon goddess, has a magical girl transformation sequence, and she fights evil.
@@Avrysatos I can't convince you that she is not basically Sailor Moon because she very much is basically Sailor Moon.
Magic Girl Sailor Moon Scout, sure, but no meatball hair, no Sailor Moon, proper. 🍝
Good to see you doing what you do best. Happy Christmas to you and yours!
A Jill Christmas armor video with adverts. And socks! Hazzah!
Merry Christmas and welcome back.
Merry Christmas to you and yours, Jill!
In depth armour review! Whoop!
It is magic armour that her moon goddess mother beams directly onto her in a kind of magic girl anime cutscene when she's released from 100 years of imprisonment by her lovers father. I really appreciate your commitment to demonstrating the physical practicality of extremely impractical armour though. It makes for great entertainment.
Edit, also Merry Christmas 🎄🎁 I'm happy everything got sorted before the holiday started.
lol I’ve been stuck in this game since I bought it 2 weeks ago. Probably one of 5 best video games I’ve played since 1993.
This armor does not need to make sense in real world physics, but I absolutely love the discussion of "ok but what if?" Top notch work.
How it goes on? If you can't "Sailor Moon" it into place, at the very least you should recruit a squire :)
Maybe the outer plates are welded together and connect to the cuirass under the tasset? Then the inner plate can be hinged and connect to the outer plate via locking hook?
OR, Occam's Razor, the thigh scales are simply worked into metal of the cuisses and aren't actually an underlayment. That still leaves her with a skin-tight scale cod, which sounds about the least comfortable thing to wear in or out of combat
10:35 ooo, what a fun little teaser moment 😊
I believe the panels are embossed dyed leather and are integrated enrichment of the scalemail britches. So probably have laces/straps on the back that weave through the scale.
The scale mail will have a flexible cloth or leather backing to hold the scales, so it would be easy to add hooks or studs for attaching the larger plates.
What are the bloody odds that I was just playing through the scene where Aylin gets her armor, and thought "I wonder how the well known helmet lover Jill Bearup feels about this armor. Wish I knew.", and then when I close the game, this is waiting
Excellent CAD skills (cardboard aided design)
In two years when Jill is full- time cosplaying, we will look back at this video as the start of it all.
Merry Christmas!
I want more videos of you making cardboard armour. :)
"Magic!"
High level character with fancy armour that wouldn't work in a mechanical way, then magic made it work. Also known as, the graphic designers didn't have the time to make it work in a practical sense, so they made it into a skin.
Not the point of the video but I really like the way you did your hair in this video ☺️ and the colour of the shirt is really nice, too.
I feel like the fact that you were so captivated by this armor that you had to build it and try it on definitely and literally qualifies for a ranking of "I'd wear it"
Merry Christmas. 🎉I hope you can weave the demonetization into book two.❤
You just put ten times more thought into the design of her armor than the game developers did.
i think it is all one armor and the bigger peices have tabs with holes in them on the inside so it attaches directly to the scale. there might be a separation between the pants section and cuirass / upper body section. but then i don't have any idea how you would get the upper section on
About the only non-magical way I can think off for that thigh section to work and stay together is that the scale mail attaches to edges but not underneath the plate sections, I hope my meaning was clear.
As for the cuirass I imagine those blue colored side pieces to be stiff cloth or leather.
Arts & Crafts FTW! 🥳