Here’s my current progress on my Mark 3. It’s been a long journey to get to this point…about 4 years of modelling up to a certain point and then starting again, building shaders and being satisfied with them only to scrap them 6 months later and rebuild them from scratch and then the cycle repeats.
Finally I can see light at the end of the tunnel and it’s at the stage where I’m happy to say I’ve more or less ‘finished’. Now I just have to figure out a way to best present it.
Here’s a test on the post work. I was toying with the idea of making the garage scene, but I think this will be the final look, otherwise I could spend another 4 years experimenting with it all.
click for full size
Nice, can you share your wireframe?
I think the light in the helmet area need some fix. I don’t fill a good flow of the rim highlight.
Here’s the wirerframe.
I’m not sure I follow about the helmet area. Is it something about the reflections in the gold section?
Thanks for commenting.
Hey!
the modeling looks great, but the hands seem to short imo, what reference are you working off?
One of the prop forums has renders of the prop suit so I’m going off those as well as renders of the cg version.
Yes I talk about the specular flow… It’s the flow of the specular who cut … The flow most go on 
Really nice work man, Ive seen alot of people model iron man and they always tend to get the head shape wrong in a way, yours is spot on, as for the metal, the red metal material is great, but the other material seems off to me in a way, I could be wrong tho, either way looks good man. Are there any falloff materials on the lights? you know around the edges sordof a hint of blue
I love the Iron man!
And your model looks AMAZING!
Im not soooo sure about the proportions.
I couldnt fine an example to compare, but really I love your model.
Congrats!
Thanks for the comments.
NixonBlur, yeah the gold could do with a few more tweaks but I’m going to leave it. Maybe I’ll update the shader for the VI or VII. As for the lights, the eyes have a blue light material and an orange one for the chest and hands, but the intensity makes them more or less white apart from the edges.
Well, here’s the final image, time to move on to the next project I think.
click for full size
Can you screenshot you LightRig? maybe it’s your lightrig who bugs me.
But yah Great work on the helmet, many people get it wrong and, I mean, it’s the main focus point of Ironman armour.
Are you planning a cool pose?
The lighting is just a HDRI from the sIBL website, nothing fancy. As far as the pose, the rig is really basic so I can’t really make it too dramatic, plus this one is based on the Sideshow 1/2 scale statue.
I might get a 3d print and get my own 1/6 version.
Well I just can’t leave this thing alone!
I’m trying different ways of presenting it and this is a test on a backplate. It still looks too CG for me and it’s missing that little ‘something’ to get it looking completely photoreal but I don’t know what it is.
Really good modeling and texturing work.
It looks pretty good, it could just be that you need to do a bit of grading, as the colours are a bit vague.
I am sure you have seen plenty of reference images, but have a look at these.
http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/iron-man-2-movie-image-22.jpg
http://geekspodcast.com/geekpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/im2_2.jpg
The maroon colour is more vibrant in those reference images and while you have added dirt, perhaps add more wear and tear marks in places you would expect it to be and less dirt and dust, and you could add some grime where parts of the suit come together as in the reference images, like grooves and parts where metal come together.
While Tony Stark does get down and dirt with building robots, working on engines, he is still very well presented and clean and so is his iron man suits, so that is why I believe you should have less dirt on the suit, especially the breast plate area.
It could also be the angle, but the breast plate feels a bit small compared to the reference images. It is however apparent that you are modelling to a specific version which is not quite the same as the reference images I have added.
Modeling wise, I am sure you are done and won’t go back to it, but the gaps between some of the parts could be wider, for a lack of a better word.
Thanks for the feedback Bianca-Lee. The colour difference is due to the Mark 3 being a darker shade in the first movie…those images are from Iron Man 2 
http://www.masculinity-movies.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Iron_Man_movie.jpg
I can see what you mean about the dirt and yeah a few scrapes and chips wouldn’t go amiss. I’ve already done a bit of grading but I wanted it to feel natural and didn’t want to push it too far. Do you reckon I could push it further? What would you recommend?
Thanks.
Hey David!
I’m no expert on this stuff but what I see when I look to the image is a render over an image.
Renders tend to come with powerful colors, much more saturated than a photo or video footage. Try to desaturate it and try to match the black and white levels. I believe these are very important.
Are you using an HDRi to light the model?
What about DoF?
I wish I could help you more!
Good luck with it David! Go for it!! 
Thanks utopia780, it’s such a fine balance and developing an eye for it is something I’m very keen to learn.
I decided to scrap that setup and recreate the Stark garage HDRI. I re-discovered Ben Snow’s pdf on physically based shaders from 2010 and used that to extract the Stark garage HDRI using some of the tricks he mentions. I think it’s a more successful now. It also helps that I used an updated shader for the Mark II. Still some way to go but I’ll get there.
