Scaling a 3d File for Pattern Making or 3d Printing
NOTE: If you are planning to 3d print your files, you need to load your high resolution file. When you scale it, the output will be directly based on the file you loaded into Armorsmith.
In the previous tutorial, I showed you how to simplify (decimate) a model for making a pattern in Armorsmith Designer. While that step is necessary for pattern making – it isn’t necessary if you are going to be 3d printing the file.
The whole point of this tutorial is to make sure that you know how to scale your costume pieces properly for what you are doing. Since I am planning on making the the patterns for an EVA foam build, I am going to use the decimated file that I made in my previous tutorial. If you are 3d printing your piece – you Iron Man and Master Chief cosplayers know who you are – you can use your print ready file.
There is no right or wrong way to scale things… Well, that is not entirely correct. There IS a wrong way to scale things. However, in most cases, scaling you cosplays is an art rather than a science. You have to balance what is technically correct and accurate with what is comfortable and will work. Let me tell you this – if you don’t get it right the first time, it can get VERY expensive building things a couple times. That is why we make a poster board mockup of most of our patterns before we build in any other materials. We can get poster board for about 60 cents a piece and the same amount of EVA foam is going to cost $30-$40
Launching Armorsmith Designer
The first time you load Armorsmith designer, you are going to be greeted with a window that explains the process of setting up your avatar – a digital version of you. It looks like this.
Go through that entire set up process, and you should be close to ready. Take a look at your avatar and make sure that it looks like you. Well, not like you, but that it matches your proportions. If it doesn’t, you will need to do some extra fiddly work. For instance, when we entered my measurements, it looked like Shrek. While I do have some extra weight, I don’t have an ogre belly, so we had to make adjustments.
The reason that we need to make precise adjustments is because it treats the avatar as someone with average proportions. In my case, someone with my waist would be portly. However, I am almost as broad as a standard door and as tall, so it didn’t know what to do.
Click on each section of the body, and you will see something that looks like this.
I had to click on waist width and measure across my midsection side to side. Then waist depth and measure across my midsection front to back. I recommend doing this for every body part. It can be daunting, but is worth it in the end. I mean, really worth it.
Once you’ve got it all entered, you should see your avatar. This is your digital dress form, and we will work with this a LOT to get the patterns right. When you open it, you should see something like this.
NOTE: Please ignore the fact that my shoulders are floating free of my body. When I started this tutorial, I had all of my measurements written down, and I believe my shoulder measurement is for a suit coat, not what the application wants. When you click on the number in the measurements pane, an orange line shows up on the avatar showing you what it wants measured.
In the upper right hand side of the screen you should see the Workspaces pane. At the moment, it has a big black gear pictured. Go ahead and hit import.
Navigate to the folder where you stored your decimated helmet, select it, and hit the open button. You should see the file name and the helmet where the gear was.
Here is where the fun begins. Click that attach button. All of the possible attachment points will now appear as orange circles on the avatar model.
The helmet is currently attached to your cursor. Drag it near the attachment point on the head and it will snap into place.
Then click on that attachment point. When you do, the helmet will now be attached to the model.
Navigating this window is pretty standard for most 3d applications, but I know not everyone has that kind of experience. So here are a couple quick reference commands to help you do all this.
The left mouse button is how you select things like costume pieces and avatar body parts.
When you hold the right mouse button down, it rotates your avatar.
When you roll the scroll wheel, you will zoom in and out.
When you click and hold the scroll wheel, you can move your avatar around in the costume window view.
For now, we need to select the helmet. So, left click on it and it should get an orange outline.
With the helmet selected, we want to go down to the property grid in the lower right corner and change the opacity to something like .65. This allows us to see through the helmet so we can make sure everything is the right size.
Now, we are going to use the Transforms panel to get the helmet to the right size for us. Translation moves the item you have selected relative to your avatar. Rotation pivots the item around it axis. And Scale makes it bigger or smaller. With Uniform Scale checked, the whole item will get larger or smaller. If you have it unchecked, you can change the height, width and depth of a piece independent of each other.
I know it sounds complex, but go on and play around with the transforms by clicking on the up and down arrows. You can always reset the numbers to zero (or 100 for scale) if you feel like you made a mistake. You can also use Ctrl-Z to undo a change.
I tend to start in a side view and adjust the y-axis (which is up and down) and the z-axis (front to back) to get the piece roughly where I think it should be. Sometimes, we need to rotate it, too. Here is where I have the helmet before I start to scale it.
As you can see, the helmet is a teensy bit small for my brick of a skull. And THAT is why we are doing this. If I were to unwrap the helmet to make a pattern now, it would be too small and we would have to build it again. So, we are going to start by using a uniform scale to see if the helmet looks okay at the sizes needed to cover my jawline. I didn’t really like that. The uniform scale just made it look like I was a kid in daddy’s helmet.
So, I unchecked the Uniform Scale box and played around with the values a bit. “Y” is how tall the helmet is. Since my head is shaped like an excitingly chunky cinder block, I made the helmet taller than it had been. This made it too wide in the uniform scale transformation, so I reduced the “X” axis a few points. Lastly, Samus’ helmet is kind of an oblong shape and this helmet was more… well… helmet shaped, so I made it longer on the “Z” axis. This is where we ended up.
I feel that this is scaled pretty well now, and is ready for the next step, which will be unwrapping it to create the pattern. Go to the Avatar menu and save your avatar if you haven’t already. Put it in it’s own folder. If you ever mess something up, you can load the avatar and you will be good to go. Go to the File menu and save this armor build, as well.
Here is a video of everything we just did.
October 8, 2025
