Ongoing - Status Of Shields Projects

Got that latest design for the narrow S.E.Asian shield completed on paper - now I need to wait till I can get to a scanner to get it from pen-and-ink to ones-and-zeroes.

In the meantime I've decided to do some other one-handed shields to work with my PropGoto+ script, so I can make Smart+ props for them too. Roman shields, Viking shields, African parrying shields, and Medieval bucklers. Here's my first stab at an early Empire era Roman legionaries shield, based on the Dura Europos - i.e. c.106x86cm, curved to a 66cm chord, 5-6mm thick (source info from principialegionis.org , wikipedia , romancoins.info , and romanarmytalk.com ), although I've made the umbo (boss) an elongated hexagon as opposed to a square - don't know why I did that?

Very basic model at present - 412 vertices, 412 faces. Boss needs to be more rounded (only 8 vertices round its circumference - you can see from the handgrip), shield corners need rounding, all edges need beveling, etc. Here's Jimmy doing the old "Hail Caesar!" with it...



Not sure whether to model the rawhide edging and the the rivets on the boss, or to leave that to bump/displacement in the texturing.

P.S. Image Upload Problem: Seems to be a FF issue (clearing cache/cookies, Ctrl-F5, disabling addons/plugins, restarting browser and logging in again doesn't help), since it worked fine from IE.

Note for future - For Republican shields check the Kasr el-Harit shield, e.g. at http://www.swan.ac.uk/grst/student%20papers/Roman%20Rep%20shield.htm - 120x64cm, so taller and narrower.