As our assignment for week 5, we were tasked to create a helmet, a UV map for it, and then texture it in Adobe Substance 3D Painter, then for it to be ported back into Blender. I chose a Spartan helmet design, specifically one from the game Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

I used this image as a reference for the model. Here are a few photos of my progress.

Building 

I started with a sphere for the helmet, and used basic shapes to build up all of the sections bar the bird decoration, for which I used the knife tool and cut out the general shape from a plane, then solidified it and built the form further from there. A mistake that I made that cost me a lot of time, was that when I was building the main part of the helmet I used a mirror modifier, but did not for the plume at the top and the bird decoration, so when I joined the separate parts, the plume was essentially doubled, which I did not notice until it caused issues with UV mapping.

To resolve this, I cut the entire model in half, and went through trying to find and delete all of the doubled faces, which was a tedious and avoidable process, but I managed to clear it all up before reapplying the mirror modifier so the helmet was once again whole. I should have applied the mirror modifier before joining the parts that didn’t need it, or cut everything in half before doing so.

I used bezier curves to create the details on the front of the helmet, as this helped make them look smoother and also was easier to fit to the shape of the helmet. I really enjoyed figuring this part out, and I think it adds a lot to the look of the model overall.

Texturing

In Adobe Substance 3D Painter, I realised how simple the textures on the model were, so I tried to add some variation by making certain details more shiny, and I added blood, mud and dents to the helmet to add character.

The helmet has a dent on the left face plate, as if a sword clashed off of it, and there are also tally marks on the back right side, where the soldier kept count of their kills. I used a stencil to create these effects, and after painting them in, I set the layer to effect height only.

Although the plume texturing could have been more realistic, overall, I am very pleased with my model.