Due to my efforts with my sword, I knew what it took to assemble and UV map such a complicated design, and as I’ve never worked with substance painter before or knew what it entailed, I wanted to dial it back with a simple helmet concept. I was unable to follow along to a previous workshop that entailed getting to know substance painters interface and texture a pre-made model, however I watched along with the class tutorials while modelling my own model so I knew what it entailed and what skills could be applied to what limited amount of time I had.

When I thought signature helmets from media Tali from Mass Effect was the first character that came to mind, and as her race was centred around wearing their helmets to survive, I thought it was a fitting reference to use. I also adore the Mass Effect series and Tali is one of my favourite characters so I wanted to do her justice.

To begin I took a sphere and deleted the bottom half, using proportional tool to adjust and hug the helmets frame of the BG image. This allowed me to alter my curve while maintaining my desired shape. The only thing was the images weren’t aligned properly so I had to keep switching between angles to form the shape and have a middle ground that resembled both angles.

I began by adding a sphere and deleting it’s bottom faces. I switched to x-ray mode to highlight the faces that I needed from both sides. I switched between front and side profiles to ensure the sphere hugged the shape of my reference image, selecting vertices and using proportional editing where I saw fit.

I then inserted another sphere that hugged the back of the helm and deleting half its faces, then adjusting it into position (much like the glass shape of the helmet.)

Another sphere was implemented to form the surrounding frame of the helm. Forming basic shape using knife tool, cleaning up the edges and making sure any triangles turned to quads around the edges (much like the Zubat assignment.)

Added shade smooth, solidify modifier to see how the overall model is coming along. Turned on auto smooth to ensure a good balance between smooth curves vs sharp edges.

One thing I need to work on going forward is my geometry of my model. Although I’ve had multiple practise models until this point, I still struggle with getting good geometry to my models. This helmet result in a lot more triangles than I was happy with and tidied as much as I was able without altering the overall shape of my helm, however I was nervous when it later came to marking it’s seams as how successful it would have been. Alongside time constraints I was unable to get my model as tidy as I had wanted, however it serves its purpose for what little time I had.

Knife tool was used to form protruding shapes, adding a surrounding frame to attempt to tidy the edges of my model. This involved a lot of moving and deleting edges/vertices and time as this wasn’t my strong suit.

I selected the faces and extruded them forward, working from highest point to lowest. Once the faces were extruded a selected the bottom faces and also extruded them forward to ensure there were altering 3D levels to my helm.

To form the mouth piece I inserted a cyclinder, scaled inward and inserted faces, using the BG as reference. I extruded these faces inward and placed a sphere in the middle to replicate the “light” in the centre.

A sphere was also used as the bottom of the helm, same methods as above. I carved the shape of the 3D aspect of the bottom section and extruded forward. I selected edges and bevelled slightly to ensure there were no harsh edges as this looked unrealistic.

One issue I faced was, once I bevelled the frame of the helm, I created a really strange issue with the shape of the top corner section.

I wanted to try and fix this section as it would be possible to see when the helmet pieces were assembled. I fixed this the best I could be extruding normal, selecting vertices and “merging at centre”. This took a while to fix, however I got to the point where it looked serviceable enough to continue forward. I had to do this with both sides, this is the outcome.

The solidify mod, smooth and auto smooth options were placed on all the objects and I then attempted to alter the shapes using proportional editing and selecting vertices so everything modelled so far would fit together, much like placing puzzle pieces to complete the overall picture. Once the glass hugged the shape of the helmet I was happy enough to call my model complete.

I began to make the seams, which turned out to be fine in the end as I tried to fix the surface geometry as best as I could. The base model was also simple shapes, which turned out to be a simple process compared to my sword as there were so many moving parts to keep track of.

The result could have been a lot better/neater and in the future I want to attempt to look into the tutorial on how to tidy my unwrapped UV’s.

There were some aspects of my helm that I wish I could alter, much like the inside so the shapes weren’t clipping and, as mentioned before, cleaner geometry. I had also forgotten to partner all the shapes together as one object before submitting, which is a bad habit and would have been a nice finishing touch. However I was eager to play with Substance Painter so I unwrapped the UV’s and imported my model to the painting program.

Overall finished Helmet model:

When I uploaded my model to substance painter all it took was playing around with the settings until I got a result that I liked. I added base colours/materials to my helmet to resemble a similar feel to the original in game helm. When adding 3D textures I altered them to ensure they didn’t come across too strong and their various height levels/how much of said textures I wanted to display.

I also wanted to play around with the paint brush, but I wanted to have a “less is more” approach to my helm as the original design was simple and I didn’t want to overdo my design. I lightly brushed my mouthpiece with a lighter blue to have the illusion that it was lightly glowing and ensured it had a glossy finish to match the glass to bounce off light. I then also added a light brush of cracks indented into the helm, which caused a happy accident when uploading my helm back into blender. This was the result of me playing around with the software:

I preferred this method of texturing to UV mapping with flat images. There’s a lot of freedom that the substance painter tools give you and could add a lot of personalized features that you can’t do with simple images.

I exported my custom made textures into a folder and applied them to my model in blender. This involved inserting nodes and plugging them into certain areas to get the effect I wanted. When implemented my textures to my helm there was an issue with how shiny it came out. I added a few nodes to ensure the shininess of my model was toned down and made a few finishing adjustments.

For my background I added a plane, formed it around my object, bevelled and added light points. I thought, since her mask illuminates a blue glow to the mouth piece, I could add a blue light point and turn up the strength to resemble this feature. I adored how this came out as the few gaps and textured cracks illuminated this colour.

In the end this is how my helmet came out:

I also wanted to see what it would look like settled onto a shinier surface:

I enjoyed the bottom result better, however again due to time constraints I submitted the above image. If I also had more time I would have liked to play around with the transparency of the glass/blue sphere as her mask was semi-transparent in some scenes, however I was happy enough with the result of my final helm.

What I learned from the creation of the helm was a few more creative tools to achieve the effect I want, however I need to put aside more time if I want to make more adjustments. I also need to ensure the model that I’m focusing on, if it has a lot of parts, to prepare a lot more time in advance for trial and error and the capacities of the tech I’m running said software on as I had a lot of errors/crashes with my previous sword that stumped the development of my helm.