Blood Bowl Helmet!

I've decided to drop the doing the monthly noob challenge this month. Not because I wasn't enjoying it or anything but I think I'm trying to run before I can walk, so to speak. Rather than trying to do full completed scenes I should be trying to get individual assets looking go on their own first.

I've opted to do a few single assets and trying to do them fairly quickly. Any troubles I hit on each asset I'm going to make the focus on the next one. This time round I'm going to attempt a Blood Bowl Helmet.

First thing I did was gather my reference. I knew I wanted to put my own spin on this version of the helmet but I wanted to remove the seal and damage it up a little more with a tri count target of 2k tris...

Original concept 

Reference #1

Reference #1

I began by analyzing my reference, I noticed that general shape of the helmet was not far off a barbute helmet but with the face section open rather than a general “T” shape. I decided I would push that shape a little further in my version of the helmet.

I started by creating a general low poly, I then duplicated the low poly and added any supporting geometry to the helmet and turbo smoothed it out, I made sure the mesh stayed all quads. I then took this version into zBrush and sculpted any detail I needed onto the model. After completing that I exported it back out of zBrush and into 3dsMax. I first optimized the low poly mesh to get it as close to my set tri count as possible, I then unwrapped it and started baking and that's where things went wrong!

Initial models - low poly and zBrush ready (before symmetry)

High Poly Sculpt

High Poly Sculpt

High Poly Sculpt

Red Helmet is the model that was taken into zBrush before sculpting.

I had a lot of intersecting geometry on the model. This caused the bake for the normal and AO maps to come out incredible dirty with a lot of artifacts. At this point I should have fixed that, I should have separated the low poly and high poly and baked out there parts individually, but I pressed on with what I had hoping once it had some albedo and gloss on it it would save it (spoilers... It didn't!)

I then took it into the Quixel Suite and began texturing. I have to point out how much I love texturing with dDo. I love the process and idea behind using masks and layering different materials on top of one another. It's incredibly fast, and it produces lovely results and provides a solid flexible base for the artist to work from.

Unfortunately a lot of the dDo loveliness was ruined by the shoddy bake...

Final Result

looking at the final result I'm unhappy with the normal map applied the blocky silhouette. I feel I could fix both of these by better approaching the model. I should have better optimized my model to keep as much of the high poly silhouette as possible. I should have baked each part of the model individually and combined the normal maps into one after the bakes where complete. I could have also maybe retopologizsed the high poly to get my low poly rather than starting with one, this was I could have had more control over my topology and maybe allocated some around the bigger cracks on the model and they could have added to the models silhouette.

I think my next model will be all about improving my baking!Hopefully it'll turn out better.

Peace and love x