VS - "Cambrian" Helmet Concept

Update 12/13/13: Convergence Helmet has been completed. I haven't been checking the status every day so this may have happened a few days earlier.

Update 10/14/13:
Cambrian helmet v2: Convergence Helmet has been accepted!



Update 10/9/13:
Helmet has been tweaked and color scheme has been modified:

Current 3D Viewer Link

Update 9/28/13:
Helmet has been revamped based on feedback from T-Ray, Faven, Nicococo, and others.

3D Viewer Link

Update 8/31/13:



All teal regions are intended to be emissive but I haven't looked into how to do that in Blender just yet.

3D Viewer Link

Original Post:

Any suggestions before I start modeling this guy? How is the level of detail, thickness, etc? I may have missed some consistency errors between the perspectives here so feel free to point those out if they make it hard to read the design.

The optical sensors are intended to be convex rather than flat circles; this will be more obvious in the model.

That's a really neat concept, I'm looking forward to seeing how you model it.

Its looking really awesome.. i already want this

Great concept, this will look ace.

My only thought is you could end up with something that is 'all chitin/carapace' material. The sides of the jaw there is some indication of louvers/gills type of thing? Maybe keep in mind making the 'gills' pretty different for some variety of materials on it.

Also maybe some buckles/latches/closure on the back, how do they put it on? It looks like it's not removable right now.

nice design, simplify the face mask

I see what you mean about too much homogeneity in the material. I meant for this lineart to show geometry only but I forgot to remove the "gill"lines, which represent a soft-material jaw texture on the standard sheet that I was planning on using. As for how it opens, my thought was that the entire helmet separates along a coronal plane with the first cranial plate, faceplate, and jaw splitting off from the rest of the helmet.

Thanks! Which part of the mask do you mean, though? The curvature on the edges of some of the plates? The number of plates? I'm still very new to modeling so I'm not sure which part of the mask is problematic.

As a loyal VS play, I want this so much, I'm throwing my SC at the screen but nothings happening!

http://i.imgur.com/KAV8zSU.jpg

I have a modeling best-practices question: What is the best way to close the geometry circled in red above and below the eyes in the link above? I want to maintain the appearance of smooth plates across as much of the facemask as possible, but I know I need to avoid T-intersections with my edges. I can think of several ways to close things up but since I'm new to modeling I wanted to know if there was a recommended way.

The model is, of course, far from done, but if there are any outstanding issues in the way my mesh is progressing please let me know.

(Edit: And T-Ray, if you have the chance I would still like a clarification on what you meant by "simplifying the face mask." I know you made that suggestion just before heading out to SOE Live and this thread has been buried a bit since then, so it may have slipped through the cracks.)

I love this thing so much. The only thing i would suggest any sort of change with is to smooth out the back. I was never a huge fan of the elongated-head theme in some of the vanu helmets (or the head-fins, lets be honest). Not only does it looks kinda weird i have to think its heavy and awkward to move around in.

In the back of yours you have what looks like (from some angles) like a 'spike' sticking straight out. Smoothing out the curve and bringing it much more vertically - and less of a point at the tip - so it meshed into the neck of whatever armour you're wearing would look really good.

A few points as to why, so it sounds less picky.

• It looks like I'd stab myself in the back of the neck of I looked up.
• It looks like there is an open, vulnerable spot under there
• The ear pieces seem good but they stick out a little too much. When i think of Vanu i think of angular plates, but less spiky and pointy. I think of insect chitin, or large scales, or even the bumps and grooves on a turtle shell, but less spikes and sharp edges. To me, sharp edges and sudden points show cheaper production, not the advanced construction of the Vanu.
• With that in mind, the center head fin could be flatted out and expanded over the skull of the helmet and not be quite so tall, and look more like flattened armour plating and less like a mohawk (which i notice the model leans towards a little more than the draft.

Its still looking really good, i love the "goggles" or what i like to think of as glowing cameras which display an advanced visual on the inside of the solid-metal face-plate. Power to the vanu! Good luck, i want this helmet!

Just looking at the line up on the concept wouldn't he be unable to see directly ahead? You have the eyeholes/lenses positioned in such a way that one would have to look left or right to see out the holes.

cameras for an internal display.

Ah, figured there had to be some reasoning behind it. Still like the concept, though I agree it looks like you would sever your own spine with how sharp that point it. Maybe reverse where the "edge" is?

The first draft of the mesh is complete at 4078 tris. The wireframe view isn't rendering some of the mesh for some reason, but as you can see from the solid view there are no gaps. I'm already planning on cleaning up the channel around the eyes to give it more uniform thickness, but I welcome other revision suggestions.

@T-Ray, if I haven't addressed your earlier suggestion to simplify the facemask, please specify what I should change.

I've been tweaking the geometry and I've run into an issue with the faceplate, illustrated in these renders (UV unwrap is not finalized):



Here's a detail image of the mesh around the eyes. The tris above and below each eyelid have been Shrinkwrapped to helper faces (not shown) in a way that they should be coplanar. This planarization shows properly in the flat shader image above but not in the smooth shader.

Do I need to worry about the shadowing with the smooth shader or is this just an issue with Blender's shader? If I do need to fix it, what's the best way?

(Current mesh has 4556 triangles.)

Once this issue is resolved I'll post more comprehensive images of the UV unwrap and the new ear geometry, which you can't see very well from this angle.

Wish I was able to help. You're light years beyond my league.

My silly thoughts to try:
-In your Material settings put Specularity to 0
-Are you using only the default spot light when you start a new project? I like a sun in the sky and a hemi below the floor facing up to help me see things when I'm working in the early stage like this.

Hope someone has real answers to your questions.

I'm using a single point light for rendering in this case because I just wanted to emphasize the shading issue around the eyes.

Playing with the Material settings doesn't seem to be helping; the problem seems to be inherent to the way the smooth shader is treating my geometry. Thanks anyway for your suggestions though

Yeah, sorry I couldn't be more help. I barely know Blender and I see what you're talking about with my own stuff, wish I knew.

merge or join the objects. Its likely there is a split there or something.

what he said, and did you select all and Vertices -> Remove Doubles?

There are no split edges or doubled vertices in that region. The entire helmet shown in these images is one object; I only used separate objects in the form of dummy faces to Shrinkwrap the eyelid vertices. Ironically, splitting the edges around the eyelids and along the next ridge below the eyes actually improves the shading drastically:



I know I can't submit the helmet with split edges like this (or can I?), but maybe this will help provide more insight into what's going on with the shading.