Iron Man Helmet

Keynlan

Just started playing with 3D modeling about two weeks ago.  Will post progress as I go. Any critique/tips/advice is greatly appreciated.

Front view of the helmet so far. Cylinders in place for when i finish with the face.


I haven't really done much with the back of the helmet yet, just the face and sides. Lots of issues with lower side detailed in the next screenshot.


I'm having issues getting a clean cut around where the "mouth" line is into the cuts of the cheek. I can't quite get the very bottom to smoothly transition into the cheek.


Frame of that area with issues circled.


Making a triangle out of the face of the blue circle on the right creates a dimple in the side of the side. Doesn't smoothly transition to the back because of the other vertices that connects to the back of the cheek. Maybe create bevel cuts to remove that connection? Will work on it.

Keynlan

Not a lot of progress other than the back of the head. Had to take a step back and really clean up the mesh. The amount of faces was very unmanageable and the UV mapping looked like a nightmare, so I did a heavy cleaning.

Front view before cleanup. This was also before the screenshot in the original post and I don't really have an old screenshot of the side before.


This is what it looks like now. Still needs some cleanup and smoothing. The eye portion looks way too deep so I'll probably bring the eyes forward a bit. Any advice on how to best sharpen edges of triangles would be appreciated.


The triangles that I'm having issues with can be seen where the two weird shadows are showing on the upper left side of the mask. Also not sure what's going on with the lower part of the mouth.

Gazu

When working on HighPolys try to keep your Topology as clean as possible.
For example: For a 90° Curve its enough to have 2 or 3 Edgeloops in the Curve. The more Geo you add, the Hardedged your Mesh will look like on curvy surfaces. Or try to bend surfaces with a modifier and not by hand.  The results will be cleaner.

Keynlan

Understood. Some of the issues I have with using edge loops to tighten things up, is that they stretch around into areas where i don't need them. I do know the purpose of those is to loop all the way around, but it creates a pinch in the mesh. I either have to merge the vertices to make it go away or shift them on top of others and remove doubles. I'm assuming the modifier you mentioned makes this a bit easier?

Keynlan

I went back and removed all the edge loops I had placed and started marking the edges I wanted as sharp, while using the edge split modifier. When that was done I set the subsurf back to catmull and put in edge loops to tighten up the edges.

Everything marked as sharp while subsurf was set to catmull really curved the edges that were marked as sharp in several directions. Edge loops fixed it.


Model with a few minor errors to correct.

Quick render with some color. Would like to try my hand at painting it myself after I fix some small quirks. May see what i can do with the eyes.