building a helmet

Ruz

may seem a silly question but if you were building a crash helmet , would you have the poles of the sphere at the ears or on the top. trying to zbrush it so want minimal artefacts

Tumerboy

Ears seem like a more natural place to me. . . but I don't do characters, so who knows. . .

Illusions

Make Quad-spheres. Then there are no "poles"...

BeatKitano

Yep, best choice i think.

Geezus

Quad Sphere plugins for max (if you're using max):

Discussion: http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.php?t=57329
Download: http://files.filefront.com/quadPrimi.../fileinfo.html

Examples:

CheeseOnToast

Hmm, I dunno. You get even more poles using a quad sphere, and you lose the nice perpendicular edgeloops. I just depends how smooth looking you want the final result to be. If you Zbrush this there'll be much more potential little "nipples" formed on the high res surface.

Got a design in mind Ruz? Or some photo ref?

low odor

seems like you would see the side of the head more than the top of the head.. and I guess it would depend on where you were adding the most detail

Ruz

CheeseOnToast - its jut a standard crash helmet, but I kind of sussed it out , the pole started out at the top and I managed to turn that bit in to quads.

haven't zbrushed it yet, so I will find out if its woirked ok or not

cheers for the replies guys

LEViATHAN

Geezus wrote: »

Download: http://files.filefront.com/quadPrimi.../fileinfo.html

This link obviously won't work, could you fix it?

Ryno

Quad sphere is a plugin?! Uhhh.... Box with a spheriphy modifier does the same thing.

Geezus

LEViATHAN wrote: »

This link obviously won't work, could you fix it?

doh, it was working just last month. But, yeah...like Ryno says, box with spheriphy modifier should work just the same. I just like having the convenience of having it right there in my create tab.

edit: quick google search popped up this link at area:
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php?ACT=44&fid=26&aid=1527_opGC312KbbD0H73mRz9o

pretty sure it's the same thing.

pior

About that quadsphere ... correct me if I'm wrong but I think this is mostly the solution to get a perfect sphere from a cage (since a box doesn't subdivide as a perfect sphere - except if spherified as Ryno said)
That does no mean that a such a topology is good for sculpting ; as a matter of fact it will create many nipple spots indeed.

MoP

I'd probably just do a basemesh that closely matched the shape of the helmet? That way you don't have to worry about pinching spots from triangles or 5+ edge verts.

Blaizer

i would model the helmet in subdivs... would map it, and then, zbrush.

Ruz

MoP - I have built the helmet base mesh, but there are certain areas that produce nipples/weird spots when zbrushed.
I might have to look a bit closer at the construction as it has kind of ridges flowing down from back to front, which might help give me a better sculpting base

I think a quad sphere is out of the picture for this one

TWilson

I made this ridiculous image to illustrate my take on spheres:



PS. I just smoothed a sphere in Maya.

Ruz

actually I used a sphere with a pole at the sides and it worked perfect. the shape near the poles helps to define the sides of the visor.
my main priority was to have the top of the helmet say perfectly smooth

can''t post any images unfortunatley