Its all just practice! Over and over, try different things!

Of course! I didn’t mean to say they were bad! Something like a power rangers helmet is a super simple shape, so its a lot easier to be super general with something like that.

When i poly modelled like that, i would essentially just be tracing ortho images, often just drawings!

I guess so! It depends on the helmet i suppose, there’s a lot of information you get from modelling while having a scan to model over. As someone who does stuff for film and tv, it’s super important for me to be sure what i make fits on the actor well.

With reference pics every now and then. Locking yourself to looking at it as only a tracing process really prevents you from properly understanding the shapes!

Clean, big compound curves that can have sharp grooves running through them without having to worry about fixing pinching in the topology, as i usually don’t have time to 😅. Don’t feel like you absolutely need a reference image to trace over! I usually model with ref on the side and line my model up

Body base mesh, load in a cube and make it the same size as the peice of armour, then start moving and adding edges to get the general shape of the piece, add more and refine the shape, then move onto details, since i model for 3d printed costumes, i usually do grooves with booleans so that i get-

I understand your confusion from talking to someone who was modelling a helmet and not even having a head in there, i definitely do not recommend that, i’m willing to bet his helmets didn’t fit great.

The biggest tip i can give is to start with the biggest shapes and work your way down. Load in a -

It’s a tricky one for sure! What i’d do is block it out in low poly, interpreting the shape from different pictures, and trying to line it up with this angled photo, making adjustments you need to, lining up edge loops where you want grooves to be etc, setting it up to make pretty later :)

Im not sure if dm’s exist here, this interaction is really the only time ive properly used this app hahaha. Happy to give help where i can though! Feel free to just drop stuff in these comments!

This is my most recent one, just a helmet i made up as i was going. I just get it far enough along that i can see the idea of the shapes… i save making clean, sharp edges for when i’m doing the retop :)

Thank you! Yeah that was poly modelled!! It was the only way i knew how to work years ago… it taught me patience hahaha

Hey! Thanks for the kind words!! The ant-man helmet was poly modelled over reference images in blender :) nowadays my workflow is a dynamesh sculpt in zbrush that i retopologise later, getting a rough version of the shapes out first helps me plan my topo and prevent redoing stuff later :)