This is a work in progress update for my ballistic high cut helmet project.

What initially began as a hard-surface speed model practice, I decided to turn it into a small project.

The Helmet is inspired by a ops core fast helmet. The night vision mount is inspired by a Wilcox mount.

I will share a few stages of the model progress, from maya to zbrush.

This is all in maya before I brought the model into ZBrush

After ZBrush I brought the model back into maya for retopo and cleanup.

Polycount is about 29k, which I brought down from 40k originally.

I use two texture maps (one for the accessories, and one for the base helmet).

After substance painter I returned the low poly to UE5 now as I work on further texture detail I am able to quickly replace the texture files for new turnarounds.

Current progress

Current Status of the Armor: BRINGING INTO ZBRUSH

Happy to announce that I will be moving forward with the armor process, after a long hiatus (life happens). I wish I had more work in progress shots to share unfortunately I forgot to take as many as what I had previously done.

After undergoing the tedious procedure of repeatedly placing knots and rope that binds the armor shingles together, I have finished the helmet designs and quite enjoy the silhouette. The next step I underwent was sculpting a few mask concepts till I wound up with a design I liked most. That being a mix of a traditional Oni themed mask design and an aquatic theme, hence the gills and the mouth shape being slightly tapered down towards the corners somewhat resembling a fish. I attempted to match some ancient Japanese depictions of fish I was able to find. 

Helmet

Mask (zbrush stage)

Mask (retopo)

Thanks!

Armor Wip part 4: Chest, Legs, Shoulder and Rope Detail

So I started off where I left off last week with my blockout of the shoulder plates, pretty simple stuff just trying to match multiple references. 

I had another chance to play around with splines as rope and matching knots to my references, while not as difficult as I was able to skip the underside of the holes since it would never be seen, it was still quite fun attempting to match the rope used in a reference.

I will still have to later replace the rope with an unwrapped rope model so I must make sure to match the rope splines or use zbrush to reduce the polycount then touch up the results. 

Next, I went and matched the rope used to bind the armor plating. It will also need to be replaced and unwrapped later on.

Here is a partial progress example. 

The recolor matched the natural shades more, helped for visualization.

Much of this next stage has been a fairly repetitive process. Which makes sense with the way the armor in made.

I made some more adjustments to the size of the chainmail to match real life, and moved on to the shin and calf armor. 

The sune ate, tateage, ieji and the kakozuri are all at stages I like before zbrush.

I added shingles to the haidate (thigh  armor)

I have also blocked out the chest armor.

The arm guards fabric and shingle designs are in place. It is only a matter of filling in the chainmail and orienting the rings properly.

baseplate for my republic commando project