Base Meshes: A Question of Convention

Support Modeling
1

I have been working on the base mesh for a character and while I was working on the head, I realised I was not sure how I wanted to proceed.

For the character I’m currently working on, all he has on his head are some aviator goggles. So naturally, I assumed that I would make a base mesh for his head and sculpt the details on that without worry - the goggles would be modelled separately and I’d fit them on at some later time.

However, for another character, their face is mostly hidden behind a full helm (or whatever it be called - something along these lines: random image). In this case, I’ve seen it done both ways: some model the helm as a part of the base mesh then separate it out, others the head and fit the helm on later.

This is probably a rather subjective question, but in general, which is the better convention?

Cheers

Edited to add: I realised that I forgot to mention - you will probably never see the character’s face or head at all. All you see is the helm. Is there any merit to actually making a proper head sculpt? (Aside from the practice, of course, ha.)

2

One of the rules of 3d (that I made up) is “Only model what the camera will see”. More geometry may cause your scene to render slower, even if the camera doesn’t “see” the actual head under the helmet. However, if it were me, I’d model the head and then use a mask modifier if it was slowing me down – you never know if you might need it. I don’t use my head that much, but it might come in handy eventually.

3

It is worth to be quoted! :smiley:

paolo

4

If you never see the head, there’s no point in modelling it. I’d recommend importing one of your old heads however just to make sure the helmet is of the appropriate shape and size to fit a head, then discarding it.

5

Thanks for the replies everyone. I did think the ‘rule’ you mentioned, Safetyman, was intuitive and was probably something I was going to follow after a lot of humming and hawwing.

Amen to that.