Hardsurface Tutorial Collection — VOL 03 - Scifi Helmet

Volume three sets the Hardsurface Tutorial Collection on a sci-fi helmet, modelled in 3ds Max from a 2D concept in 270 minutes of real-time capture. It is the tightest of the three volumes, which makes it the sensible one to judge the series on before committing to the longer builds.

A helmet is a compact hard-surface exercise with everything the discipline asks for packed into one prop: a curved shell that has to hold a clean reflection, hard panel breaks cut into it, and mechanical fittings that must sit on the surface rather than float above it. Four and a half hours is enough to see all three solved without any of it being skipped over.

What is in the download

• ✓270 minutes of 3ds Max modelling captured at working speed, with nothing fast-forwarded
• ✓A sci-fi helmet built from a flat concept through to a finished hard-surface mesh
• ✓Beginner level, with a single package used from the first cut to the last
• ✓Unnarrated throughout: nothing is spoken and nothing is captioned

Used properly this is a rebuild rather than a viewing. Open the concept, open 3ds Max, and follow the recording a step at a time — the viewport is the instruction, so watch the selection modes, the edge loops going in around each panel break and the point at which the shell is committed to a smoothing pass. Anyone working towards a game-art portfolio gets a second use out of it: the finished piece is exactly the class of prop a junior hard-surface reel is judged on.

Prerequisites

You need to be able to navigate 3ds Max and use its primary functions; nothing beyond that. No project files and no finished model ship with the videos, so what you take away is the method and something you made yourself.