Sculpt - making a mask - suggestions

[TMC.Engineering]

For Halloween I am using fusion to design a mask.  A mold for the mask will be made on a shopbot and then vacuum formed.

The mask is from the street fighter game the character's name is Vega.  If you look on the web there are a lot of variations people have made/drawn.  I made this mask using t-splines.  I just used create face and pulled things around til I got somewhere I liked.  after doing it I wonder if I should have used loft instead to start the surface or some other technique.  

So my question for the sculptors out there, How would you go about modeling the mask?

Attached is my model if anyone else want to play with it.

[Anonymous]

Hey Timm,

I appreciate your design challenge! I get to work in the Sculpt environment every once in a while, and your mask seemed like a cool (and relevant since it’s nearly Halloween) design, so I thought I’d try and model it myself! My gut reaction was to model it in a similar way as yours. Here’s the steps I took, in case you want to compare:

1. Create a multi-sided single face with the general outer profile of a face. I drew one half, and then used “Mirror – duplicate” to copy the other half. This also added a symmetry condition down the middle.

1. Next I used “Subdivide” to create a number of data points within the outer profile. I subdivided a few times to give me enough data to manipulate.

1. From here I began using “Edit Form” to pull the sides back and rotate them a bit, which gives more of the curved contour of a head. I had to use a sequence of small adjustments, which I’ve found to be pretty typical of working in the Sculpt environment.

1. From here I pulled the centerline of the mask out a bit. This allowed to get a better curvature near the nose area.

1. Next I wanted to accentuate the crease down the center. To do this I inserted new lines on both sides of the center line using a factor of 0.25 (so that they’re close to the original line). Then I pulled that centerline out a bit more using Edit Form.

1. From here I decided to Thicken the model.

1. Next I wanted to make a hard creased edge along the centerline. I used the “Crease” command and selected the lines down the center.

1. Because I drew the original face with multiple edges, the mask had hard corners around the sides that I wanted to curve a bit more. I used “Uncrease” and selected the edges on one side to round them out more.

1. From here the general shape was complete, and I decided I wanted to create the eyes in the Model environment so I could make a cut with sharp edges. I finished the form, switched over to the model environment, drew one of the eyes, created the cut using Extrude, and then mirrored it over to the other side.

If you had any tricks you learned along the way, or using some tool that was really helpful, I’d love to hear how you did it! Happy Halloween!

[TrippyLighting]

As it pertains to T-Spline modeling and Subdivision Surface modeling triangles are evil and should be avoided at all cost.

Starting with a face and pulling things aroud is what I'd have done as well. Perfectly valid technique.

There are excellent video turorials on face mdeling for all sort of subdivision modeling tools that would apply. Any 3DS Max, Maya, Modo, Blende, Cinema 4D etc facial modeling video would likely do to show what a good topology is. For this relatively simple mask that might not even all be necessry.

[Phil.E]

Great response, nice step by step mask.

I was going to only suggest starting with a reference model to work around. See attached mesh, you must RENAME it from .zip to .stl

[TMC.Engineering]

@Phil.E, Thanks for the head! I will play with it.  

@Anonymous

Thanks for your effort, I decided to do one too. I got carried away and remade the mask so i could make 3 screencasts and the accompanying 24 pg Tutorial. Should probably get back to work.

I did not really proof read the PDF so let me know if there are glaring issues.

@TrippyLighting if you have a minute can you look at this stuff?  I would be curious if there are improvements you would make to the materials.  

I start teaching Fusion at my local makerspace so I will be making more video/pdf packets for it.

Let me know what you guys think.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

[TrippyLighting]

Loos like a good approach. As usual there is more than one way to do this in Fusion 360.