Fallout 3 Power Armour Helmet

Hi all,

As a total beginner to Blender who is really keen to master it, I’ve been very ambitious and decided to try and model the power armour helmet from Fallout 3. It’s taken me ages but I think I’ve got most of the symmetrical sections done. All that’s left of the modelling process is the extra features which I’ll get to later. But for now, I’m hoping that the good folk on here can give me some advice on how to develop and improve my work so far.

In particular, I’d love to know an easy way to produce a good pre-material render. That is one that shows off the detail in the model with strong light and dark contrast before doing any detailed texture painting or node editing?

Also, the front circular ‘nose’ section of the helmet features a pattern of 6 elongated gaps arranged a bit like a flower or clock face. It’s hard to describe but hopefully you know what I mean! Anyways, I can’t figure out the best way to go about making this bit. I thought I could sub-divide the front circular face to create evenly spaced faces to work from but I can’t make them sub-divide evenly. Does anyone have any idea of how I could approach this?

Huge thanks in advance to anyone who can find the time to help an aspiring Blenderite!

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I think this mask looks good, especially for a beginner. However, I never played Fallout, so I have no idea what the original looks like and what you’re aiming for. It would also help if you put up a picture that shows off your mask’s topology so I can see how you modeled your faces. All I can say right now is you’re doing great. Keep up the good work.

Hi Omnilord.

Thanks for your comment, that’s very encouraging for me! This is probably a stupid question but how do I save my model in Blender as an image that shows the topology?

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It’s simple. All you have to do is go to edit mode, make sure the line edge select is on, and if you have subdivision modifiers, activate those so the lines wrap around the surface.

Hey there,

Thanks for your help. So here are some shots of the topology of my model. I hope they are clear enough.

I’ve also included one of the images I’m working from which shows the pattern on the nose section that I’m having trouble with.




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Your topology is great. You have a fair amount of spacing in between quads and have avoided triangles wherever unnecessary. If I didn’t know any better, I’d assume that you had prior experience with Maya or something. As for the nose section, I tried making it myself and found out that it’s easier than it looks. If you start with a 12 point circle and extrude outwards a couple times then delete a few of the faces, then you should get something like what I have above. With a few adjustments, you can capture the look of that nose piece. If you want to join the nose piece with the mask as one object, you might want to cut it in half so the mirror modifier doesn’t mess anything up and make some modifications so that both ends have the same number of vertices.

That’s very helpful. I made this section in the way you suggested and it did turn out to be quite simple! and looks great. Thank you!

I’m going to do some more of the decorative extras and then upload a new image of the work so far.

So here is the Power Armour Helmet model completed with all the bells and whistles on it! It’s taken me a long time to do but I’m very pleased with how it looks so far so the time spent was worth it I think. I made the hoses by creating a small section of the hose with a cylinder mesh and then used an array modifier to create the full hose length, which I then mapped to a Bezier curve to get the positioning. It took me a while to get my head around that but it’s certainly a handy technique! Now to get to work on the textures and rendering…



After 3 weeks of work this model of a Power Armour Helmet from Fallout 3 is (almost) finished. I used the node editor to make the materials and I feel like this is my weakest area. Certain parts, especially the hoses and the glass areas (eyes and lenses) could be better. If anyone can point me in the right direction for how to improve in this area then please do! Other than that I’m pleased with the outcome and, as the biggest project I’ve tried with no tutorials, I feel like I’ve learned lots of techniques and really enjoyed it too!