Editing the Viking helmet

Now that we've had some practice transforming objects, we're ready for the main event: editing the Viking helmet. This is the largest part of this chapter, so we'll break it down into a few small subsections, as follows:

• Preparing to work on the helmet
• Making changes to components in Edit Mode
• Adding the nose guard
• Adding the horns
• Adding the studs
• Returning to Object Mode to finish

We will begin by preparing to work on the helmet so that the rest of the objects in the scene don't get in the way.

Preparing to work on the helmet

Let's take a moment to prepare for working on the helmet. In a typical 3D workflow, we edit one object at a time. We can use a special view mode called Local View to temporarily hide all of the other objects in the scene. Let's do this now:

1. Select the Viking Helmet object.
2. Look at the header of the 3D Viewport and find the View menu at the top-left.
3. Click on the View menu to open it and choose Local View | Toggle Local View, as shown here:

View | Local View | Toggle Local View

If you are using a computer that has a number pad, the hotkey to toggle the Local View is the slash (/).

4. Open the Object menu in the top-left of the 3D Viewport header.
5. Choose Clear | Location, as shown in the following screenshot:

Object | Clear | Location

6. Press the tilde ~ key to bring up the View pie menu and choose the View Selected option to frame the helmet in the Viewport.

The clear location operation has moved the helmet to the center of the grid, which will make it easier to work on. Lastly, let's turn off the Random Colors so that we can see the helmet's material colors. We'll do this from the Viewport Shading pop-up menu:

1. Look at the header of the 3D Viewport and find the four circle-shaped icons in the top-right corner.
2. Click the little downward-facing arrow to the right of the four circles to open the Viewport Shading pop-up menu.
3. Change the Color option from Random to Material by clicking on the Material button, as shown in the following screenshot:

Viewport Shading | Color | Material

There are many ways to customize the Viewport's shading in Blender 2.8. At the end of this chapter, we'll take look at how powerful this feature can be for creating a final high-quality image. But for now, we're ready to make some changes to the Viking helmet!

Making changes to components in Edit Mode

The Viking helmet provided in this scene is already halfway done, but as we can see in the following screenshot, it's missing some details: a nose guard, pyramid studs, and horns. To add these features, we need to switch to a different Interaction Mode:

Viking Helmet in Object Mode

Blender has several interaction modes that provide us with different ways of editing our models. We can see which mode we are in by looking at the header of the 3D Viewport; at the moment, it says Object Mode because we have been in Object Mode up to this point. While we are in Object Mode, we can move objects around, rotate them, and scale them, but we can't make any changes to the components of the objects.

To edit the components of the Viking Helmet object, we need to switch to Edit Mode. Edit Mode is where we can edit the components that make up a mesh object. As you may recall from Chapter 1, the components of a mesh are vertices, edges, and faces. Let's switch to Edit Mode:

1. If it isn't already selected, select the Viking Helmet object.
2. Go to the header of the 3D Viewport and click on Object Mode.
3. Choose Edit Mode from the drop-down list:

The Interaction Mode drop-down list

A faster way to enter Edit Mode is to use the Tab hotkey. In Blender, you will be switching between Edit Mode and Object Mode very often. Many Blender users refer to this as "Tab into Edit Mode," or simply "Tab in."

Once we enter Edit Mode, we'll see that several things have changed regarding the User Interface: the 3D Viewport header has several new options, the interaction mode now says Edit Mode, the Toolbar on the left contains several new tools, and the Viking Helmet object has dots and lines drawn all over it, as shown in the following screenshot:

Viking Helmet in Edit Mode

These dots and lines are the vertices and edges that the mesh is made out of. While we are in this mode, we aren't limited to selecting the object as a whole; we can select the individual components instead. Take a look at the header of the 3D Viewport again. Next to where it says Edit Mode, you'll see three component selection types: Vertex Select, Edge Select, and Face Select. These are represented by the icons shown here:

Component selection modes

While we're in Edit Mode, we can switch between these selection modes by clicking on these three icons, or by pressing the 1, 2, and 3 hotkeys on the home row of the keyboard.

These selection modes provide us with flexibility in terms of the types of selections we can make, but they don't limit us to the types of operations we can perform on a mesh.

Most of the time, it doesn't matter which selection mode we use because when we have a face selected, all of its edges and vertices are also selected. It's even possible to activate all three selection modes at once by holding the Shift key before clicking on each icon. This can of course be overwhelming, so usually one at a time is enough.

We can also switch between the selection modes at any time. For example, we can make a selection in Face Select mode, then swap over to Vertex Select mode, and the selection will automatically be converted from a selection of faces into a selection of vertices (if possible).

There are a few edge cases (that's a pun) where we need to select edges but not faces, at which point Edge Select mode becomes very useful. But the rest of the time, we can use whichever selection mode works best for the task at hand.

We will switch between these three selection modes as needed while we're editing our models. Speaking of which, it's time to add a nose guard to the helmet!

Adding the nose guard

This is exciting! You're about to make your first edits to a 3D model in Blender! Adding the nose guard will give our little Viking dummy some much-needed protection, just like a proper helmet would!

To get started, we need to make a selection. Technically, we could use any of the three selection modes for this part, but face selection is the most efficient choice in this case:

1. Switch to face selection mode by pressing 3 on the home row of the keyboard, or by clicking the Face Select icon in the header of the 3D Viewport.

Notice that the vertex dots disappear from the view because we are in face selection mode now.

2. Use the middle mouse button to rotate the view so that we can see the underside of the helmet, as shown in the following screenshot:

The underside of the helmet

3. Hold down the Shift key so that we can select multiple faces at once.
4. Click on the two faces that the nose guard will be attached to, as shown in the following screenshot:

The nose guard will be added to the two faces shown here

Great – we've got our selection. To add the nose guard, we can use the most common tool in 3D modeling: Extrude. Extruding lets us pull new polygons out of the selected polygons. We do this very often in almost every 3D project. It's appropriate that the first modeling tool we get to use is Extrude because we will use it over and over again in the modeling workflow. There are several extrude tools in Blender, but the one we need is called Extrude Region. It looks like this in the Toolbar:

The Extrude Region tool as it appears in the Toolbar

Alright, let's start extruding:

1. Click on the Extrude Region tool on the Toolbar. The Extrude tool gizmo will appear, sticking out of the selected faces, as shown here:

Select these polygons so we can extrude the nose guard

2. Click and drag downward on the gizmo's yellow plus (+) symbol to start creating the nose guard. Try to match the length shown in the following screenshot:

The first extruded segment of the nose guard

New polygons will be created each time we use the yellow plus symbol. If you need to adjust the length of the extrusion, click and drag the yellow arrow part of the gizmo, NOT the plus symbol; otherwise, we'll end up with unneeded duplicate polygons, which is a common pitfall when learning to extrude.

3. Click and drag the plus symbol again to make a second extrusion. Try to match the length shown in the following screenshot:

The second extruded segment of the nose guard

4. Select the face on the right-hand side of the newly extruded section.
5. Extrude the next piece of the nose guard, as shown in the following screenshot:

The third extruded segment of the nose guard

Looking good! Don't worry about the other side for now – we'll learn an easy way to make it symmetrical when we're finished with our other edits. We have all of the polygons that we need for the nose guard, but they aren't quite the right shape yet, so let's make some adjustments:

1. Activate the Move tool on the Toolbar.
2. Switch to Edge Select mode by pressing 2 on the keyboard, or by clicking the Edge Select icon in the header of the 3D Viewport.

Notice that the edges appear slightly thicker than before to emphasize that we are in edge selection mode now.

3. Select the bottom-right corner edge of the nose guard.
4. Click and drag upward on the Move gizmo's blue arrow to raise the edge up along the Z-axis, as shown in the following screenshot:

The edge of the nose guard raised up

5. Select the center edge at the bottom of the nose guard.
6. Click and drag the blue arrow downward to form the tip of the nose guard, as shown here:

The tip of the nose guard

Awesome – now, we just need to make it symmetrical. There are several ways to make sure that our models stay symmetrical while we are making them. In this case, we did not turn on any of these features ahead of time... does that mean it's too late? Of course not! Never say never:

1. Go to the Select menu in the header of the 3D Viewport.
2. Choose All to select all of the Viking Helmet's components.
3. Go to the Mesh menu in the header of the 3D Viewport.
4. Choose Symmetrize:

Mesh | Symmetrize

The Symmetrize operation should have left your model looking like this:

The default (backwards) result of the Symmetrize operation

It sort of worked... but it symmetrized the wrong side. To fix this, take a look at the bottom-left corner of the 3D Viewport. Here, you will see the Adjust Last Operation panel. You may have noticed this panel already. It appears every time we perform an operation such as extrude or move. In this case, it shows the Symmetrize operation that we just performed. Click on the little triangle next to the word Symmetrize to show the parameters for the operation:

Adjust Last Operation panel displaying the Symmetrize operator

From this panel, we can adjust some options to get a different result:

1. Change the Direction from -X to +X to +X to -X.

The operator will now symmetrize the correct side of the helmet and complete the nose guard:

The final result of the Symmetrize operation

You must change these parameters immediately after performing this operation. If you don't do this right away, the operator panel will disappear and you won't be able to change any of the options. If you make a mistake, undo with the Ctrl + Z hotkey, and then try the operation again.

Deselect everything so that we don't accidentally make unwanted changes to the selected parts. You can deselect by either clicking in the empty space near the helmet, or by pressing the Alt + A hotkey. Excellent! Now, our Viking helmet has a nose guard. Don't forget to rotate your view around to make sure it looks good from every angle. If you're happy with the edit you've made, save the file by going to File | Save. Alternatively, you can press the Ctrl + S hotkey.

We've covered a lot of ground by making these few edits to the helmet. Let's keep the momentum going and add some horns.

Adding the horns

Historically, Vikings didn't actually have horned helmets, but this is our world, so we can add whatever we want!

Remember how we mentioned that you would be using the Extrude tool over and over again? Well, guess what? We're going to extrude again here:

1. Switch to face selection mode by pressing 3 on the home row of the keyboard.
2. Rotate your view with the middle mouse button so that you can see the area of the helmet that the horn will be extruded from:

A nice view of the area that the horn will be extruded from

Just like when we extruded the nose guard, the first step is to make a selection. We have a lot of really fancy selection methods that we can use, but some of them aren't visible in the UI right now. You may have noticed that some of the tool icons on the Toolbar have a tiny arrow in the bottom-right corner.

This means that there are similar tools stacked underneath that tool. Let's try out the Select Circle tool, which is stacked underneath the Select Box tool:

1. Click and hold down the left mouse button on the Select Box tool to expand the list of stacked tools, as shown here:

Stacked Selection tools on the Toolbar

2. While the mouse button is still held down, hover over the Select Circle tool.
3. Let go of the mouse button to activate the Select Circle tool.
4. Hover the little selection circle over one of the Viking Helmet's round white side pieces.
5. Click and drag the circle to select all of the white polygons, as shown here:

The white polygons that make up the base of the horn are selected

There! Wasn't that easy? The next step is... you guessed it, extrude!

1. Activate the Extrude Region tool again.
2. Click and drag the yellow plus (+) symbol on the gizmo to extrude the first piece of the horn, as shown here:

Extruding the first piece of the horn

We're off to a good start, but these horns should be curved. Unfortunately, the only way to make a 3D model curved is to add lots and lots of extra polygons, so we're going to have to extrude over and over again. The problem is that with each extrusion, we will have to make small adjustments to the position, rotation, and scale. That's going to involve a lot of back and forth between the extrude tool, the move tool, the rotate tool, and the scale tool, but there is a better way of doing this! We'll use one of the alternative extrude tools stacked underneath the Extrude Region tool:

1. Make sure you still have the same polygons selected from the previous step.
2. Press the Tilde ~ key to bring up the View pie menu.
3. Choose the Front option from the pie menu in order to rotate the view to the front of the helmet, as shown here:

The Viking Helmet, as seen from the front view

4. Click and hold down the left mouse button on the Extrude Region tool to expand the list of stacked tools, as shown here:

Stacked Extrude tools in the Toolbar

5. While the mouse button is still held down, hover over the Extrude to Cursor tool.
6. Let go of the mouse button to activate the Extrude to Cursor tool.
7. Hover your mouse over the position you would like to extrude the horn toward.
8. Left-click to extrude the horn to the position of the mouse, as shown here:

The extruded horn

Excellent – the Extrude to Cursor tool took care of the position and rotation at the same time as extruding! Now, all that's left is the scale. It would be nice to avoid switching back and forth between the Extrude to Cursor and Scale tools, so it's time to learn about a new hotkey. The hotkey for the scale operation is S. This hotkey automatically begins scaling as soon as you press it, no gizmo required:

1. Hover the mouse near (but not directly on top of) the selected polygons.
2. Press the S hotkey to begin scaling.
3. Drag the mouse slightly closer toward the horn so that the extruded piece tapers slightly, as shown in the following screenshot.
4. Left-click to confirm the scale operation:

Scale the extruded section down to taper the horn

It helps to back the mouse away from the selection before pressing the s hotkey. The amount of scale is determined by the distance, so you will have very little control over it if your mouse is right on top of the selection when you press the hotkey.

Perfect! The great thing about using the s hotkey for scale is that our Extrude to Cursor tool remains active, so we can finish the horn without switching tools over and over:

1. While the Extrude to Cursor tool is still active, left-click to extrude the next small section.
2. Press the S hotkey to begin scaling down the newly extruded section.
3. Drag the mouse inward to shrink the selected polygons.
4. Left-click to confirm the scaling operation.
5. Repeat these steps as many times as needed to finish making the horn.

Have fun with your design! Our example turned out like this:

Finished horn

When you're finished with your horn, we can symmetrize the helmet again:

1. Go to the Mesh menu in the header of the 3D Viewport.
2. Choose Symmetrize from the Mesh menu.
3. Use the Adjust Last Operation panel to change the Direction of the Symmetrize operation if needed.

If you like, you can make the second horn by hand instead to get a wacky asymmetrical result. Make the horns however large or small or lopsided as you like!

Beautiful! That's a fine pair of horns. Our example turned out like this:

A fine pair of horns on our Viking Helmet

Now that we have a nose guard and horns, all that's left is to make some pyramid studs for decoration.

Adding the studs

If there's one thing we know about helmets, it's that they look cooler with pyramid studs, especially if they go all the way around the metal rim. We're going to use a couple of advanced techniques to make selections and create the studs.

In 3D modeling, we have a very useful topology concept called Edge Loops, which we will learn about in more detail in the next chapter. Basically, an edge loop is exactly what it sounds like: a loop of edges that run through a model. If the model has good topology (like our Viking Helmet), there will be clean edge loops all over the model. We can use these loops to our advantage in our modeling process. Let's use them to start modeling the studs:

1. Switch to Edge Select mode by pressing 2 on the keyboard.
2. Hover your mouse over the middle horizontal loop of the Viking Helmet's base.
3. Hold down the Alt key and click on any one of the horizontal edges in the loop.

The whole loop will be selected with just one click, as shown here:

The whole edge loop around the base of the helmet is selected

Next, we want to select a part of the vertical loop that crosses over the middle of the helmet. We have to use a different method this time because the vertical edge loop runs all the way through the nose guard and underside of the helmet, which isn't ideal. Instead, we're going to use a wonderful selection feature called Shortest Path:

1. Hold down the Shift key and click to add the first edge in the vertical edge loop to the current selection, as shown here:

Selecting the edge above the horizontal edge loop

2. Use the middle mouse button to rotate the view to the back of the helmet.
3. Hold down the Ctrl key and click on the final edge in the vertical edge loop (it's in the same position as the first, but on the opposite side).

Perfect – the shortest path between the two edges has been added to the selection. Now, our selection includes a horizontal edge loop around the rim and part of a vertical edge loop across the top of the helmet, as shown here:

The shortest path over the top of the helmet

Selecting these edges by hand would have been a pain, but with the right approach, we were able to select them all in just three clicks.

If you're having trouble with the Shortest Path feature, you can select the edges one at a time by holding the Shift key and clicking on each edge. The way in which you make your selection will not be an issue for the following steps; just make sure you have all of the edges selected, as shown in the preceding screenshot.

We're going to use the vertices in this selection as center points for our studs, so let's switch to Vertex Select mode:

1. Press 1 on the home row of the keyboard to switch to Vertex Select mode.

That's good, but that's going to be way too many studs, so let's remove some of the vertices from the selection. Specifically, we want to remove every other vertex. That sounds like a pain, but fear not – we don't have to do that by hand either!

2. Go to the Select menu in the header of the 3D Viewport.
3. Choose Checker Deselect, as shown here:

Select | Checker Deselect

Good – the selection should now look like this:

The selection after using Checker Deselect

If your selection is offset from the example shown here, then we need to make an adjustment to the Checker Deselect operation by using the Adjust Last operation, just like we did when we had to edit the parameters of the Symmetrize operation earlier in this project:

1. Have a look at the Adjust Last Operation panel in the bottom-left of the 3D Viewport.
2. If needed, increase the Offset to shift the selected vertices until they match the ones shown in this example.

There we go – that will make for a more manageable number of studs. Now that we've selected all of the individual spots where our studs should go, we're ready to actually make the studs:

1. Open the Vertex menu in the header of the 3D Viewport.
2. Choose Bevel Vertices from the menu:

Vertex | Bevel Vertices

This operation works similarly to how the s hotkey works: you have to drag the mouse to increase the amount of vertex bevel:

1. Drag the mouse outward until the vertices split into little diamond shapes.
2. Left-click to confirm the operation when the little diamonds match the example shown in the following screenshot:

Beveled vertices

Now, we just need to turn the diamonds into pyramids.

3. Open the Face menu in the header of the 3D Viewport.
4. Choose Poke Faces from the menu:

Face | Poke Faces

Remember that even though we are in Vertex Select mode, we can still use the operations in the Face menu because the highlighted faces in-between the vertices are also selected.

Poking faces sounds dangerous, but in 3D modeling, it's fun! We just need to make one more adjustment in the Adjust Last Operation panel:

1. Have a look at the Adjust Last Operation panel at the bottom-left of the 3D Viewport.
2. Increase the Poke Offset to make the little diamonds stick out like pyramids. 0.08m feels about right, but feel free to try other values until you get a result like the one shown in the following screenshot:

The studs are raised up with the poke offset

And there we have it – the Poke added an extra vertex to each face and the Poke Offset raised them up to form the studs. We're done!

That was a lot of work. Now, we just have to wear it proudly! And by that, we mean we have to place the helmet on the dummy's head.

Returning to Object Mode to finish

Now that we're done making our additions to the helmet, we can finish the scene. We've been spending a lot of time in Edit Mode, but we want to return to Object Mode so we can place the helmet on the dummy's head:

1. Return to Object Mode by using the drop-down menu in the header of the 3D Viewport, or by pressing the Tab hotkey.

2. Go to the View menu in the header of the 3D Viewport.
3. Choose Local View | Toggle Local View to leave Local mode and bring all of the other objects back.

You can always tell if you're still in Local view because the 3D Viewport will display (Local) in the top-left corner.

Now that we're back from the isolated Local view, the helmet is buried in the ground, as shown in the following screenshot:

The helmet buried in the ground

Use the transformation skills you learned about at the beginning of this chapter to place the helmet on top of the dummy's head:

1. Activate the Move tool and move the helmet upward to the dummy's head.
2. Activate the Rotate tool and rotate the helmet so that it aligns with the head.
3. Activate the Scale tool and resize the helmet if needed.

When you're done, the helmet should fit nicely on the dummy's head (don't forget to check it from multiple camera angles). Here's how our example turned out:

The helmet fits nicely on the dummy's head

You've done an excellent job making your first 3D scene. Don't forget to save your work. Now, it's time for a reward – you'll get to see the scene in a proper render!