25 Hat Base Mesh — VOL 20

Twenty-five hats, drawn from across periods and social registers rather than from one costume department. Wide-brimmed and narrow, soft and structured, working caps and formal shapes, sun hats, hoods and novelty forms: the spread is the product. A character line-up reads as a world when everyone is wearing something different, and modelling twenty-five hats to get there is a week nobody schedules.

Inside the package

• ✓25 hat base meshes in FBX and OBJ
• ✓Clean and editable topology
• ✓1k to 6k triangles each, according to the design
• ✓25 preview renders, one for every hat
• ✓Each design unique in form and theme

Two things make a hat mesh useful rather than decorative. The first is that crown and brim are modelled as continuous, sensibly flowing geometry, so it can be reshaped — a brim turned down, a crown crushed, a band removed — without the surface breaking up. The second is that the counts are low enough to be honest about: at 6k triangles you can put one on every character in a crowd and still not have spent what a single prop would cost you.

They fit either pipeline. Sculpt over them for felt grain, sweat staining and creasing and bake back onto the base, or texture them as they are for a stylised project. Prototyping is the common case, though — put the whole set on a character in turn to find out what the design wants before committing to a final model. Note that the textured example in the previews is a sample of the potential result, not an asset in the pack. Volume 20 of the series, modelled in 3ds Max, Blender, Marvelous Designer, Substance Painter and ZBrush.