How to use the Vicis Zero One website to make your own templates in Photoshop.

[Darth Brooks]

A good deal for the credit for this method has to go to Frazier Davison, who first started showing people how to make realistic templates in Photoshop.

 

There's been a great deal of interest in the Vicis Zero1 football helmet. I'm going to show you how to make your own unique template using their website. To make a template you need two things, a copy of the helmet or uniform as if it was totally white, and a copy that looks like it if it was totally black. What I mean by this isn't a completely white or black object. Most items that you look at will have shadows and reflected light. Take this Soccer ball for example.

 

 

Even though it's a white ball, it's not a perfect white. The shadows and reflections give the ball it's shape. Same with a football helmet. Lighter objects are defined by their shadows, darker ones by light reflecting off of them. If you try to just use either Multiply or darken or any single tool, you're not going to get a good image. Let's go with Multiply.

 

 

 

We have a black set up for highlights (reflected light) and a white set up for shadows. Just using multiply white is ok but dull and the black is awful What about Screen (which we saw above is a better way to lighten a subject)?

 

 

 

This time around the black is, well, it's there. Neither image is dark enough. Let's combine techniques.

 

 

Now we have a nice solid looking image that runs the gamut of values from light to dark. It comes out feeling real rather than that puzzling "I know something's wrong but I can't figure it out" feeling. What has this to do with the Zero1 helmet? Vicis is nice enough to put up images that will work for the black and white on their website.

 

Go to https://vicis.com/products/zero1

 

They have quite the selection of finishes, facemask designs, whether a strap is in black or white and angles. You get to pick what you want AND YOU AREN'T GIVING SOMEBODY THIRTY BUCKS TO GET SOMETHING YOUR HAPPY WITH.

Once you have an angle/design you like get a copy with an all white finish and a copy with an all black finish. The white is there to provide the shadows, the black is there to provide the highlights. (it sounds backwards but it's not.) Save the images and then place them as layers in a Photoshop document. They are 1000 x1000 so it's nice and big. Set it up as follows:

 

The top two are masked off to keep stuff like bolts and straps from changing color. The next folder (and it's helpful to lock this away once it's done.) is where the work is done.

 

White image set to Multiply.
Black image set to Screen.
A copy of the black image set to overlay.

 

Then you have a masked off layer for the Facemask followed by the helmet colors. You're going to want to have the decals stripes, whatever, on top of the base color of the helmet. You'll need to make a mask for the helmet so that the whole background isn't the same color as the helmet.

 

An example copy can be found at: https://www.deviantart.com/darth-brooks/art/Vicis-Zero1-Helmet-Template-772528268