Creating the Base of the Cap
The first steps for building Jim’s cap are shown in Figure 7.24.
1. Create a UV Sphere with eight vertices and six rings. Delete the bottom and left section of the sphere and add a Mirror modifier to it. Scale it on the Z-axis so it’s no longer perfectly spherical.
2. Convert the selected faces from triangles to quads using the Dissolve Faces tool (X). Repeatedly select two adjacent triangles and invoke the Dissolve Faces tool until all the triangles are converted to quads. You can add a Subdivision Surface modifier now.
3. With the Knife tool (K), make two cuts through the cap similar to those in the image. The two cuts should be very close to each other so that when the model is subdivided, the seam will be sharp. At the top of the cap, the inner line touches the center of the mirror and the other line continues through the cap’s center to its other side.
4. Perform a loop cut and adjust the resulting vertices to smooth the cap’s shape.
5. On the back side of the cap, delete the two central faces at the bottom.
6. Go back to the front side and extrude the front edges at the bottom to create the cap’s visor.
7. Move the central faces of the cap up a little to make the visor bend up in the middle. Also, add a new loop near the bottom all around the cap’s body. Add a Solidify modifier before the Subdivision Surface modifier in the stack and adjust its thickness until it looks right to you.
8. Now, select the visor’s faces and press P to separate them from the cap’s body. Doing this after adding the modifiers to the original model gives you the modifiers in this new model as well.
9. Add some new loops near all of the visor’s borders to help define its shapes.