Voldex / NFL Universe

A full modular helmet design system, delivered solo in ~14 hours as a paid test assignment for Voldex — the studio behind NFL Universe Football on Roblox.

Build time

~14 hours

Team

Solo

Engine

Roblox Studio

Helmet tri count

2.7–2.9k

Voldex NFL Universe Football

The brief

Voldex sent over a paid test assignment for NFL Universe Football, one of the larger sports IPs on Roblox. The ask: design a helmet system that fits the platform’s tri-count and material budget, lands the NFL look, and supports player-side customization without needing a developer in the loop every time someone wants to swap a visor or repaint their team colors.

I had ~14 hours, calendar time, working solo. The deliverable wasn’t just “a helmet” — it was a modular system built so it could be operated by players in-game.

What I built

A complete modular helmet kit, broken into independently swappable parts:

3 base helmet shells with team-color bands
3 face mask styles (different bar configurations)
3 visor styles (clear, tinted, mirror)
3 final assembled variants demonstrating mix-and-match
Decal-on-separate-mesh paintwork system, welded to the base in Roblox Studio
Optimized UV layouts shared across the system
~2.7–2.9k tri budget per assembled helmet (mobile-class)

The modular system

Voldex helmet modular parts: visors, face masks, base shells, full variants, UV layouts

Left to right: face mask shapes → base shells → full assembled variants → UV layouts. Each part is its own mesh with its own UV island so it can be hot-swapped at runtime without re-baking textures or breaking the rest of the kit. The paintwork (logo, side stripe) sits on a separate decal mesh with its own UVs, welded to the helmet shell in Roblox Studio — meaning a new team paint scheme is a texture change, not a model change.

Three final variants

Each is shown with its rendered hero, its wireframe, and its triangle count. All three sit within the same ~2.8k tri budget despite the visible silhouette differences — the modular system carries the variation.

Voldex helmet variant 1 — 2,760 tris — Variant 1 — 2,760 tris

Voldex helmet variant 2 — 2,832 tris — Variant 2 — 2,832 tris

Voldex helmet variant 3 — 2,864 tris — Variant 3 — 2,864 tris

Turnaround

The full helmet system in motion — same video I sent to Voldex with the deliverable.

Texturing in Substance Painter

A short capture from the Substance Painter session — setting up the team-color bands, decal layer for paintwork, and the metal/plastic material split.

In Ilya’s words, at the time

“Just spent around 14 hours on @VoldexGames test assignment, haha, couldn’t stop myself. Have created the entire modular helmet design system for @NFLUniverseRBLX.”

“The cool part of this system is that players can customize helmets, change modular parts, visors, colors, and paintwork by themselves, without extra involvement from the dev side.”

“Just a paintwork decal example, created on a separate mesh with its own UVs, then welded to the main helmet base in Roblox Studio. This allows us to easily change logos, paintwork, etc., without touching the underlying model.”

What this demonstrates

Working to a real studio brief at real studio velocity
Modular thinking from day one — not a one-off helmet, a system
Roblox Studio fluency: weld-based decals, runtime part swapping, mobile-class budgets
UV/topology discipline: ~2.8k tri budget per variant despite visible silhouette change
End-to-end ownership: design → model → UV → texture → in-engine assembly → turnaround render