Cylinder with Holes (Editable with nice smoothing)

Gazu

Hi Guys!

I got a problem with my holes in a cylinder.
I start with a plane with 8 vertices.
I chamfer it and have a hole...later on i use a Turbosmooth and then a 360° Bend.
I get a nice Cylinder with some holes in it. But i want it to be editable.

So i use a Edit Poly modifier on that and i dont know why....this destroys the nice smoohing when i for example extrude the Border of the cylinder.
Any idea on how to get nice smoothing on a editable cylinder with holes?

Thanks,
Gazu

Eric Chadwick

Images would help. 

Gazu

Allright, here we go:

My starting point:


Turbosmooth and then 360° Bend:


Not perfect clean


First Bend then Turbosmooth give much bader results.
Border Extrudet with Shift:


Then a Edit Poly and again Turbo Smooth:

I tried a lot, but i get this bad shading all the time.
What im doing wrong?

Greetings,
Gazu

Gazu

Here another example:

oglu

ignor it for normalmap baking... just clean it in photoshop....

Gazu

Hm, i would like to learn how this works because i want a detailed Highpoly

lorenzo_di_pietro

Maybe this thread can help:

http://polycount.com/discussion/137638/weird-shading-on-a-cylinder-with-holes/p1

oglu

the thing is how clean should it be..? 
as clean as you need it...

if you need the asset only for baking... its faster to do the final cleaning pass in Ps....

if you model a hardsurface asset for rendering and its only 200 pixel big on the final image it dont have to be that clean...

if the asset is getting damaged and full of dirt.... it doesnt matter...

if it has to be super clean for some reason.... then you need to model the base objects super clean... use much more geometry...

Gazu

Thanks for your help. I will try it with more Geo and i will look at the Thread.
I love to Model clean just for me and exercise. Thats all ^^

a3D

If you up the subdivisions of the turbosmooth, which should stay below the bend in the modifier stack, it will become progressively cleaner.

You can probably change the geometry at that point but you must do it at the bottom of the stack if you want predictable smoothing results.
Try to temporarily turn off the bend modifier, the turbosmooth, extrude what you need to extrude (so you can see clearly what you're doing), and finally turn back on the other modifiers.

In any case, starting with a 16x16 surface and making a 16 sided hole will definitely help.

Gazu

Thanks i will try it!

ZacD

oglu said:

ignor it for normalmap baking... just clean it in photoshop....

Don't do that, that's bad advice. It's a waste of time, and those gradients are taking the vertex normals into consideration, and are supposed to be there. Normal maps aren't meant to edited in photoshop. Combining normal maps is okay if done right. 

Cylinders with holes is a common subject in the how do you model this shape thread (it's stickied in tech talk). Generally the quickest and beat solution is starting with more geometry so the subdivision artifacts are smaller. 

MediumSolid

The topology you are using is not bad, but here's how the topology should look like in order to not have any artifacts:  

Eric Chadwick

Nice! What does the cage look like, un-smoothed?

MediumSolid

Like this: 

Eric Chadwick

Beautiful, thank you! I always find it difficult to read a smoothed wireframe, I wonder if others do too.

MediumSolid

People that are new to 3d modeling do, more experienced somewhat and the pros have no problem at all to read smoothed wireframe.

MediumSolid

You can even get away with using hexagon circles:

Please note that achieving the best possible results would be with using boolean operations on cylinders rather than bend operations with a flat surface.

Eric Chadwick

I guess I don't have trouble understanding how to reverse-engineer the shapes. I think it's just less readable. But I don't do much sub-d either.

Gazu

I got it guys. I used a very special technique
I started with a 150 x 150 Segments Plane(I know very high, but for HP purpose....) I used Regularize to create the Circles. Then i deleted the Circle Faces and moved the border of each circle very close to the neighboor face. I bended it 360° and collapsed the Modifier. Only with TurboSmooth i have a nice Shading and i can Edit my cylinder to finish it
 

Thank you guys,
Greetings,
Gazu

Dan Powell

Same thing in 3DS Max essentially:

Dan Powell

oglu said:

the thing is how clean should it be..? 
as clean as you need it...

if you need the asset only for baking... its faster to do the final cleaning pass in Ps....

if you model a hardsurface asset for rendering and its only 200 pixel big on the final image it dont have to be that clean...

if the asset is getting damaged and full of dirt.... it doesnt matter...

if it has to be super clean for some reason.... then you need to model the base objects super clean... use much more geometry...

Personally, I would avoid having to rely on painting out errors in Photoshop. The original error shown in the opening post was quite severe in my opinion, and would definitely both show up on a Normal Map, and potentially be a pain in the neck to paint out! It's always best to avoid having to paint out errors on Normal maps.

If your Art supervisor asks you to change something on the asset, then it means you could end up having to re-bake it, and then paint out the error once again - and even more times, if you are asked to make multiple changes. Therefore, try to just get the topology right in the first place, most of the time it's doable! Sometimes you can get away with painting out an error, if it's absolutely tiny, or extremely simple to paint out.

 If you've been given the OK on an asset, and you know for certain you will not have to bake it again, then go ahead. Remember that you can show high poly models on your portfolio too, as they are impressive within themselves, so again, good idea to get them looking error-free too!

Gazu

Hey Dan, thanks. What happens when you Add a Edit Poly modifier to your Cylinder? What does the Cylinder look like then?
My goal was a editable cylinder with holes with good shading only in 3dsmax, no zBrush.

Dan Powell

Gazu said:

Hey Dan, thanks. What happens when you Add a Edit Poly modifier to your Cylinder? What does the Cylinder look like then?
My goal was a editable cylinder with holes with good shading only in 3dsmax, no zBrush. 

Edit Poly will work just fine, and you'll be able to work on it - you'll just have lots of Vertices to work with, as obviously, this mesh has been subdivided a few times. I think I did 3 Subdivisions there - but two would probably work just fine as well.

 You can use Turbosmooth instead of OpenSubDiv if you want to - I personally just find that OpenSubDiv uses less geometry when smoothing models, for the same result. I haven't looked too much into the specifics of either, but you seem to be able to use Turbosmooth and OpenSubDiv interchangeably.

 Essentially, it's impossible to achieve a "perfect" result from this, because cylinders have an infinite number of edges and that is not something you can achieve in 3D, so the goal is to get the best result possible in the minimum amount of time, and using the Bend approach is a good way to 'cheat' infinity in that respect.

aharmlesspie

Gazu said:

Here another example:

This weird smoothing comes from having "Isoline" checked on the turbosmooth modifier when you apply the edit poly. Uncheck it, and you should have fewer issues.