What's better for sub-d? Bevel or edge loops

iamolvr

Hello, guys. What's the difference between beveling edges and inserting edge loops when modeling for subdiv if the resulting mesh almost is the same? I'm quite noobish at modeling and I don't know what to use. What method is better and used more in the industry? And what should I use to get clean models with good topology?

throttlekitty

Both achieve more or less the same results. I'll use A for left and B for right here, and I think this is mostly about how you think about the high poly and the low poly in regards to the end result. Neither is better than the other, it's a bit of personal opinion and style.

A has a focus on hard-edged low poly, and it's easy to see which edges to remove to get from a cage model to the low. B is more helpful if the final low poly features bevels instead of hard edges, and it also describes the high poly better.

Personally I prefer A, because it reads better to me, and is easy to clean up or make changes to. In this example, if I decide too late that I want bevels, it's also easy to start relaxing the corners compared to the other way around.

Revel

When you subd those meshes the A will give a more straighter side faces (the height of the cylinder) compare to B will will have slight curvature to them, due to larger bevel radius on those chamfered edges. It really depends on what effect do you want to create here.

Panupat

For general purpose I'd go for the left because it's easier to revert later since the corner is still in its original spot.

Revel

You can use unbevel script for the right one to properly collapsed it to its original volume, at least for max user or modo, but yeah generally I prefer the left one.

oglu

If you use displacement for rendering B is better.
Cause if there is a 90 degree corner its possible the displacement is tearing your mesh apart.

sacboi

Preferably for me, the left hand side geometry for high res hard surface detaling, once a validated blockout example is confirmed. Then it's bevel edge workflow in order too extract relevant surface data for projection onto a proxy.