How to mimic this 3ds max workflow in blender

Duckmamoll

Hello,
I've asked this question here in the past but never had an answer.
I have watched chamferzone's tutorial (they are REALLY good), and in his video, to go from low poly to high poly, he creates smoothing groups; then use his chamfer modifier which only bevels on the smoothing groups, which allows to easily apply a turbosmooth modifier.
Is it possible to mimic such a worflow in blender? for exemple have auto sharp above a certain angle, and create my own "smoothing groups" using mark sharp, then bevel them, and have a super clean subdiv modifier with that?

I hope my question was clear, thank you for reading .

Edit : I tried a few thing, first is add a bevel weight + bevel modifier and crank it to the max, I got some weird pinching
I also tried removing the bevel and crease them instead, which gives really bad result, despite my edge flow being only quads. if I crank the crease to 1 tho it removes the bad pinching result but I don't have my bevel edged anymore

Udjani

Bevel Modifier is the closes to the max workflow, but it does not handle it as good as max bevel in some cases, and you have to think about where you will use your ''bevels weights'', loops. 

Duckmamoll

that's what I feared, so what is the best workflow for producing "easily" a low and high poly hard surface model? I've started cg shrimp hard surface blender modelling course, but it doesn't cover videogame production or making low poly. And chamferzone's course are really close to it, the only big difference being this smoothing group stuff. How does one do hard surface as efficiently in blender? 

I've had people in the past tell me to just use the bevel shader but it's not like it does everything a high to low poly does

Udjani

Often in tutorials or addons showoff videos they use simple examples with very minimal smooth surfaces, usually box with a bunch of cuts or meshes that they know that their technique will work, make things looks easy and fast, but is not really how it works.

You will find that in a bunch of cases the ''easily'' don't apply and you will need to know some of the fundamentals and do some testing to accomplish it, In blender the most solid options are to use the bevel modifier as a starting point in most meshes, as it let you change the bevel width whenever you want, you also don't need to always use subdiv, mid poly + normal weight are really usefull in a lot of cases, and very easy to set up.

I would suggest you to play arround with it and understand how it works, you can do a lot of ''cheating'' using the bevel modifier too, they might break ''edge flow'' but will get your clean highpoly. 

I attached a blend file with 3 meshes showing a bit how you can use it, 1 subdiv and 2 midpoly. 

Duckmamoll

well I know that they use not so complicated shape,but in chamferzone's course he does a really well detailed full mech , and his method works super well, but I guess I have to take the slow route in blender?

also many thanks for sending a file with exemple, the first one uses boolean + bevel, which I know how to do and handle, the last one tho is what I've tried I do get a bit of weird pinching on some spots.
Is there a way to select easily the edges you decide to bevel cause that's mostly what would save me time similar to smoothing group, have a big part of it automated like autosmoothing in 3ds max, and then create the other "groups" manually? I know I can do something like "select planar" and change the angle but that's slower unless I can select planar of multiple groups, then select their outer edges and bevel weight them.

My idea was to have 2 bevel modifier one angle based (which simulates the auto smoot), and then one bevel weight based (to emulate the smoothing group manually). Is this a good workflow?

Edit : so after looking again at your model I've just realized that the bevel ammount needs to be changed depending on where it is (especially on those circles), which makes me realize trying to do all smoothing group at once would not work. Also, why the triangulate modifier? just to make sure the export goes alright?

Udjani

There are some wasy to make it easier to select edges.

Select Sharp Edges, it will select them by angle. 
You can select groups of face then go to Select > Select Loops > Select Boundary Loops
You can also hold Ctrl when selecting edges and it will select edges in between. 

''i do get a bit of weird pinching on some spots.'', yep, like i said the blender bevels are not as ''smart'' as the max ones as far as i know, so you will need to edit the mesh to work with or do some cheating some times that might make the topology looks weird but will remove the pinching. 

Yes using 2 bevel modifiers can be quite useful, good way to keep stuff editable.

Duckmamoll

thank you very much for all the explaination I think I got it down now but after a few test I do have one small problem remaining on my model, it's what i've highlighted in red in this screenshot

idk if this kind of thing is  problematic, or if it's alright to have them here it does cause some stretching with more "punishing" matcaps

Udjani

I would have to see the mesh to know what is causing those problems, but if you are using subdiv try those settings for bevels.

 

Duckmamoll

Thank you, I realized I had put a wrong value in the angle based bevel modifier, which caused part of the problem, your solution fixed the rest. Many thanks for the lightning fast answer I hope you have a nice day and thanks again.