Guys, how would you model large, continuous, smooth shapes like this kayak in 3ds max? I considered polygonal modeling with turbosmooth, but after adding loops it quickly becomes a mess to adjust size here and there, because it's one shape which cannot be broken in parts. I started modeling it with curves and then surface, but it's really clunky in 3ds max. Is there a better approach?
@Hikabuzy I understand that this stuff is hard to learn. If it helps, I have a pinterest board on hard surface topology. https://www.pinterest.com/Makkon06/hard-surface-topology/ If you get some time, I'd suggest going through it and recreating some of the shapes in there. Thank you for making the effort! It can take a lot of tries before things start to click.
Otherwise, I would suggest trying to have more uniform topology, in this case more subdivisions for the cylinder, making room for intersections to smooth better. Good luck.
Hi guyz, Im bothering with this simple topology... and cant find out how to make this object with perfect topology... some help? Im thinking at the end chamfer edges and apply turbosmooth
Hey guys, I am struggling wall section. Especially the arch part. Now I did that arch using boolean and extruding the edges afterwards. However, I ended up with some loose vertices which I am unable to weld. It worked fine until I created that arch. Upon dividing mesh in Zbrush all goes wrong.
@perna Do you also offer possibility of confession ? Anyway, I ll try to remodel and do what you suggested, altough I have no idea what modifiers you used there.
Browsing this thread now and again, one thing that sticks out is the unnecessary amount of geo used by the posters with sub-d problems.
The sub-d cage or base mesh is best modeled as a very low (as little as is needed to derive the basic form) density mesh. The subdivision algorithm does the rest. Look at the last 2 examples given by @perna . This is all that's required. This is a fundamental guiding principle of sub-d. Only add geo IF it is needed. Use existing geo where possible and IF you can't get the forms with the geo you have, THEN add more.
And the misconception of 'all must quad to get a smooth sub-d mesh' also a problem that sometimes make people frustrated cus it's just impossible to get all quad sometimes and really not that important rules to must-follow, and often requires you to add unnecessary edges that harder to control.
The general idea of quad is just the evenly spread vertex location on the mesh, which I believed already mentioned by @perna thousands times here, the importance of vertex/ edges distribution.
Hi guys, What is the best way of connecting all the faces together? if I Bridge now I still have to connect all the other side of the edges. I want to make it grid squares.
If equadistance (or even approx., just makes it not 100% "square"), just loop each corner edges for each shell, marquee deselect edges on corner, bridge.
Thank you guys, you gave me inspiration I did bridge two edge sides and then I did connect on the same amount of subdivision and then I merged the vertices. That's all.
now the real question would be, why does your mesh have this density at that stage? wouldnt it be simpler to model with the minimum amount of faces now and subdivide later?
now the real question would be, why does your mesh have this density at that stage? wouldnt it be simpler to model with the minimum amount of faces now and subdivide later?
Thank you for your comment. Yes you are right it's really dense but it's only a prototype and not the final model, I needed to be very precise to model a shape so later I can mont a certain shapes on top, so basically it's only a base and will be removed later
I'm trying to get use to using quad chamfer with my hard surface workflow. Has anyone had any success in using this method with just pro boolean objects without quads?
nope, the way quadchamfer works you will always need some sort of clean topology with enough support structure to guide the chamfers. i guess what you are looking for would be more of the face inset script
Hi, I need help , how to create best subd topology on cube corner with nice beveled edges, as you can see on the image below. I try something, but I am not happy with result. I need some advice, step by step guide how to do right way. Thank you.
@PetSto , in terms of just topology, below are some standard approaches. The shape construction for this mesh is non-trivial though, if you want it mathematically perfect. The sphere section of the corner fillet has to resolve smoothly into the edge fillet. Would be interesting to see how people would approach that.
Thank you Perna, I think your middle topology is the best, has nice transition in corner, no pinching etc. But challenge will be how to achieve this, because I don't know where to start.
Started with a cube. copied it, turbosmoothed the second cube, spherify, scaled it up. used Boolean to intersect. Got that edge, cleaned it up and extruded the "cube" from the corner.
Cube with spherify, then a cylinder placed for reference with symmetry at 45deg, adjust half of cube to match edges, then symmetry, then clean up.
This way seems pretty adjustable by changing the amount of segments in the cube and sides of cylinders and/or radius and get something closer to what you guys have made.
another approach that give you more control of how smooth the edges are. Notice that in reference image, the vertical edge is more round than the others. When you cut the corner from a "cube-sphere" you have to cut it evenly for all edge, and after that you have verry little control over edge smoothness
I did some inset on a box and used some control loops. Then applyied a turbosmooth and deleted the parts that I wouldn't use. Idk, I've seen this quite long ago on some kind of model (I can't remember what model had this kind of corner), I think it works fine since I couldn't notice any pinching when subdividing.
Yet the topology is different from perna's examples...
I'm actually interested in how you got that shape.
@musashidan , "topo cleanup" sounds trivial, but you're actually making very significant shape edits during that stage, not just cleaning topo. I'd be interested in seeing whether someone has a more accurate, efficient and ideally configurable way of approaching this shape.
STEPS FOR THE NEW ONE. 1. box 2. inset the sides i want to bevel, top, left and right 3. use turbosmooth and smoothjing groups (top left and right have the same smoothing groups 4. delete the edges inbetween those sides. 5. Bridge and turbosmooth.
@wirrexx , oh I don't really have an ideal solution to this problem. I mean, if we should allow for variable chamfer width along the edges and have that add up with the curvature of the corner, and also be able to have as many subdivisions as we want on the corner geometry and so on, it's a complex problem.
In terms of earlier suggestions, I don't think anything with a huge manual cleanup stage or anything that gives wonky curves or bad aesthetics or bad shading should be in the running.
The below basic boolean op requires zero manual cleanup or in fact any manual work whatsoever and the shading quality is good enough for most purposes. The curvature is clean. To change the width of the outer edge fillets you'd simply move the intersection points closer to the corner, along with a scale op if you want to actually keep the boundaries in the same places and so on (well, if it's all going to be uniform, just change the scale of the sphere in the boolean op).
However you'll need another type of topology if you want yet another chamfer surrounding the triangle of the corner, which will be necessary if you need an exact style of chamfer on the edges.
Yeah this got rambly, just writing this in a hurry, Saturday and all
that was the step i took on the first one! so it made me happy seeing this!
@musashidan , "topo cleanup" sounds trivial, but you're actually making very significant shape edits during that stage, not just cleaning topo.
@perna It actually is pretty trivial, with no significant shape changes: Quickslice/delete to clean the inset topo. Collapse 3x vert pairs. Move corner edges with Normal constraint to flatten. 3x edge chamfer. That's it.
@perna yeah, I tried your boolean method too, as soon as I saw it. Works out pretty good. Still a bit of manual work though when intended for sub-d. I'm not sure if I'm into the mathematical perfection route, though, when I'm modeling. While I definitely respect the fact that this whole endeavour is entirely mathematical, I'm often an eyeball modeler.
@perna so there wasn't a single stray vert from the boolean operation? Unusual in this type of intersection. Scaling the spheroid to allow a larger/smaller chamfer is definitely going to result in strays or verts that need to be collapsed/welded. Also, if changes down the road meant maybe one of the chamfers needed to be wider then the perfect curve would need to be manually tweaked.
I'm not arguing that doing it by hand or 'eyeballing' is better in any way. I'm just surprised that you had zero stray verts. Personally, when I'm modeling, a lot of the time I'm plowing through the work, trying to get piece after piece done within a certain time. I'm not saying I'm sloppy as I'm rather ocd but by 'eyeballing' I mean trying not to obsess or spend too much time noodling or tweaking things that won't really be noticed for the asset purposes. I've learned over the years that I've wasted far too much time on small things that don't matter all that much in the end. I'm not using what we're talking about here as an example as I'm finding it interesting, I'm speaking generally.
But to get rid of those stray vertices is something really fast, 2 or 3 clicks and they're all gone. It could be faster with a script thought, something like 1 click.
But to get rid of those stray vertices is something really fast, 2 or 3 clicks and they're all gone. It could be faster with a script thought, something like 1 click.
Yes, I use a vert cleaner script like that myself. But, I'm also wondering about verts that may need to be welded/collapsed if the chamfer width changes. Or edgeloops/creasing added if sub-d is required.
Interesting way of doing this, so you have two probooleans and one is for controlling the chamfer width.
And now that I saw, turn to poly has one option to remove the mid edge vertices, quite a rookie mistake of mine not to read those options in this modifier.
so last attempt, did this before work, so 10 min of work (probably 2 min of clean up, mostly target welding vertex). Not even close to correct scale but it was nice for a change of working with my current scene.
Replies
Does anybody have a solution about that weirdness on the top of my sphere.
Thankx a lot
I understand that this stuff is hard to learn. If it helps, I have a pinterest board on hard surface topology.
https://www.pinterest.com/Makkon06/hard-surface-topology/
If you get some time, I'd suggest going through it and recreating some of the shapes in there. Thank you for making the effort! It can take a lot of tries before things start to click.
Otherwise, I would suggest trying to have more uniform topology, in this case more subdivisions for the cylinder, making room for intersections to smooth better. Good luck.
uh little help fellas on my post above
ps: sorry for my bad english. Its not my mother tongue
Im bothering with this simple topology... and cant find out how to make this object with perfect topology... some help?
Im thinking at the end chamfer edges and apply turbosmooth
try from blender
made something but still think its not good...?
(for some reason obj can't be uploaded either)
The sub-d cage or base mesh is best modeled as a very low (as little as is needed to derive the basic form) density mesh. The subdivision algorithm does the rest. Look at the last 2 examples given by @perna . This is all that's required. This is a fundamental guiding principle of sub-d. Only add geo IF it is needed. Use existing geo where possible and IF you can't get the forms with the geo you have, THEN add more.
The general idea of quad is just the evenly spread vertex location on the mesh, which I believed already mentioned by @perna thousands times here, the importance of vertex/ edges distribution.
What is the best way of connecting all the faces together? if I Bridge now I still have to connect all the other side of the edges. I want to make it grid squares.
I did bridge two edge sides and then I did connect on the same amount of subdivision and then I merged the vertices. That's all.
Yes you are right it's really dense but it's only a prototype and not the final model, I needed to be very precise to model a shape so later I can mont a certain shapes on top, so basically it's only a base and will be removed later
Thank you Perna, I think your middle topology is the best, has nice transition in corner, no pinching etc. But challenge will be how to achieve this, because I don't know where to start.
copied it, turbosmoothed the second cube, spherify, scaled it up.
used Boolean to intersect. Got that edge, cleaned it up and extruded the "cube" from the corner.
I gave it a shot too.
Cube with spherify, then a cylinder placed for reference with symmetry at 45deg, adjust half of cube to match edges, then symmetry, then clean up.
This way seems pretty adjustable by changing the amount of segments in the cube and sides of cylinders and/or radius and get something closer to what you guys have made.
Yet the topology is different from perna's examples...
I'm actually interested in how you got that shape.
double vert chamfer>face inset>topo cleanup
Optional step for the quad-fanatics
1. box
2. inset the sides i want to bevel, top, left and right
3. use turbosmooth and smoothjing groups (top left and right have the same smoothing groups
4. delete the edges inbetween those sides.
5. Bridge and turbosmooth.
And i bet you Perna will do it in 5 steps less.
I'm not arguing that doing it by hand or 'eyeballing' is better in any way. I'm just surprised that you had zero stray verts. Personally, when I'm modeling, a lot of the time I'm plowing through the work, trying to get piece after piece done within a certain time. I'm not saying I'm sloppy as I'm rather ocd but by 'eyeballing' I mean trying not to obsess or spend too much time noodling or tweaking things that won't really be noticed for the asset purposes. I've learned over the years that I've wasted far too much time on small things that don't matter all that much in the end. I'm not using what we're talking about here as an example as I'm finding it interesting, I'm speaking generally.
And now that I saw, turn to poly has one option to remove the mid edge vertices, quite a rookie mistake of mine not to read those options in this modifier.
For fucks sake, the things you can find out about a program you've used for a decade. Thanks perna!
Not even close to correct scale but it was nice for a change of working with my current scene.