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How The F*#% Do I Model This? - Reply for help with specific shapes - (Post attempt before asking)

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  • bbob
    The problem with your mesh, alex is that the corners of the lines that cut through the raised geometry, has different heights, bending your mesh. To counteract that you must place some lines across, to keep the shape..
  • Dippndots
    thanks bbob worked perfectly
  • TinyFly
    Im just curious how would u guys go about modelling the little indents into this beretta ninety two model from what i have so far...
    I Mean i know its going to be ALOT of geometry its just im unsure how to go about it at the moment because its going to be so TIGHT when its all padded and done its a nightmare
    Im just curious about how you guys would go about it
    anyway heres the images of what i need to get done from what i have.

    [IMG]file:///C:/Users/tinyfly/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot.png[/IMG]nthis.jpg
    this.jpg
  • frubes
    if you are modelling them for normal maps Tinfly just use seperate pieces of floating geometry for the extrusions.
  • TinyFly
    Ahhh frubes see I was sort of thinking that but at the same time ... I still want them to be in the low poly as well if u know what i mean... I know they are small...
    I mean there must be a way i know its not going to be easy
    Ive already got the indents made but not attached sort of thing....
    I havent figured out how to get them to follow through into the curve above em
    I thought perhaps I could just create a strip of polys above them with the same amount of edges and have the strip inwards on the angle i needed it then just bridge it..
    I dunno i was just wondering how u guys would approach it ive seen so many good ideas here but this just stumped me a bit.
  • keizza
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    keizza polycounter lvl 18
    just out of curiosity....why would you want to BUILD that in the LOW poly? if you are going to that amount of polygonal detail....might as well just model a high poly and leave it at that.
  • Un_dead
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    Un_dead polycounter lvl 11
    notice that the extrusions follow the contours....
    i would make a plane with double the amount of loops, extrude every second poly, and then edit the verts at the top to get the contour...
    or if your really lazy use a boolean, but i wouldnt suggest it me personally HATING booleans and despising all who use them :P
  • Koden
    Two quick bits I could use some insight on.

    First, what would be the best way to texture multiple wires or cables, either wrapped together (A) or loose (B)? I like the plugin Wire Jumble because I can produce lots of wires very quickly, while still control the parameters for each. With all the looping and curves, unwrapping each individual wire seems redundant and a big waste of time. I want the ability to apply text/grunge to the wires (C) instead of a single solid color.

    --

    Secondly, what would be an efficient/effective way to model areas of metal that are welded together (D)? If I'm going to cast my highpoly onto a low, I'd like the welded area to look better than just two cylinders intersecting at 90 degrees (E)

    boards.polycount.netwiresweld.jpgwiresweld.jpg
  • frubes
    from recollection Marek Denko wrote a tutorial on the welding workflow you are looking for. He did it on this vehicle:

    http://marekdenko.net/3dgallery/044/buggy.html

    Unfortunately i cant remember where it is but hopefully someone else might be able to remember.
  • Mefix
  • AlecMoody
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    AlecMoody ngon master
    Koden wrote: »
    Two quick bits I could use some insight on.

    First, what would be the best way to texture multiple wires or cables, either wrapped together (A) or loose (B)? I like the plugin Wire Jumble because I can produce lots of wires very quickly, while still control the parameters for each. With all the looping and curves, unwrapping each individual wire seems redundant and a big waste of time. I want the ability to apply text/grunge to the wires (C) instead of a single solid color.

    --

    Secondly, what would be an efficient/effective way to model areas of metal that are welded together (D)? If I'm going to cast my highpoly onto a low, I'd like the welded area to look better than just two cylinders intersecting at 90 degrees (E)

    boards.polycount.netwiresweld.jpgwiresweld.jpg


    I haven't used that wire plugin but if you build your wires with lofts you can have the UVs built for you automatically.
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    Koden wrote: »
    Two quick bits I could use some insight on.

    First, what would be the best way to texture multiple wires or cables, either wrapped together
    --

    Secondly, what would be an efficient/effective way to model areas of metal that are welded together

    boards.polycount.netwiresweld.jpg

    For the wires i would be tempted to model and texture 1 or 2 wires and then duplicate them around later.

    For the weld, i would think that sculpting would be your best option.
    I bet Claytubes/smooth would work well :)
  • 00Zero
    there was a good tutorial on welds a while back. basically you make a line and give it width, then convert it to a mesh and scale verts and throw a smooth on it. it will look blobby.

    it works well enough but if the welds are going to be an important part, they wont look real enough so you would probably want to sculpt them in zbrush or something.
  • Koden
    Thanks Metalliandy and 00Zero. I played around for a bit and found that moving/scaling points around returned the best results.

    Here's what I came up with for the welded areas. They are not an 'important' part, so I didn't think it was necessary to ZBrush them. They're just for the welded bars in this gurney.

    welds.jpg
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    That's going to look fine when rendered or baked to normals, good work :)
  • 00Zero
    lol. I wouldnt trust a welder who welds like that. looks good for a model though.
  • arrangemonk
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    arrangemonk polycounter lvl 17
    has to look like this (but you can only achieve this quality with lazuor or a welding crack)
    titan_kehlnaht_aussen1.jpg

    edit maybe this helps
    coins.png
    or this
    schweinaht.png
    (for tracks in zbrush or something)
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Koden, that looks like gum.

    look at this.

    ad_rahmen_final_gr.jpg

    bike_welds.jpg
  • danshewan
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    danshewan polycounter lvl 8
    Some great info here, guys.

    I'm trying to round out the corners of this model. I removed some of the supporting edges, and this is what I've got so far:


    smoothedcorner.jpg

    It's not looking too bad, but the highlighted edge is giving me some artifacting. If I remove the edge, that inward extrusion retains it's edge, but I'm getting some funkiness because of the angle of the edges that define the inset area where the handle sits.

    I tried adding an extra two edges as per the advice given earlier in the thread, and it does lessen the error, but still looks kinda crappy:

    newedges.jpg


    edgecompare.jpg


    At this stage, I'm wondering if I'd be better off detaching everything below the red line as a separate object so I don't have to worry about the edge flow that's giving me these errors?

    Is there a more optimal way to achieve this?
  • ES_139
    Dan, try these edges, its a bit crude i.e. you would want to tidy the edges up as opposed to have them running all round the edge ring but this should support that front edge and define it better. If your still having problems you might have two vertices overlapping in there, i downloaded your mesh from your wip thread and ill have a look at it tomo if your still having problems.

    newedgescopy.jpg
  • GoSsS
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    GoSsS polycounter lvl 14
    ZacD wrote: »
    Koden, that looks like gum.

    look at this.

    ad_rahmen_final_gr.jpg

    bike_welds.jpg

    Wow, these welded parts on the second screen are pretty cool !
    Can you tell us more about the technique ? is this a brush with alpha in ZBrush etc. because it looks really cool and i'll have to do some 3d welding in few days :D

    Edit : yups sorry, i found the tutorial on bitmap's website ;)
    Here's the url for guys who need : http://www.staticcurve.com/Artists/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=168

    Thanks bitmap for this tuto
  • Koden
    ZacD, arrangemonk thank you both very much. Those alpha images combined with the bike_metal pictures are excellent references; already saved them for future use!
  • Valandar
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    Valandar polycounter lvl 18
    There was a tutorial on making a ZBrush sculpt of a weld seam on here a while back... I remember it used the clay brush to build up the form at the seam, then you rub back and forth along the built up seam with the Elastic brush to give it the 'beaded weld seam' look.
  • Pedro Amorim
    well.. yeah.
    that's what i do in the video lol

    but the thing is.. i use some diferent methods now.

    I will make some videos this week
  • Yamo
    Hey guys, love this thread and I was hoping I could get a little help with these corners

    corners1.jpg

    corners2.jpg

    corners3.jpg

    *editted for better pics*
  • ES_139
    try playing around with this arrangement, and weld the verts to the existing edge until you get the result your after.
    corners3.jpg
  • Joao Sapiro
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    Joao Sapiro sublime tool
  • Ja.Bogacki
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    Ja.Bogacki polycounter lvl 11
    Hello Guys.

    Its my firs thread I'm reading on this forum and my first post as well.
    I'm reading it for few days and I'm on page 25 ... too bad the end is near :/

    I've readed SO COOL things here about sub-D , went to so amazing links thanks to You. WOW. And seen so amazing portfolios !

    EarthQuake, Perna and Bitmap ... Blazer too. Guys , You R sooooo helpful. Respect.
    With all respect 4 others.

    With all the read I'm doin to push my skills further and further , every time I do Sub_D models , I encounter UV stretching problem. Forgive me , I know it is not this thread , but , thanks to You , I don't have a lot of mesh difficulty ;P and my problem involves Sub_D use.

    UV Stretching. Please tell me Guys how You deal with that. I know HP models are made mostly just for normals, but I'm pretty sure You Pros know that nifty little thing that deals with texture stretching when you do so.
    I attach picture with that %^@# stretching thing. I already added a lot of additional edges to my object, Yes it helped , but c mon It gets as dense if I would use 2x subD even before i use it. Here is a picture.

    uvstreching.jpg

    One more time , thanks for this thread !
    Kuba.
  • EarthQuake
    There may be a "smooth uvs" setting somewhere, i think by default in modo the uvs get sub-divided, but you may have to turn that feature on in your app
  • Ja.Bogacki
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    Ja.Bogacki polycounter lvl 11
    Hi EQ . Sorry , I forgot to mention that I'm 3DS max user. I dig about UV stretching problem as well for a long time , and adding old style mapping almost never works. :/
  • frubes
    unfortunately UV smoothing is a problem in max which isn't easy to fix. Turbosmooth is worse than meshmooth but Meshmooth is rubbish performance wise.

    There is a complicated fix which involves breaking the low poly geometry along the UV seams, turn back on your turbosmooth then going into the channel info and copying the UV channel from the smoothed model with broken UV's onto a model which doesn't have broken UV's. This way you can get around the distortion but its a far from ideal solution which involves a lot of changes if you adjust your UV's again.

    Somewhere on neil blevins site there is a small explanation of a fix but i cant find it atm.
    Also there is a large thread on this over at CG society.
  • EarthQuake
    Man that sucks, yeah i just assume that is a standard thing most apps can do, weird.
  • Ja.Bogacki
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    Ja.Bogacki polycounter lvl 11
    Frubes -Thanks for tip and where I should dig about it

    EQ- yap. Its totally F up. Especially in my case ;P. Then almost all Murphys laws apply ;P haha.
  • frubes
    It depends on why you want to unwrap the high poly Bogacki. In film for example, they tend to unwrap high poly organic models because they are dealing with resolutions where texture stretching are more noticeable. However, when it comes to technical models, things like guns etc, the texturing is handled differently. Techniques like blended box mapping and procedurals are employed to get around having to deal with unwrapping high poly models by hand. They have clever ways of generating things like edge wear and tear by using vertex based maps which look at edge/face angles. I would recommend you check out neil blevins gnomon tutorial on hard surface texture and shading. Its an excellent example of how you might go about some of these things.

    Im not saying that max shouldn't fix the unwrapping issue as it does drive me nuts but there are workflows you can use which wont hinder you so much depending on what you are trying to achieve.
  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    just a nice commercial script I found the other day:
    http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/polygon-creator
    polygoncreatorimage.jpg

    And this is how it actually works:
    You select either 3 or 4 connected splines and run the script
    04.png
    it will then loop through the 2 opposing axis of the to be created patch and creates quads
    16.jpg

    this is an example with 3 sides:
    18.jpg

    Shouldn't be to hard to code that oneself, I used the same method actually for my texture extraction tool where I loop through 2 opposing lines/splines as well.

    Edit: more tech screens and how it works can be found on the official site:
    http://www.heavenlypictures.hu/polygoncreator/polygoncreator.php
  • Eric Chadwick
    Only 15 bucks, certainly seems worth it to me, if I was doing patch modeling a lot.

    Thanks for the heads up!
  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    I think its still to much for such a function, sure he added lots of special options and probably made it bullet proof but the core functionality itself is not worth 15$ imo.
    But very inspirational
  • Rang3r1
    Ok guys, I have yet to find something I couldn't make in quads to make sub-d basemeshes easier to add loops to. Until I have to make one of these for a model I am working on. I would really appreciate if someone could make a little section of it, as I need to figure out the holes. I understand the chamfering a vertex and then adding the spherify modifier method, but I cannot seem to be able to apply it to this RIS foregrip.

    http://www.ebairsoft.com/dboys-matte-black-quality-aluminum-p-1060.html

    Thanks.

    E\ Sorry, I saw Frube's earlier post on this exact subject. Thanks for this awesome thread.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Woah nice script! Its like M.O.I. inside max. Always wondered where that kind of functionality was by default - I guess it just wasnt there at all!!
  • erikb
    Is it fine baking normals from a hi-poly that has some parts in subd and others not? Or do you freeze the whole thing before baking, anyway?

    I find it's a bit harder to match silhouette of the hi-poly as well, when using subds... Feels like I have to use more polys on the low-poly for matching the smooth silhouette of the subd...
  • Rang3r1
    I find, that yes, sometimes you need to add a little more geo to get it to bake cleaner. And yes, you should always use a full sub-d high to bake from. If you are having issues with getting the high and low to match up, you might not have enough control loops.
  • Spur
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    Spur polycounter lvl 6
    I've been working on a high res version of a B.A.R. to bake my normals. The area around the ejection port has been a pain in the ass and I'm not really happy with the mesh even though it seems to be smoothing o.k. Anyone have any ideas for improvements or a better way to go about this?

    Ref.jpg

    Smoothed.jpgSmoothed2.jpgWF1.jpg
    WF2.jpg
  • Koden
  • Piflik
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    Piflik polycounter lvl 12
    That does smehow not exactly fit in this thread...
  • Koden
    Piflik wrote: »
    That does smehow not exactly fit in this thread...

    Yeah... if an admin wants to move it somewhere more appropriate then by all means do
  • I_R_Hopo
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    I_R_Hopo polycounter lvl 14
    Okay, I've been wondering about this one for a while. I know there must be an answer, but I just can't figure it out. Say you want to add something to the side of a cylinder, but it has to look attached (high poly). Now, if you add supporting edges going horizontally, you suddenly get a hard edge on your cylinder! As the picture says, this is an "Oh noes" sort of scenario :(
    Does anyone know how to model something into the side of a cylinder like this without getting the hard edge?

    28977499.jpg
    49448873.jpg

    Oh, and I guess I should mention that I tried what ES_139 suggested on the similar problem, but this gave a hard edge still in the immediate vicinity of the part... Oh, and sorry for all the sad faces. I've just been stuck on this a while.

    71220511.jpg
  • divi
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    divi polycounter lvl 12
  • ander
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    ander polycounter lvl 17
    ^ Awsome mini-mini tutorial! :D

    Anyway, can anyone explain why this anomaly is happening?

    lolwutnintendo.jpg
  • Anuxinamoon
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    Anuxinamoon polycounter lvl 14
    I_R_Hopo wrote: »
    Okay, I've been wondering about this one for a while. I know there must be an answer, but I just can't figure it out. Say you want to add something to the side of a cylinder, but it has to look attached (high poly). Now, if you add supporting edges going horizontally, you suddenly get a hard edge on your cylinder! As the picture says, this is an "Oh noes" sort of scenario :(
    Does anyone know how to model something into the side of a cylinder like this without getting the hard edge?

    ][/URL]

    My best advice is, only extrude when you HAVE TO. For all other hard sharp extrusions, even embossing I would suggest using separate elements. I used to high poly like that but it was a major to clean up, so I just broke stuff off into elements where I could. It increased the speed of my work flow and saved me some grey hairs :)
  • Progg
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    Progg polycounter lvl 11
    ander wrote: »
    ^ Awsome mini-mini tutorial! :D

    Anyway, can anyone explain why this anomaly is happening?

    lolwutnintendo.jpg

    Sometimes you get really strange artifacts on NURBS/Sub-D if you apply a material too them in separate sections. If you were poly modeling I would say a reversed face normal... but I'm not that experienced with Sub-D's
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