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
That's what I thought it might have to come to. But I'm still confused then for if if have to cut into a cylinder and not extrude. I'd have the same problem, but not be able to do it with seperate pieces
But if I don't put it in, the extruded shape isn't supported and get's rounded at the corners But it's okay I'm thinking, because I'm watching Racer445's AK47U tutorial, and learned how to do the path deform thing so that might help with what I'm doing. That's really not a beginner tutorial though, I keep getting lost on it :P Thanks for the help though guys!
You could just collapse that loop sooner, you have all those ones defining it's shape as it extrudes, cut it into one of those, don't let it go all the way down the cylinder. That's why you're getting the hard seam.
EDIT: I think I worded this weird. I can show you if it doesn't make sense. but basically, you want to terminate that loop, merging it into one of the existing ones.
You could just collapse that loop sooner, you have all those ones defining it's shape as it extrudes, cut it into one of those, don't let it go all the way down the cylinder. That's why you're getting the hard seam.
EDIT: I think I worded this weird. I can show you if it doesn't make sense. but basically, you want to terminate that loop, merging it into one of the existing ones.
That was the problem I was having. I was terminating the loop but it was still giving me a nasty hard edge. I'm guessing this just boils down to me doing something wrong though... I probably shouldn't have picked such a rounded weapon for my first try :P I think I'm just going to make it floating geometery though, and redo that entire area. After doing some more of the tutorial, I see where I've made a whole bunch of unnecessary mistakes. I love modelling, it's like a giant puzzle!
No, you were letting the loop go down the entire length, run it off into another vert right outside the box, end it early so it doesn't run all the way down. you want it to merge into the edges that are existing defining the cylindrical shape.
No, you were letting the loop go down the entire length, run it off into another vert right outside the box, end it early so it doesn't run all the way down. you want it to merge into the edges that are existing defining the cylindrical shape.
I definately did this, in my third picture. For some reason it was still giving a nasty error, but not all the way down the cylinder. Like I said, I'm probably doing something else wrong, but I did terminate the loop.
Hey guys, I've been working on improving my high poly skills lately and have been using this pistol for practice. I'm getting hung up on this area of the grip. It's probably an easy fix, but I just wanted to know how you would go about modeling dat shape.
Hey guys, quick 3ds max question. I found a quick and dirty cylindrical knurling tut in this thread, and it tells me to save my selection set, ie, the edges I have currently selected but need to select later.
in maya : create > set > quick select set, then right click in the outliner and hit 'select set members' to fetch back that saved selection.
In max you just select stuff, type the desired name in the empty filed in the main toolbar, and it then fills up and becomes a selection dropdpwn. Dunno if it works on components tho.
E:\ that worked, but not I cannot seem to be able to do step 11, the hotkey specified doesn't work with my setup, and I cannot find that command in the hotkey setup menu....
So i got a PM from n88tr asking how i make cylinders inside of other shapes, so here are a few gifs:
1. Easy way to do what is shown in his example
2. Doing a cylinder inside of a box
You'll notice i didnt make a full edge selection when i bridge here, sometimes modo likes to screw this sort of bridge operation up, so you can just leave out 1 selection from each ring, and then just go back in and cap the missing area.
Now, when doing this sort of thing with more complex shapes, i often will create the main shape, and create the hole as a separate part of geometry, instance the hole 6 times for a revolver cylinder, and then just connect everything back together, either manually by selecting verts and creating faces, or using tools like bridge on an edge selection.
It takes some thought while you're doing this to make sure you have enough geometry to work well with sub-d, so keep that in mind as you create each section. The connecting geometry should be fairly messy, so make sure you have enough supporting edges around your pieces before you connect them.
Care should be taken to make sure you have a divisible number of sides in your main mesh for the amound of holes you wish to create, IE if you have 6 holes you wouldn't want 22 sides or 28 sides but 24 or 36 sides.
3. Here is a more complex example showing how i connect the different pieces. Exactly how you do it will depend on your tools, but it should be clear.
I thought I'd have a go at some sub-d with something simple - a clipper lighter.
Can't find a single reference image on google for the underside, but I'm pretty sure it's as the lazy mock-up in photshop, where it's a circle, with six little rectangles coming out of it.
Is it best in this case to just make the little rectangles separate objects, rather than trying to bevel/inset the actual recess?
I wanted to make it fuzzy, as if it was injection moulded, hence the modelling in one piece, but gets very fuzzy.
EDIT - BTW - on searching tutorials for Sub-d , this thread now ranks #4 on google.
EQ, that last .gif I get it mostly which is surprising to me but anyways after all the chambers are in there and you added those faces and duplicated that all around the open face how did you create those faces before duplicating them? Like did you use a plane and had the same amount of verts on the edges and then attached it to the outer cylinder or something else? Everything else I get but that one part.
EQ, that last .gif I get it mostly which is surprising to me but anyways after all the chambers are in there and you added those faces and duplicated that all around the open face how did you create those faces before duplicating them? Like did you use a plane and had the same amount of verts on the edges and then attached it to the outer cylinder or something else? Everything else I get but that one part.
Probably the bridge tool would be fastest, but you could do it with edge extrusion/weld or putting a plane there and then welding verts.
Bridge tool is probably the closest you're going to come to a "magic fill this shit" button, everything else is more work, but the bridge tool isn't going to do that all in one click, either.
1. Select 2 edges(or more), bridge. if your # of sides are even, you can select a bunch of edges and bridge to get perfect quads etc. by # of sides varied a bit more than i liked so i needed some tris in there
2. Select vertexes and make poly! In modo this is P on the keyboard, im sure other apps have the same function
This damn shape has been annoying me for ages :poly118:
Basically all I want is the subdivided shape on the left, a recessed triangle that has its longest edge flush with a flat plane. However I really want it to be repeated across a grid, which is where my problems come in.
You can see where I've circled in pink on the low poly that there are mor edges leaving the plane on the right than on the left, which makes them very difficult to join up without getting pinching, and more to the point wihtout alot of tedious welding and cutting. (I am repeating this across a pretty big grid.)
finally for bonus points, the change between the 'triangle' and the plane is a curver rather than straight between the two corners. but cutting it up into triangles makes more pinching.
Hey Guys and Gals .
Theres a site called CGTut+ with several great highpoly modeling tutorials for max. check it out if youve never heard of it. ive learnt alot from the Rpg modeling tut.
Hey Guys and Gals .
Theres a site called CGTut+ with several great highpoly modeling tutorials for max. check it out if youve never heard of it. ive learnt alot from the Rpg modeling tut.
I have to admit I was somewhat skeptical about that community at first, it seemed like one of those shitty and lame community that just wanted your moneyz.
Cgtuts+ has grown a lot in the last few months, with lot's of great tuts. Totally recomended.
Hey Guys and Gals .
Theres a site called CGTut+ with several great highpoly modeling tutorials for max. check it out if youve never heard of it. ive learnt alot from the Rpg modeling tut.
I am trying to figure out how to produce rifling engravings. I havnt found any tutorials that would assist me.
Can any one point me in the right direction or just give me a few good quick tips?
Floating geometry would be fine.
any help will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
What do you mean engravings? Like letters?
If that's your question, I'd say you can use floating geometry on there. Either that, or do it in PS, run it trhough xnormal PS plugin (or nvidia nm filter) and put it on top of your baked result as an overlay.
Okay, I've posted one similar to this before, but this time I can better illustrate what I need help with. I'm just really stuck on how to do bits like this, and unfortunately for this part I cannot do floating geometry. I need those edge loops in there, but as you can see it creates an unwanted hard edge on the cylindrical area.
Now, when I do the target welding and deleting side edges to retain quads and only one edge, I get this nastiness:
Any help with this would be appreciated (Especially if you can keep everything in quads. That'd be beautiful!) Thanks in advance, and sorry for always posting a bunch of pictures.
You might have to grit your teeth, grab a drink, and redo the shape - or a large part of it. I always hate looking at something and thinking, 'oh christ I've got to do it again...'
Sucks.
You might have to grit your teeth, grab a drink, and redo the shape - or a large part of it. I always hate looking at something and thinking, 'oh christ I've got to do it again...'
Sucks.
I found a way to do it that gave satifactory results. Still a bit of pinching, but I think it was the best solution for what I had there. Unfortunately the part I showed was just a piece of a huge part, and redoing that shape probably would involve redoing a LOT of really complex bits. I felt a bit of pinching in a largely unseen place was better than a couple more hours' work :P Thanks for the help though guys! Next time I'm doing a piece where I need to extrude from a cylinder, I'll try and plan out ahead and add more geometry when starting off.
I REALLY hate cylinders now, they cause me soooooo much pain
I usually do these a different way (chamfer every other vert on a gridded cylinder, delete the new polys, shell), but it results in similar (but not as steep) pinching around the holes. A while back I recall seeing some really slick topo for something like this but I don't think it was in this thread because I just flipped through it.
Anyone got a picture of some better topo for this?
Can someone give me a walkthrough of the double-smooth technique where you have two turbosmooth modifiers and one references smoothing groups? I would love to see some technical workflow. Such as, do you add some edges to support, do you have to setup the smoothing groups on the basemesh before, etc.
Can someone give me a walkthrough of the double-smooth technique where you have two turbosmooth modifiers and one references smoothing groups? I would love to see some technical workflow. Such as, do you add some edges to support, do you have to setup the smoothing groups on the basemesh before, etc.
I'm pretty sure this is a matter of just setting smoothing groups on the base mesh, using a smooth that respects the smoothing groups to highly tesselate the mesh to the point where it generates the support edges for all the hard edges, and then dropping one last smooth on top to round all the edges.
I do this with a tesselate modifier without any averaging but I guess smoothing with s-groups lets you mix curved and hard surfaces.
edit: here is a quick mockup. The topology is bad but the idea behind this is to let you skate with some quick topology.
Replies
That's what I thought it might have to come to. But I'm still confused then for if if have to cut into a cylinder and not extrude. I'd have the same problem, but not be able to do it with seperate pieces
Also, I_R_Hopo, that edge doesn't seem to make sense where it is. It seems like you don't need it at all from the view that you showed.....
EDIT: I think I worded this weird. I can show you if it doesn't make sense. but basically, you want to terminate that loop, merging it into one of the existing ones.
So is this a dvd or did you download it somewhere? I'm curious to take a look at it
I recommend the torrent download to save bandwidth.
That was the problem I was having. I was terminating the loop but it was still giving me a nasty hard edge. I'm guessing this just boils down to me doing something wrong though... I probably shouldn't have picked such a rounded weapon for my first try :P I think I'm just going to make it floating geometery though, and redo that entire area. After doing some more of the tutorial, I see where I've made a whole bunch of unnecessary mistakes. I love modelling, it's like a giant puzzle!
I definately did this, in my third picture. For some reason it was still giving a nasty error, but not all the way down the cylinder. Like I said, I'm probably doing something else wrong, but I did terminate the loop.
Yeah, though I have unlimited bandwidth. :poly124:
How do I save it?
Thanks, and sorry if it is a stupid question.
In max you just select stuff, type the desired name in the empty filed in the main toolbar, and it then fills up and becomes a selection dropdpwn. Dunno if it works on components tho.
Here is that tut in case anyone wants to see it:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=56014&page=17
E:\ that worked, but not I cannot seem to be able to do step 11, the hotkey specified doesn't work with my setup, and I cannot find that command in the hotkey setup menu....
...Inset...
1. Easy way to do what is shown in his example
2. Doing a cylinder inside of a box
You'll notice i didnt make a full edge selection when i bridge here, sometimes modo likes to screw this sort of bridge operation up, so you can just leave out 1 selection from each ring, and then just go back in and cap the missing area.
Now, when doing this sort of thing with more complex shapes, i often will create the main shape, and create the hole as a separate part of geometry, instance the hole 6 times for a revolver cylinder, and then just connect everything back together, either manually by selecting verts and creating faces, or using tools like bridge on an edge selection.
It takes some thought while you're doing this to make sure you have enough geometry to work well with sub-d, so keep that in mind as you create each section. The connecting geometry should be fairly messy, so make sure you have enough supporting edges around your pieces before you connect them.
Care should be taken to make sure you have a divisible number of sides in your main mesh for the amound of holes you wish to create, IE if you have 6 holes you wouldn't want 22 sides or 28 sides but 24 or 36 sides.
3. Here is a more complex example showing how i connect the different pieces. Exactly how you do it will depend on your tools, but it should be clear.
OBJ: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/499159/cylinder-example.obj
he sucks at modeling
Can't find a single reference image on google for the underside, but I'm pretty sure it's as the lazy mock-up in photshop, where it's a circle, with six little rectangles coming out of it.
Is it best in this case to just make the little rectangles separate objects, rather than trying to bevel/inset the actual recess?
I wanted to make it fuzzy, as if it was injection moulded, hence the modelling in one piece, but gets very fuzzy.
EDIT - BTW - on searching tutorials for Sub-d , this thread now ranks #4 on google.
Can any one point me in the right direction or just give me a few good quick tips?
Floating geometry would be fine.
any help will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Probably the bridge tool would be fastest, but you could do it with edge extrusion/weld or putting a plane there and then welding verts.
Bridge tool is probably the closest you're going to come to a "magic fill this shit" button, everything else is more work, but the bridge tool isn't going to do that all in one click, either.
1. Select 2 edges(or more), bridge. if your # of sides are even, you can select a bunch of edges and bridge to get perfect quads etc. by # of sides varied a bit more than i liked so i needed some tris in there
2. Select vertexes and make poly! In modo this is P on the keyboard, im sure other apps have the same function
This damn shape has been annoying me for ages :poly118:
Basically all I want is the subdivided shape on the left, a recessed triangle that has its longest edge flush with a flat plane. However I really want it to be repeated across a grid, which is where my problems come in.
You can see where I've circled in pink on the low poly that there are mor edges leaving the plane on the right than on the left, which makes them very difficult to join up without getting pinching, and more to the point wihtout alot of tedious welding and cutting. (I am repeating this across a pretty big grid.)
finally for bonus points, the change between the 'triangle' and the plane is a curver rather than straight between the two corners. but cutting it up into triangles makes more pinching.
Help, polycount!
Heres a botched previous attempt to give you an idea of the end result:
Theres a site called CGTut+ with several great highpoly modeling tutorials for max. check it out if youve never heard of it. ive learnt alot from the Rpg modeling tut.
I have to admit I was somewhat skeptical about that community at first, it seemed like one of those shitty and lame community that just wanted your moneyz.
Cgtuts+ has grown a lot in the last few months, with lot's of great tuts. Totally recomended.
QFT
Probably the best tutorial site I've seen.
What do you mean engravings? Like letters?
If that's your question, I'd say you can use floating geometry on there. Either that, or do it in PS, run it trhough xnormal PS plugin (or nvidia nm filter) and put it on top of your baked result as an overlay.
Already answered here http://boards.polycount.net/showpost.php?p=1021219&postcount=695
Now, when I do the target welding and deleting side edges to retain quads and only one edge, I get this nastiness:
Any help with this would be appreciated
So say I'm in a position where adding more geometry just really isn't.... Doable. Am I kinda screwed then?
Sucks.
Just think, you'll be glad you did in the end!
Gotta quote to say this is insane. :thumbup:
I found a way to do it that gave satifactory results. Still a bit of pinching, but I think it was the best solution for what I had there. Unfortunately the part I showed was just a piece of a huge part, and redoing that shape probably would involve redoing a LOT of really complex bits. I felt a bit of pinching in a largely unseen place was better than a couple more hours' work :P Thanks for the help though guys! Next time I'm doing a piece where I need to extrude from a cylinder, I'll try and plan out ahead and add more geometry when starting off.
I REALLY hate cylinders now, they cause me soooooo much pain
I am quite new here, and with sub-d, but I made the belows. Someone may do a better one for you.
It tiles easily and is easy to add curve to the dip. There's a six sided pole present but no pinching.
It's an interesting one. If there's a better way that any 'pros' want to show ...
I usually do these a different way (chamfer every other vert on a gridded cylinder, delete the new polys, shell), but it results in similar (but not as steep) pinching around the holes. A while back I recall seeing some really slick topo for something like this but I don't think it was in this thread because I just flipped through it.
Anyone got a picture of some better topo for this?
I'm pretty sure this is a matter of just setting smoothing groups on the base mesh, using a smooth that respects the smoothing groups to highly tesselate the mesh to the point where it generates the support edges for all the hard edges, and then dropping one last smooth on top to round all the edges.
I do this with a tesselate modifier without any averaging but I guess smoothing with s-groups lets you mix curved and hard surfaces.
edit: here is a quick mockup. The topology is bad but the idea behind this is to let you skate with some quick topology.