What books about polygonal modeling in 3d s max would you recommend?
For mechanical hard surface?
If indeed the case, hmm.....well pretty rare these days to find one still in print, though you might get lucky searching on ebay.
I'll also suggest, exploring student friendly narrated video content which on that note one really can't go past Tim Bergholz, particularly for his 3ds Max stuff alone so check them out on ChamferZone.
He's been around for ages in fact one of a handful of senior guys still working with Max, although last I heard may've already switched over to Blender?!
@perandall not sure what exactly your question is but I suppose you're talking about pinching artifacts caused by uneven spaced loops ?
If so enable loop tools addon under blender preference > select the row of edges you wanna space like this > loop tools > space. You can also add an extra softness by using the relax option.
@Raphael_Bouch to clarify for my question, with my current topology i get a little pit of pinching at the edge. Do you know if there is a way to avoid this? Maybe a different way to topologize that edge? Ive included some images of the topology as well as the pinching. It might seem minimal but its pretty visible in a render.
(Might be posting this in the wrong area) Trying to model a low-ish poly wolf and I'm struggling to get a good shape for the ears. Any pointers would be appreciated. Also the model is mirrored.
You may just start with using a simple roundish object.. here i'm using no ref .. ( bad ! ..and the back and lower part has to be tweaked a lot more..) and ( in blender ) subdivide with two cuts and smoothness one (and not the base two subdivision nor mirror modifier but symetrical edit) to specificly only modeling the a animal (like) basic head mesh.. because your subdivision along the ears (and even across ??.. ) may hinder you yet making the ear.. two fat/big.. they are usually thinner.. Making some insets may also be worth a try..
Edit: ..well and after spending some more time with this...only the neck was once extruded.. (and some post edit problems)..
trying to model a bevel around this arc shaped extrusion....how would I approach this without adding a bunch of extra lines and triangles? I'm trying to do quads only
trying to model a bevel around this arc shaped extrusion....how would I approach this without adding a bunch of extra lines and triangles? I'm trying to do quads only
There's nothing wrong with tris, terminating loops on flat surfaces using tris or ngons is perfectly fine.
You may just start with using a simple roundish object.. here i'm using no ref .. ( bad ! ..and the back and lower part has to be tweaked a lot more..) and ( in blender ) subdivide with two cuts and smoothness one (and not the base two subdivision nor mirror modifier but symetrical edit) to specificly only modeling the a animal (like) basic head mesh.. because your subdivision along the ears (and even across ??.. ) may hinder you yet making the ear.. two fat/big.. they are usually thinner.. Making some insets may also be worth a try..
Edit: ..well and after spending some more time with this...only the neck was once extruded.. (and some post edit problems)..
Did you use a UV sphere as a base shape? I'm quite new to the exact workflow which is why I was following a beginner tutorial.
@1471tom - okidoki nailed it due to the flexibility of having aligned quads on all four axis, mitigating issues you're at the moment trying to resolve not only it's ears, imo more importantly when even blocked out, looks like a wolf or indeed k9
Hi, im not sure if its modeling problem or normals problem. How would you fix the shading on this model? I just dont understand the workflow of fixing it.
Is it the vertex connections that i make afte booleans?
I made the high poly in zbrush using live boolean. You make base mesh and boolean objects in blender then import it into zbrush and refine it, then dynamesh, polish and decimate. After that i export the subtools back into blender together with boolean objects and do the same. Shout out to Eugene Petrov. My problem is the shading and those weired gradients across the mesh. It gives me gradients all over my normal map and i cannot progress further. Ive been stuck with this for a few months now and i couldnt figure it out on my own. Ive tried YAVNE and custom normals but nothing is working.
yeah it's a mess....for one smoothing group there's a ton of redundant vertices all over the place, probably better off just clearing custom normals then manually cull instead of solely rely upon an automated operation like decimate?!
hmm....I'll post back with a result after I skim that file!
Hi! How can I fix pinch in this places? I was trying for pretty long time but did not come up with anything better that what i did here. Thanks in advance )
When applying smoothing groups in Blender, I highly recommend Textools - So under the Mesh UV Tools tab click last in the sub menu stack - Smooth by UV Islands!
However, that said most of those gradients are caused by tiny triangles and miss-placed sharp edges, where vertex normals should've been made smooth. I'd spent some time diagnosing those issues and by the way still not perfect but should I think at least output a usable baked normal map.
EDIT:
In the event that you follow my advice, first make sure to create a new material as well as setting shading to flat, then run the UV islands smoothing operation.
When applying smoothing groups in Blender, I highly recommend Textools - So under the Mesh UV Tools tab click last in the sub menu stack - Smooth by UV Islands!
However, that said most of those gradients are caused by tiny triangles and miss-placed sharp edges, where vertex normals should've been made smooth. I'd spent some time diagnosing those issues and by the way still not perfect but should I think at least output a usable baked normal map.
EDIT:
In the event that you follow my advice, first make sure to create a new material as well as setting shading to flat, then run the UV islands smoothing operation.
Thank you for this. Im gonna have to reapply all the booleans and connect them properly first. Also, do you use blender 4.0? i think my tex tools is outdated
All good glad to help out and nah I'm on 3.5 atm won't update, unless I have too
And yeah, probably best to download Textools 1.5v zip for Blender (...btw it's the one I'd used) over at github, just ensure you uninstall whatever default TTs first before installing the current addon version, as per usual.
However
it seems some things don't work quite correctly, like the straighten
function. It has also been reported on the issues tab.
This is the first time I've had a Blender add-on not quite work in a newer version. I'm sticking to 3.6 for the time being
Thank you all for your interest.
As you
said, it works. I've been committing some fixes lately, if you see a
certain tool not properly working please report it. Blender 4.0 have
massive performance gains and although the Python API have changed a lot
lately, most old code is still supported in this version, maybe becomes
deprecated in the future and for now is slower compared, e.g., to the
new methods of mesh attributes accessing. But sticking to a previous
Blender version just for this is a bit too much in my opinion.
so ive tried this on older blender version and this thing just fixed everything in one click. Is there a video/documentation of whats happening when i click it? Does it somehow redistribute vertex normal weight in both indentations, plane faces and curved ones? Thank you for recommending this. This is crazy
TTs was originally written for 3ds Max, so the smooth by islands script basically replicates afaik behavior ironically enough, of Max internal Smoothing Groups assignment operation.
Smoothing does not affect geometry. It affects only the way geometry is colored when rendered.
Smoothing
is controlled by smoothing groups, which are numbered groups ranging
from 1 to 32. You can assign each face to one or more smoothing groups.
When a scene is rendered, the renderer checks each adjacent pair of
faces to see if they share a smoothing group, and renders the object as
follows:
If faces have no smoothing groups in common, the faces are rendered with a sharp edge between them.
If
faces have at least one smoothing group in common, the edge between the
faces is “smoothed”, meaning it is shaded in such a way that the area
where the faces meet appears smooth.
Because
each face has three edges, only three smoothing groups can be in effect
for any face. Extra smoothing groups assigned to a face are ignored.
Do one of the following to view or change smoothing group assignments:
Turn on the Smooth checkbox on the Parameters rollout of a parametric object to set default smoothing for the object.
Turn on the Auto Smooth checkbox on the Rendering rollout of a spline shape to turn on smoothing.
Apply a Smooth modifier.
If a Face sub-object selection is active, Smooth applies to the
selected faces. If no faces are selected, Smooth applies to the entire
object.
The
easiest way to view smoothing is to look at an object in a shaded
viewport. In this case, you are not viewing the smoothing groups
themselves but rather their effects on the shaded surface.
You
can see the smoothing group numbers for selected faces of an editable
mesh object or the Edit Mesh modifier by looking at the Smoothing Group
buttons on the Surface Properties rollout, or of an editable poly object
on the Polygon Properties rollout.
Smoothing Group buttons appear as follows:
Group numbers not used by any face in the selection, appear normal.
Group numbers used by all faces in the selection, appear selected.
Group numbers used by some, but not all, faces in the selection, appear blank.
Automatically Smoothing an Object
Click Auto Smooth to assign smoothing automatically. You set a Threshold angle to determine whether to smooth adjacent faces.
If the angle between face normals is less than or equal to the threshold, the faces are assigned to a common smoothing group.
If the angle between face normals is greater than the threshold, the faces are assigned to separate groups.
Auto Smooth is found on the Surface Properties rollout and on the Smooth modifier.
Manually Applying Smoothing Groups
You
manually assign smoothing groups to a selection of faces by clicking
Smoothing Group buttons on the Surface Properties rollout or the Smooth
modifier. The smoothing group of each button you click is assigned to
the selection.
Selecting Faces by Smoothing Group
You
can also select faces according to the assigned smoothing groups. Click
Select By SG on the Surface Properties rollout (editable mesh) or
Polygon Properties rollout (editable poly) and then click the smoothing
group of the faces to select.
This is a convenient way to examine smoothing groups on an object someone else created.
so ive tried this on older blender version and this thing just fixed everything in one click. Is there a video/documentation of whats happening when i click it? Does it somehow redistribute vertex normal weight in both indentations, plane faces and curved ones? Thank you for recommending this. This is crazy
Not sure if this was mentioned already, but if you are baking normal maps, then for every hard edge (in other words, split vertex normals) you will need to split the UVs and give some padding between the two sides of the UV. This helps to prevent lighting errors when the texture is down-sampled.
However, the reverse is not true! For every UV seam you do not need to create a hard edge. UV seams can be split across smooth edges without problems, when using a normal map.
It's not going to hurt you to add hard edges on every UV split, but it's good to know the "why" behind this.
How do I go about modelling multiple cylinders intersecting into one object with good meshflow/topology? I've been doing it a hacky way for years and right now i'm doing more and more industrial modelling, so i'm looking for ways to increase my modelling speed.
Here is an image of what i'm talking about, the middle part (in red) here that has a cylinder horizontally and one vertically at the bottom. More specifically i'm talking about how to model the part that intersects (in blue). I'm confused rather or not booleans or just modelling by hand is faster. Here is an attempt before writing this;
Hello, I'm trying to challenge myself into making a modern/real life weapons that has such complex and organic shapes that it feels almost impossible to model without some special tools for it. How do I go about modeling these pieces there on the M4 Carbine? The Gas Release cylinder which is fused on the receiver, the Brass Cover of the receiver's ejector port, and the form shift near the butt stock (On the back of the rifle body?)
For the last 2 posts, block in the shapes with separate pieces of geo, then you can try to either model those shapes and intersections directly in the model, or you can try to line up edge loops and geo on the two separate parts and merge them together.
For the last 2 posts, block in the shapes with separate pieces of geo, then you can try to either model those shapes and intersections directly in the model, or you can try to line up edge loops and geo on the two separate parts and merge them together.
Yeah thats what I do, but i'm wondering if there's a faster way of doing it?
Hello, I'm trying to challenge myself into making a modern/real life weapons that has such complex and organic shapes that it feels almost impossible to model without some special tools for it. How do I go about modeling these pieces there on the M4 Carbine? The Gas Release cylinder which is fused on the receiver, the Brass Cover of the receiver's ejector port, and the form shift near the butt stock (On the back of the rifle body?)
What is the purpose of your model, what end use will it have (video game/render?)?
If you model it for a video game I would add those in as floating geometry if it's not a for a first person shooter.
If you don't want floating geometry, you can use a boolean for the forward assist. You can also use booleans for the brass deflector, but you can also create a couple of lines on the receiver and extrude the brass deflector from there.
Also I don't get what your issue is with the buttstock/buffer tube area can you explain that a little more in detail?
Hello, I'm trying to challenge myself into making a modern/real life weapons that has such complex and organic shapes that it feels almost impossible to model without some special tools for it. How do I go about modeling these pieces there on the M4 Carbine? The Gas Release cylinder which is fused on the receiver, the Brass Cover of the receiver's ejector port, and the form shift near the butt stock (On the back of the rifle body?)
What is the purpose of your model, what end use will it have (video game/render?)?
If you model it for a video game I would add those in as floating geometry if it's not a for a first person shooter.
If you don't want floating geometry, you can use a boolean for the forward assist. You can also use booleans for the brass deflector, but you can also create a couple of lines on the receiver and extrude the brass deflector from there.
Also I don't get what your issue is with the buttstock/buffer tube area can you explain that a little more in detail?
This is going to end up being a game model. And near the buffer tube, There is a horizontal annotation line which I have added, I wanted to achieve that form change where there is "bulge" flowing all the way up to the cylinderical shape near the buffer tube. I'm not sure how I can achieve that without using some boolean trickery.
Hello, I'm trying to challenge myself into making a modern/real life weapons that has such complex and organic shapes that it feels almost impossible to model without some special tools for it. How do I go about modeling these pieces there on the M4 Carbine? The Gas Release cylinder which is fused on the receiver, the Brass Cover of the receiver's ejector port, and the form shift near the butt stock (On the back of the rifle body?)
What is the purpose of your model, what end use will it have (video game/render?)?
If you model it for a video game I would add those in as floating geometry if it's not a for a first person shooter.
If you don't want floating geometry, you can use a boolean for the forward assist. You can also use booleans for the brass deflector, but you can also create a couple of lines on the receiver and extrude the brass deflector from there.
Also I don't get what your issue is with the buttstock/buffer tube area can you explain that a little more in detail?
This is going to end up being a game model. And near the buffer tube, There is a horizontal annotation line which I have added, I wanted to achieve that form change where there is "bulge" flowing all the way up to the cylinderical shape near the buffer tube. I'm not sure how I can achieve that without using some boolean trickery.
with bulge do you mean that the area where the buffer tube goes on the receiver, is thicker and circular than the base of the receiver itself?
You have split the upper and lower receiver apart, into two seperate models/pieces. So than you should more easily add more lines without adding too many triangles. What exactly is the issue you're getting into here?
Hello, I'm trying to challenge myself into making a modern/real life weapons that has such complex and organic shapes that it feels almost impossible to model without some special tools for it. How do I go about modeling these pieces there on the M4 Carbine? The Gas Release cylinder which is fused on the receiver, the Brass Cover of the receiver's ejector port, and the form shift near the butt stock (On the back of the rifle body?)
What is the purpose of your model, what end use will it have (video game/render?)?
If you model it for a video game I would add those in as floating geometry if it's not a for a first person shooter.
If you don't want floating geometry, you can use a boolean for the forward assist. You can also use booleans for the brass deflector, but you can also create a couple of lines on the receiver and extrude the brass deflector from there.
Also I don't get what your issue is with the buttstock/buffer tube area can you explain that a little more in detail?
This is going to end up being a game model. And near the buffer tube, There is a horizontal annotation line which I have added, I wanted to achieve that form change where there is "bulge" flowing all the way up to the cylinderical shape near the buffer tube. I'm not sure how I can achieve that without using some boolean trickery.
with bulge do you mean that the area where the buffer tube goes on the receiver, is thicker and circular than the base of the receiver itself?
You have split the upper and lower receiver apart, into two seperate models/pieces. So than you should more easily add more lines without adding too many triangles. What exactly is the issue you're getting into here?
Hello, I'm trying to challenge myself into making a modern/real life weapons that has such complex and organic shapes that it feels almost impossible to model without some special tools for it. How do I go about modeling these pieces there on the M4 Carbine? The Gas Release cylinder which is fused on the receiver, the Brass Cover of the receiver's ejector port, and the form shift near the butt stock (On the back of the rifle body?)
What is the purpose of your model, what end use will it have (video game/render?)?
If you model it for a video game I would add those in as floating geometry if it's not a for a first person shooter.
If you don't want floating geometry, you can use a boolean for the forward assist. You can also use booleans for the brass deflector, but you can also create a couple of lines on the receiver and extrude the brass deflector from there.
Also I don't get what your issue is with the buttstock/buffer tube area can you explain that a little more in detail?
This is going to end up being a game model. And near the buffer tube, There is a horizontal annotation line which I have added, I wanted to achieve that form change where there is "bulge" flowing all the way up to the cylinderical shape near the buffer tube. I'm not sure how I can achieve that without using some boolean trickery.
with bulge do you mean that the area where the buffer tube goes on the receiver, is thicker and circular than the base of the receiver itself?
You have split the upper and lower receiver apart, into two seperate models/pieces. So than you should more easily add more lines without adding too many triangles. What exactly is the issue you're getting into here?
oh i see, i don't have photoshop at hand so i can't really show you. What I would do is extrude the "bulge" and than attach the edges of the extrusion back to the receiver (the horizontal ones at the bottom). This way you only make that part thicker.
Hello everyone, I am thinking of what would be the best approach to recreate those "spans" on the wings of an airplane. How would proper topo look like ? And is modeling the best way to do it or is there other ways like sculpt/texturing and what would be their respective pros and cons ? Here's a cheap modeling attempt sketch I did to see how things would look like but still looks meh to me.
Hello everyone, I am thinking of what would be the best approach to recreate those "spans" on the wings of an airplane. How would proper topo look like ? And is modeling the best way to do it or is there other ways like sculpt/texturing and what would be their respective pros and cons ? Here's a cheap modeling attempt sketch I did to see how things would look like but still looks meh to me.
Thanks in advance !
Solid attempts. I think the spans of the right wing is pretty good on the right wing. If the model is for a game I would make those in normal map. But if it is for an animation or illustration it could be refined a bit. This is how I would do it. Pm me if you wan the .blend file
Looks perfect to me.. also according context (animation, illustration.. maybe hero shot..? ). ..Maybe only double check the position of the span and the start end of the flaps.. looking at the red white blue circle they may be more "aligned".. ( here using "direct" quads and only a simple bevel.. but i curved the flaps too much.. i was concentrating on the separation ).. But this even may sound too picky ..
Hi, so I'm trying to model this particular sofa but I don't even know where to start. My attempt was so pitiful that I don't really want to post it. Basically I just tried to imitate shape by using basic plane but it didn't obviously work.
After trying this very quickly.. (as a warm-up).. yes.. the problematic part is the armrest.. seems to have four parts while the sitting area have three parts.. (the head cushion is already modeled as a seperate part..)
After trying this very quickly.. (as a warm-up).. yes.. the problematic part is the armrest.. seems to have four parts while the sitting area have three parts.. (the head cushion is already modeled as a seperate part..)
..maybe..if i'm more awake..
Thank youi for the try! Maybe I wll figure something out..
I divided the parts of the sofa and did have a closer look at the arm rest.. one part almost is a triangle.. but it's also very curvy.. so lot's of trial and error because i didn't planed ahead a tiny little bit .. the bulges are simple edges selecting and bevel with three segments and the innner one resized.. and again some vertex pushing...
I divided the parts of the sofa and did have a closer look at the arm rest.. one part almost is a triangle.. but it's also very curvy.. so lot's of trial and error because i didn't planed ahead a tiny little bit .. the bulges are simple edges selecting and bevel with three segments and the innner one resized.. and again some vertex pushing...
Hello everyone, I am trying to boolean that little detail piece, but as you can see the density on the ledge is much more denser than the base. If I delete some edge loops from the ledge it will lose its half-cylinder curvature. How would you solve this ?
This may depend on the wanted outcome.. both almost only boxes.. no bevel yet on the edges with needed "curcation".. only subdiv.. no edges creases (weights)..
Hello everyone, I am trying to boolean that little detail piece, but as you can see the density on the ledge is much more denser than the base. If I delete some edge loops from the ledge it will lose its half-cylinder curvature. How would you solve this ?
Thanks in advance !
ask yourself, does it need to be a part of that or can it be a floater? this way, less headache. Will it be baked down?
How do I make a 12 strand rope/cord like the images below? Not talking about the individual braids of each strand, but the overal look of it like in the second pic.
I know how to make a braid in 3D, but can't wrap my head around how to do one properly in Blender.
Replies
For mechanical hard surface?
You still might need to do some adjustments.
In eveee:
Made two variations, but there's still distortion. I don't think I see any obvious solution.
---------------------------------------------------
V1
---------------------------------------------------
V2
PS
While I was waiting for a reply, it seemed to work )))
because your subdivision along the ears (and even across ??.. ) may hinder you yet making the ear.. two fat/big.. they are usually thinner..
Edit: ..well and after spending some more time with this...only the neck was once extruded.. (and some post edit problems)..
trying to model a bevel around this arc shaped extrusion....how would I approach this without adding a bunch of extra lines and triangles? I'm trying to do quads only
Did you use a UV sphere as a base shape? I'm quite new to the exact workflow which is why I was following a beginner tutorial.
How can I fix pinch in this places?
I was trying for pretty long time but did not come up with anything better that what i did here.
Thanks in advance )
For the second i really can't see so much of some pinching...
Thank you for this. Im gonna have to reapply all the booleans and connect them properly first. Also, do you use blender 4.0? i think my tex tools is outdated
Not sure if this was mentioned already, but if you are baking normal maps, then for every hard edge (in other words, split vertex normals) you will need to split the UVs and give some padding between the two sides of the UV. This helps to prevent lighting errors when the texture is down-sampled.
However, the reverse is not true! For every UV seam you do not need to create a hard edge. UV seams can be split across smooth edges without problems, when using a normal map.
It's not going to hurt you to add hard edges on every UV split, but it's good to know the "why" behind this.
More info on this here: https://polycount.com/discussion/107196/making-sense-of-hard-edges-uvs-normal-maps-and-vertex-counts
I've been doing it a hacky way for years and right now i'm doing more and more industrial modelling, so i'm looking for ways to increase my modelling speed.
Here is an image of what i'm talking about, the middle part (in red) here that has a cylinder horizontally and one vertically at the bottom. More specifically i'm talking about how to model the part that intersects (in blue). I'm confused rather or not booleans or just modelling by hand is faster.
Here is an attempt before writing this;
this the result of polymodelling it;
If you model it for a video game I would add those in as floating geometry if it's not a for a first person shooter.
If you don't want floating geometry, you can use a boolean for the forward assist. You can also use booleans for the brass deflector, but you can also create a couple of lines on the receiver and extrude the brass deflector from there.
Also I don't get what your issue is with the buttstock/buffer tube area can you explain that a little more in detail?
You have split the upper and lower receiver apart, into two seperate models/pieces. So than you should more easily add more lines without adding too many triangles. What exactly is the issue you're getting into here?
What I would do is extrude the "bulge" and than attach the edges of the extrusion back to the receiver (the horizontal ones at the bottom).
This way you only make that part thicker.
..maybe..if i'm more awake..
ask yourself, does it need to be a part of that or can it be a floater? this way, less headache. Will it be baked down?
Not talking about the individual braids of each strand, but the overal look of it like in the second pic.
I know how to make a braid in 3D, but can't wrap my head around how to do one properly in Blender.