Tricky hard-surface object approaches

danshewan

Hey guys,

So after much forceful hair removal and throwing of teddies into the corner, I thought I'd ask how you guys would approach modeling this particular shape.

I've created a rough guideline shape using splines in Max, and am now scratching my head as to how to get this into a workable mesh. I've been staring (glaring, actually) at it for too long now, and thought some fresh perspective might help.





I had assumed that the quickest way would be to duplicate, attach and bridge the two shapes together, but this hasn't proved as simple as I had thought.

So far, the nurbs tools have proven to be something akin to witchcraft, and I ended up creating surfaces out of the cross sections intended to be the holes and using a ProBoolean to punch holes in a plane, then used an Optimize modifier to try and clean everything up. Needless to say, this approach hasn't been particularly effective, and the result is still really messy (not finished, obviously), and hasn't seemed to make much impact in how much work there is left to do by hand.





Obviously adding and adjusting verts and edges by hand is one way to (eventually) accomplish this, but it strikes me as a really painstaking, inaccurate way to work and I'm wondering how you guys would go about tackling this shape?

I'm not looking for a magic bullet or 'easy' solution, but I'm clearly approaching this shape in the wrong way.

Help me polycount, you're my only hope.

cryrid

Normally, I'd start by modeling the shape of the holes first, then just connect them and complete the parameter shape.

Lately, seems like something shadowbox+clip brushes would quickly do in zbrush 4.

Edit: My attempt.

cw

cryrid has it bang on. model accurately the hardest elements and then you can fill in the areas with nice looped geometry which smooths as you want it.

z4 can do this well also if you have acces to it.

I also quickly tried the probooleans (I really avoid to use it normally but I thought this is maybe a good use for it)

It made an ok base mesh, 5 minutes of cleanup and any wierd bits can be got rid of.

Good luck and have fun!

danshewan

Thanks for the help, guys - at least I know which direction to head in, as opposed to bashing my head in!

Thanks again.

Revel

Hi man, looks like your problem is kinda same with this one from AREA. Problem about the bad triangulation, can be solved with adding more verts on the long spline.
Hope it help you in some way.

_Revel

danshewan

cryrid wrote: »

Edit: My attempt.

I guess I just suck then.

I did try that method earlier, but I think the starting hole geometry was too dense. I'll try again using simpler geometry in order to make it easier to connect and expand upon - any of the ProBoolean cleanup attempts have been way too much hassle.

If I manage to stop sucking so hard, I'll eventually be able to post a significant update of the scene I'm working on.

Thanks for everyone's time and suggestions.

r_fletch_r

when i do this sort of thing i make the spline shape. and duplicate it.

convert 1 shape to editable poly, this should give you 1 or 2 crazy n gons.
Inset the editable polys faces, usually there are only 1 or 2 ngons.
once i have the inset i clean up the interior ngons, topology isnt to much of an issue here as the inset gives you a quad loop around the border of the mesh.
If I need to add geometry to the border i snap the verts to the remaining spline shape so that i can keep my curves clean.

once this is done i shell the editable poly, collapse the stack and add bevels to the corners.

cw

danshewan wrote: »

I guess I just suck then.

I did try that method earlier, but I think the starting hole geometry was too dense. I'll try again using simpler geometry in order to make it easier to connect and expand upon - any of the ProBoolean cleanup attempts have been way too much hassle.

If I manage to stop sucking so hard, I'll eventually be able to post a significant update of the scene I'm working on.

Thanks for everyone's time and suggestions.

heh, probooleans is sometimes helpful, but cryrid has shown you the real way! Nicely done sir.

EarthQuake

Hey cyrid, dont be shy man. Post some nice big images with clear wires.

cryrid

danshewan

Thanks, man. Mine ended up being a little denser in some areas, but I'm pretty happy with it overall.





Still got some significant tweaking to do, but at least the base is done.

Thanks again for everyone's input!