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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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  • Kanni3d
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    Kanni3d ngon master
    iacdxb said:
    thanks but that was my last option. I was thinking that edges to merge with other edge.
    Yeah, just average them out. If you really want, you can terminate these loops (blue) and make these red edges cleaner.


  • Pain
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    Pain polycounter lvl 9
    Sr, edit:
    another problem, anyone please help me with this



  • sacboi
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    sacboi high dynamic range

    Too low poly, not enough segments to support smooth shading on a curved surface, hence the errors (artefacts) and FYI on the previous 10 pages alone a number of solutions have already been kindly offered. 

    EDIT:

    Learning anything new, starting with the basics usually provides an optimal foundation upon which to build a solid knowledge base, so I'd recommend aside from this insightful thread is to also research the PC Wiki for further Topology/Sub Division resources.  

  • Pain
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    Pain polycounter lvl 9
    @sacboi : Thank you, I used the cylinder 12 sides instead of 8 and it seems fixed. Besides, thanks for your advice, I've been searching also. 
  • iacdxb
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    iacdxb polycounter lvl 6
    Hi guys... stuck in shape, I tried but i know it wrong but not getting idea to get its basic shape.
    I tried but its totally different which have to achieve.
    Anyone who can guide to get basic shape. Thanks.

    My try...


  • SnowInChina
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    SnowInChina interpolator


    start with 3 circles for the cornershape, you only need to work with 1/8th of the mesh and mirror the rest
    try to create as many shapes as possible with basic forms which you can scale on one axis
    proportions are a bit off, whatever
  • iacdxb
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    iacdxb polycounter lvl 6
    Thanks for helping.
    Is it possible to drop some more screen shots from where to start.
  • iacdxb
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    iacdxb polycounter lvl 6
    After that... here is my try.


  • SnowInChina
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    SnowInChina interpolator
    yeah, so i deleted the original after taking the screenshot
    so heres a quick one which shows the way


  • iacdxb
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    iacdxb polycounter lvl 6
    Thanks and much appreciated.
    ...
  • SnowInChina
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    SnowInChina interpolator
    you're welcome
  • iacdxb
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    iacdxb polycounter lvl 6
    Hi, No happy with the dome topology, some shading issues. Anyone guide me any other way.

    Thanks.


  • SnowInChina
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    SnowInChina interpolator
    use a rounded cube


  • iacdxb
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    iacdxb polycounter lvl 6
    I tried this but its not getting dome bottom corner edge.
    Even this corner edge is not correct.


  • iacdxb
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    iacdxb polycounter lvl 6
    I think I fixed it....

  • iacdxb
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    iacdxb polycounter lvl 6
    Hi,

    Anyone guide me to tackle these triangles and unfinished edges ?

    Thanks.




  • Rolfisway
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    Rolfisway polycounter lvl 2
    iacdxb said:
    Hi,

    Anyone guide me to tackle these triangles and unfinished edges ?

    Thanks.




    I'm not sure, but maybe smth like these?
  • sacboi
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    sacboi high dynamic range

    @iacdxb

    https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-modeling/training/modeling/clean-edge-flow-t-vertices/

    ...probably nail down the basics first which will in turn enable intuitively modelling an optimised edge flow.   

  • Nominous
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    Nominous polycounter lvl 10
    @iacdxb I assume you started with a subdivided plane and cut it up in order to create the silhouette. Instead, I'd block out the silhouette first, add support loops for subdivision surface modeling, and then fill in the space between for proper edge flow. Your workflow makes sense if the surface has a uniform curvature from left to right, in which case I'd combine it with a Blender-specific technique using the shrinkwrap modifier. Idk if other DCCs offer it, but you basically bend the subdivided plane to match the ref's curvature, model the actual high poly model using the silhouette-first method I mentioned, and then shrinkwrap the model onto the plane in order to match its curvature. If the surface is flat, though, there's no reason to use a subdivided plane.
  • iacdxb
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    iacdxb polycounter lvl 6
    Thanks guys for your guidance.
    ...
  • juanoblagu
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    juanoblagu polycounter lvl 5
    So in order to lower the tri count in the model i have been putting these triangles around, i know it works like these but i wanted to ask very experienced or wise topology artists if you have any input about it. (like where to put the triangles better, or if the trick with quads is better than triangles) or anything! every opinion counts! thanks in advance.
    PD: my dream is one day work at a big studio epic games like or blizzard (i know its a big dream lol) but im telling this for reference maybe you guys know how they work their topology.

  • ArsenyZvonar
    So I've been modeling Tachikoma here and encountered some problem. Thing is, I'm trying to get proportions as close to the original model as possible. The shape required me to create multiple holes in different places and as I don't have much experience with 3ds Max overall, using ProBoolean seemed like a good idea to me as this way I'd get those holes exactly where I needed and of the exact size, but when I try to render it I'm getting weird shadows around those holes.


    I get that it happens because of its bad geometry since smooth groups are set correctly and I kinda get how geometry probably should've looked like so it doesn't cause these weird shadows, but again because of lack of experience I'm not exactly sure how do I do that. Are there any scripts I could use in this case? Or any other ways I could fix the geometry? Cuz for now the only way that comes to my mind is adding vertices and creating quads manually.


  • Eric Chadwick
    @ArsenyZvonar I've merged your topic into this Sticky. Go back a couple pages to find the solution. Also see the first post. 
  • Soviet
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    Soviet triangle
    So I've been modeling Tachikoma here and encountered some problem. Thing is, I'm trying to get proportions as close to the original model as possible. The shape required me to create multiple holes in different places and as I don't have much experience with 3ds Max overall, using ProBoolean seemed like a good idea to me as this way I'd get those holes exactly where I needed and of the exact size, but when I try to render it I'm getting weird shadows around those holes.

    I get that it happens because of its bad geometry since smooth groups are set correctly and I kinda get how geometry probably should've looked like so it doesn't cause these weird shadows, but again because of lack of experience I'm not exactly sure how do I do that. Are there any scripts I could use in this case? Or any other ways I could fix the geometry? Cuz for now the only way that comes to my mind is adding vertices and creating quads manually.


    Let me paste an example from a recent 80lv article, I hope they won't mind (https://80.lv/articles/002mrs-004adk-modeling-a-revoler-high-low-poly-uvs-baking/).




  • Adesh
    Im trying to model a fire hydrant, but i get some dents at the intersection when i do smooth preview.
    Any solutions please?Here's a better view

    I have attached the file

  • Thanez
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    Thanez interpolator
    @juanoblagu Those decimations look perfectly fine. 

    @ArsenyZvonar
    First off, nice post! the amount of energy and time you put into this makes me want to give you my time and energy.
    When you cut holes in curved surfaces, you should match the cutting geometry to the surrounding mesh so that the quads can flow nicely. 

    These missing red lines won't fix anything. They'll make that area look segmented, and just transfer the problem to their surrounding geometry.
    Your issue is cutting a curved hole in a curved surface while maintaining the curvature and integrity of both.
    You should start by matching the amount of sides of the hole to the amount of segments you'll be cutting into. For the size and placement of the hole I chose, 8 sides was appropriate. Your mileage will vary.

    The red cylinder is the actual hole to be cut. The seethrough one is a thiccer copy of the red one and will end up giving me the supportive geometry I need to make this smooth well.


    Hitting alt-x after boolean we can see that the shadowy cylinder cut some weird geometry into the sphere. Select these edges and hit backspace.


    Connect these edges to form the ring around the hole. :l


    Then target weld the stray verts like so. The point here is to maintain the geometry of the supporting loop we cut around the hole we cut.


    Boolean creates extra vertices all over your cut are. IDK why, just select all the verts in the booleaned area and weld them by a tiny amount. Make sure you're not welding important verts into important verts. Only invisible ones into important ones.


    Add some supporting geometry inside the hole, and add a turbosmooth modifier set to 'isoline display' to check for errors.


    Made this hex screw to fit in the same way, but the six-sided hole decided how many sides I wanted the sphere to be (6x4) to have it's supporting edgeloops fit it's silhouette.


    Bleb


    Edit:
    @Adesh Your problem is the same. Plan out your main shapes together as cylinders. Play around with their segments to make their edges line up.
  • wirrexx
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    wirrexx ngon master

    @Thanez and if you look at that example he has 4 faces but an 8 sided cylinder. That makes it 4+4 = 8.


  • Adesh
  • ArsenyZvonar
    @Thanez Thank you a lot, man! I'll certainly try it when I have time. Couldn't thank you earlier as I wasn't home for a while, haha. So do I get it right that in order to avoid such stuff, no matter the shape, I just need to make transitions between shapes as smooth as possible? Like, not going from square to circle, but rather from square to squarish circle and only then to actual circle thing?
  • bibiboo
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    bibiboo polycounter lvl 3
    Cleaning up stray verts from Pro bool ops is a huge waste of time!

    Welding verts via increased thresholds is one alternative, but it leads to Imprecise holes even if the overall look is perfectly passable. 

    Cue this handy dandy little 3rd party helper. 

    Run your probool op as you normally would, before collapsing to a edit P or adding onto the stack run this:

    http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/cleanbool

    92ish% of the time it will catch most of the junk created by bools without affecting verts which maintain a shape. 

    That percentage may not sound truly impressive to those who want an evangelical solution, but it really has helped me in reducing clicks, mental fatigue and increasing time effeciency. 


  • annee
    Hi, guys! I have a serious problem with creating a rattan chair. I spent a lot of time trying to make it, but my chair is still crooked. It all started with the fact that I made an iron base, then I made a rattan plane and I tried to bend it. I had to connect rattan and iron base, and I decided to use rings shape for this. I deleted a couple of segments of polygons at the rings and connected them with rattan stripes and all this was tilted Probably it's one of crazy methods :D It seems to me that I'm doing everything wrong. Sorry for my English 
  • Thanez
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    Thanez interpolator
    @ArsenyZvonar
    Transitions should make as much sense as possible. You're merging two very different shapes, and you should give each shape's topology somewhere logical to go without altering either shape's topology dramatically or else it won't subdivide nor reflect as intended.
    An 8-sided cylinder subdivided twice will look indiscernible to a 32-sided cylinder. Would you rather work with an 8-sided transition to then subdivide it to 32, or work on a 32-sided collision?
    Also see Wirrex and bibiboo's posts. Pretty cool stuff.

    There's a couple of vids on YT I recommend every watch, as they absolutely solved all my problems:
    Chaikins curve 
    Catmull-clark
    Not all of it is super important, but the bits where he shows how the algorithms work toward generating the highpoly from your base mesh is really important. Understanding how that works that will tell you:
    -Why your base mesh should be as densely consistent as possible within each curved area. (E.G. Why your red painted lines would only have made your issue worse)
    -Why poles, triangles and ngons in an otherwise quadratic curved mesh will create pinching or other artifacts, and how to use them to achieve a desired effect.
    -Why double-edgeloops are a good idea.
    -Why nearly all rules can be broken within a flat, double-supported plane.
    -Why some people's "cheats" work, and what their limitations are.
  • Doguib7
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    Doguib7 polycounter lvl 6
    Hey there folks!
    I am starting a VFX project where I need to track a face then add a growing tip nose,(Something similar to Disney Pinocchio), tracking stuff I think is pretty easy but I am wondering about modeling, how can I manage it to stretch and have proper UVs or deformation, Nose should stay normal and suddenly starts growing some inches....

    I already have from base mesh the long version but it does not have same polycount...

    Any queue or tip would be appreciated!

    Thanks in advance masters!

    And well not late to mention... compositing stuff I thing should be a challenge!

    Here's a closer ref of what I need to model! Any hint would be appreciated!

    Using C4D...

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/gt46bntwm1xju6z/Nose ref.jpg?dl=0








  • throttlekitty
    @Doguib7 The scope of your question is a bit large for this thread. Anyway, I would start with the elongated mesh and topology, and shrink it back to the normal nose shape, squeezing the loops as evenly as possible.

    I don't have a great suggestion on UVs and stretching, how much of an issue is the stretching here? Will this be using some stylized handpainted texture? Photoreal? Normal maps or Displacement? You may want to have a UV set for both nose states so you can blend textures appropriate for both as it grows. You can find some good tutorials on that in several of the terrain blending tutorials out there.
  • .Wiki
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    .Wiki polycounter lvl 8
    To reduce stretching you could uv the stretched and unstretched version. Render out one animation with the unstretched and one with the stretched uvs. To blend the meshes both need the same polycount and vertex-order. throttlekitty already suggested to do project the stretched topology to the base one, which should work.

    Then blend them in compositing. For the base pose you use the non stretched uvs, for the strechted pose you use the stretched uvs.
  • julienayheva
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    julienayheva polycounter lvl 3
    Hi Guys , There's something i'm trying to model and here's the picture of the part i'm trying to model but


     but i don't know how  i could join those complex shapes or just create them. Here's what i did :

    You can see the transition is not the same and i really don't know how to make it. Can someone give me some tips on how to tackle this project?


  • Doguib7
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    Doguib7 polycounter lvl 6
    @Doguib7 The scope of your question is a bit large for this thread. Anyway, I would start with the elongated mesh and topology, and shrink it back to the normal nose shape, squeezing the loops as evenly as possible.

    I don't have a great suggestion on UVs and stretching, how much of an issue is the stretching here? Will this be using some stylized handpainted texture? Photoreal? Normal maps or Displacement? You may want to have a UV set for both nose states so you can blend textures appropriate for both as it grows. You can find some good tutorials on that in several of the terrain blending tutorials out there.
    I appreciate your help! Really help a lot buddy! Thanks for your support!
  • Doguib7
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    Doguib7 polycounter lvl 6
    .Wiki said:
    To reduce stretching you could uv the stretched and unstretched version. Render out one animation with the unstretched and one with the stretched uvs. To blend the meshes both need the same polycount and vertex-order. throttlekitty already suggested to do project the stretched topology to the base one, which should work.

    Then blend them in compositing. For the base pose you use the non stretched uvs, for the strechted pose you use the stretched uvs.
    Awesome buddy! Yes that trick should work! Thanks for your suggestions buddy! Appreciate them! 
  • Nominous
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    Nominous polycounter lvl 10
    @julienayheva At first glance, it doesn't look like a real life object since there's a lot of weird shading, shapes, and proportions that aren't found in most modern printers. If you're recreating a 3D model, you'll have to rely on the render/screenshot shading, however strange it may seem due to incomplete smoothing groups in 3ds Max, sharp edges in Blender, etc. I recommend logically placing edges in areas where the lighting abruptly ends similar to my paintover in green. In blue are edges that I'm unsure about due to the weird shading and they're a compromise that I make based on the model's silhouette:


    Even if you weren't trying to recreate a 3D model, it actually reminds me of a lot of 2D concept art featuring 'impossible shapes' due to a lack of accurate shading. :p The source ref looks really messy though and I'd strongly consider redesigning it to both look more realistic and to make it more aesthetic.
  • Geekson
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    Geekson polycounter lvl 3
    Hey guys. I'm looking for the quick and the most efficient way to make these smooth transitions:



    And here is what i've got:



    I have troubles with corners mostly. Also it seems that i've picked too dense cylinder to start with, and while i probably have fewer troubles with shading here, it takes more time to handle all these loops and support stuff + it's pretty hard to edit. As you can see on the reference, there are a lot of similar shapes and transitions, so understanding of how to handle these will give me a solid speed boost, thanks.
    Edit:

    Another variant, but it looks worse imo
  • Paskuihernandez
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    Paskuihernandez polycounter lvl 5
    Geekson said:
    Hey guys. I'm looking for the quick and the most efficient way to make these smooth transitions:



    And here is what i've got:



    I have troubles with corners mostly. Also it seems that i've picked too dense cylinder to start with, and while i probably have fewer troubles with shading here, it takes more time to handle all these loops and support stuff + it's pretty hard to edit. As you can see on the reference, there are a lot of similar shapes and transitions, so understanding of how to handle these will give me a solid speed boost, thanks.
    Edit:

    Another variant, but it looks worse imo
    If you wanna be quick one of the fastest method is to use ZBrush. Make the booleans in max if you want and then go to Z and polish it
  • sacboi
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    sacboi high dynamic range

    @Geekson the object is essentially derived from cylinders, similar to an example on pg 165 however as a cast mould fabrication, overall precision is generally inconsistent and also regardless of technique a certain amount of free form manual editing would be required but ideally for instance via a polygonal subdiv workflow, less segments is usually more efficient too work with.

      

  • guitarguy00
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    guitarguy00 polycounter lvl 6
    How would you guys approach this pump?

    I originally started off with a plane and made the flat parts in blue first but then had a very hard time getting the cylindrical shape circled in red above.

    After much experimentation and headache I managed to make this but I think I would have been better off starting with the circled red part first like in the last picture and then extruding out to get the flat parts?


    Essentially a quarter of a subdivided box with 2 iterations and spherify modifier applied with middle extruded to the left and the entire model scaled on one axis to make it slimmer. Which method would you guys start with as the way I originally performed it did not seem intuitive.

  • SnowInChina
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    SnowInChina interpolator
    not sure about this, the light is fucking with my eyes
    but i see this form more like this


  • guitarguy00
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    guitarguy00 polycounter lvl 6
    not sure about this, the light is fucking with my eyes
    but i see this form more like this


    It is definitely elevated in mine too. What steps did you take to make your example? Looks like the part where the cylinder slants down into the elevated art is a straight drop with no curve?
  • SnowInChina
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    SnowInChina interpolator


    the lighting looks straight there, so i assume my form to be correct, althought i could have made the champfers more soft, but than again, it would not really help identify the form if it looks like the picture
  • guitarguy00
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    guitarguy00 polycounter lvl 6


    the lighting looks straight there, so i assume my form to be correct, althought i could have made the champfers more soft, but than again, it would not really help identify the form if it looks like the picture
    You are right. It is straight/flat(but is slightly angled). Did you use boolean to get that part? Or simply make the curved part and then the flat elevated part and bridged the gap? As it looks angled to the left in the circled picture. Thanks in advance. 
  • SnowInChina
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    SnowInChina interpolator
    you can bool it, or shear it, whatever works for you
    mine is so lowpoly that i just eyeballed it with vertexslide
    rule of thump for the highpoly is, if it looks right, it doesn't really matter
  • guitarguy00
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    guitarguy00 polycounter lvl 6
    you can bool it, or shear it, whatever works for you
    mine is so lowpoly that i just eyeballed it with vertexslide
    rule of thump for the highpoly is, if it looks right, it doesn't really matter
    Thanks for the clarification, I appreciate it. This will be a game asset so I am making the lowpoly first and applying subdivision/turbosmooth on it later so I do need quite a few edges on the cylinder to prevent it from looking too low poly.
  • Geekson
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    Geekson polycounter lvl 3
    sacboi said:

    @Geekson the object is essentially derived from cylinders, similar to an example on pg 165 however as a cast mould fabrication, overall precision is generally inconsistent and also regardless of technique a certain amount of free form manual editing would be required but ideally for instance via a polygonal subdiv workflow, less segments is usually more efficient too work with.

      

    Yeah, it seems that this time it's too much geo in my case. Big thanks for the example!
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