Thank you so much, alot of great information here. Would you ever recommend using Set-Flow/Edge-Flow to try and minimize any distortions in the sphere? Or does it usually fail because you are messing around with the even spacing of the native sphere?
Also, i find it very strange that in 3DS Max, I can only adjust the amount of segments in a standard sphere, but not the rings.. Pretty disappointing.
@guitarguy00 You can alter the geometry, but it's a bit involved.
So you make your Sphere/Geosphere demonchild, and that's when you notice it: The pinch.
You try to mitigate it by chamfering that edge, but you have little control before the pinch gets even worse.
Time to evaluate what the problem is. These edges come from the sphere and are "perfectly" flat on the X axis and of even length.
These edges are remnants of the cube that made the geosphere, and are not flat on the X axis, nor of even length.
Here are the three main culprits that end up as problems for us: First we get a curve that is supposed to give us a circular shape, but the edges that make up that curve are unequal in length. This will not make a circle when smoothed. What will make a circle is edges that are equal in length and have an equal angular variation between them.
Second, these two edges both lead up to the intersection where a new edge will be "chamfered" in. For that chamfer to look even and nice, they need to be equally long.
Third, and we can't really do much about them, are these polygons. They break up the edge flow and are the main culprit of the pinching. We can mitigate the effect by making them larger, which we will.
It's morbin' modifyin' time. Go to your geosphere and select the first edge loop that is not a remnant of the cube you started out with, and while constrained by edge, scale to 0. This might seem unnecessary, but it no being flat on the X axis will negatively affect the result of next step.
Next. Grab these pseudo-squares, cause we're about to turn them into pseudo-circles.
Constrained by face, and "Use Pivot Point Center" as your reference, scale down until...
...this polygon almost turns into a triangle. Triangle-shaped polygons don't do well on spheres.
I'm almost happy. These edges still have too much variation in length.
Grab these four polygons, constrain by face, use "Selection Center" as reference point, and scale on YZ until those edges above look a tad better. Be mindful of the polygons you're now making into a pseudo-triangles at this point.
Finally, add a spherify modifier to undo the hellish edits you did to this mesh and to make the geosphere actually spherical because they never were.
Then do the steps to connect the sphere and geosphere.
From left to right: Before any edits, chamfer severely limited. After making Pseudo-Circles. After scaling faces inward. Lastly a demonstration of how far we can push the chamfer now.
"Hold up," you think, "did this guy just make the ultimate geosphere?"
Nope, it only helps with transition into other shapes.
I'm practicing retopology and I'm trying to figure out how to properly retopo this model. I've done it as best as I could figure out. It's mostly quads (except for a few N-gons I can't seem to get rid of), but I can't help but think that the edge flow might be 'messy'. Is there a way to improve it? I've attached the OBJ file and screenshots.
I'm in the process of beginning to model an F-14 Tomcat and looking at the shape, the area in the pictures seems to be the biggest hurdle I see. I have also attached an image of a test I did. I am getting back into 3D modeling after a long hiatus and would love any ideas how to to model this area and avoid pinching and distortion without making that area of the model too dense. As you can see it needs to flow down to a point where it meets the rest of the aircraft boy and terminates smoothly on both ends. I am using Modo but the solution is not likely software specific.
looking at reference I am pretty sure wing and fuselage are not one connected body. Also for hard surface stuff continuous mesh is rarely a case in real life so its best to approach stuff like this in a way how its built (section by section)
Thank you for this model ;-) tried some retopo myself.. have to triangles in (on half of the object.. resized and rotated it to my liking ~ 644 polys for a full object.. 802 was yours
).. Your big button on the back seems to have to need some more love.. it's disrupting the flow a bit too much. The general form does change a bit i my trial..
I hacked something in Blender quickly, take a look at the attached file. This is roughly how I would do it. You probably use Blender already judging from the screenshot, but if not, you might be able to adapt the method to another app also.
Hi guys i wanted to challenge myself and i finally picked a gun that has complex grip. Before that i was making guns with very simple grips like makarov pistol and 1911.
So the question is how do i tackle this thing?
I made the top part in fusion 360 without any problems but when the time came for the grip i could not progress any further. Ive tried subd method directly in fusion but it turned out bad. I tried making it in blender using subd workflow and my shading was broken on the low poly.
it looks awfull because i wanted to figure out how do i optimize this thing for lowpoly. Before that my models were pretty simple and just removing the modifiers was enough to make the low poly. Clearly this workflow will not work with something like this. With round handle and square top part and this ergonomic indentation for a thumb. Whats the best workflow to make this thing? I need high poly and a low poly. Do i just need to apply all the modifiers and then manually clean it up?
I use both blender and fusion 360 and i use zbrush only to make highpolies when importing from fusion.
Please Help!
Edit: also, it does not have to be subd ready model. I just need the shading on LP and HP to be good.
Evenly spaced loops for predictable/smooth shading.
Easy to edit/manipulate cage is key for these sorta organic parts. Basically less is more when starting forms out from large -> medium -> small. Don't have a lot of geometry as your base model.
@solitudevibes Block out all of the important forms and features that need to be visible in the base mesh. This will make it a lot easier to generate accurate high poly and low poly models that shade cleanly. Capturing all of the key details in the base mesh should solve the issue. Like Eric mentioned, an iterative block out process will work with most modeling workflows. Including boolean re-meshing, CAD, Subdivision, etc.
Non-destructive or modifier based boolean re-meshing and subdivision workflows will work for semi-organic hard surface shapes. It just comes down to capturing the details in the base mesh and setting up the order of operations so the density of key features can be adjusted easily.
Much appreciated @FrankPolygon for your insight. I do think that I should create a block out stage in future, as I can see it would help to see an overview of the flow and it would definitely help with planning. It is something I will look into further, as for the moment, I try to get one area perfect, and then move to another, which I realise is the enemy of efficiency. Its funny, but this is just like painting - it is arguably better to work on all areas of the painting simultaneously in a broad fashion, and then begin to refine in passes. I'm familiar with Andrew Hodgson's blog, and I will look into the other recommendations.
I feel with time, block outs will become easier, as once the knowledge of Sub-D methods really gets emhe made more easily. I really appreciate your time
Sorry, for some reason my thanks was not posted, so I've posted it now above, albeit very, very late. So again my apologies. I don't take advice and help for granted.
I have a quick question regarding my process (should be v simple)
Let's say I have the top and bottom vertex where I need them, and I want all the vertices going up the centre of the shape to follow these points. If I try to align the pivot to one of the faces, naturally it will throw the start and end point off when I scale the verts. At the moment I do the following:
Move the pivot to the top vertex, and then using crtl and shift, aim it at the bottom vertex to create a custom pivot. Then I go into vertex mode, select all the vertices that need aligning, select custom pivot in the move menu, and try to scale on all axes until the line is straight.
Like so. Seems like a long winded way of doing it though. Are there better options? I suppose I could snap, but that would possibly be more time consuming. Thanks very much.
Hi I got this problem, can u tell me how can I fix that shading, the major problem⚠️ is that in the final bake u can see this same shading(I dont seethe need to post how it looks if it looks same than the 1st image)
PD: I need that form of the cilinder (I can´t scale geo)
The lines you have are pointing to the polygon edges on the surface. If you go to the mesh properties and select "show hidden edges" you'll see there's a triangle edge there.
You could try selecting all the vertexes and welding them with a low threshold. To make sure you don't have extra vertexes - this may help.
But I'm guessing that the only way to fix this would be with extra subdivisions. Or a baked normal map from a higher resolution model would also fix the shading.
@sprunghunt hello thx for the answer but If I make the bake from a higher model it would be apper in the final shading(with the bake applied) I also try to fix manually the normlas with the modifier Edit Normals and I don´t have a good result, the gral target is to preserve the low vertex count with a good final shading in that part ☺️ Chhers
@chopsuey Hey bud, this is the classic "cutting a hole in a cylinder" problem. I suggest you look through this thread for some learning, because this is just one method to do this.
In short why you're getting stretchy no-no's is because you made an extrusion at the cylinder's established edge, and you are NOT allowed to alter the cylinder further without messing with it's roundness. What you should've done is keep that established cylinder edge as supporting geometry, and make your extrusion behind it.
First off you need the correct amount of edges in your cylinder. For an extrusion that takes up about a fourth of the circumference, that number of edges is ~48, imo.
Lookie, this is the area I want the extrusion in.
I'll create some vertical edges that will house my real extrusion
Then some horizontal ones
Weld these corner verts
Then make the extrusion
Bing bang boom.
In summary, cut between the lines, and use the cylinder's geometry as support geometry.
Edit: Eh, fuck it, here's another method that preserves that girthy growth better.
This one's easier to do, but at a cost. The highpoly has much more geometry in it, so may bake or render slower, take up more ram or storage space, depending on how you output this.
Start with as few sides as possible, which is 12, because for a curve to be convincing, you need three edges to properly define it. I want the extrusion to be 1/4th of the cylinder. 3*4=12 sides to the cylinder. OKLETSGO
Turbosmooth that mofo and until you've got enough geometry to support the extrusion, so just go ahead and make it using the polygons already selected. Oh and add this edge loop.
@Octavio Sorry I took a while, but here's my two cents.
I checked out your model and I can't find any fault with it, it's working as intended, and you didn't do anything wrong. The shading you see happens because when you scaled that smol oval into the big oval, you also squished it.
When you squish a circle like that, you make the edges of the polygons non-planar, revealing the fact that all quads are made of triangles. Turning on facets shading mode illustrates the issue perfectly. Here on the right, I stole your oval shape and remade the big part but without squishing it.
Here's looking down the barrel of those polygons, showing how yours aren't flat, while mine are.
Luckily this doesn't affect the model's ability to be used as a cage for a highpoly.
If you look real closely you can still see the triangles in your faces here, but the effect of it is divided by the amount of polygons that now make up the transitional cone.
When i turn off facets shading, it all disappears and smooths nicely. There's no way to tell yours apart from mine except that yours is flatter.
This means you can bake that smoothness into a normal map.
Edit: There's also a different factor, though it doesn't have as a big effect. The best way I can describe it is that we both have compound curves made up rectangles, and that sort of wobbles the smoothing a bit.
The only way to mitigate this is to add a bunch of edge loops until the compound curve is made up by as square polygons as possible.
Both are still good for highpoly, and should be baked down, as the main issue here is that this is a complex shape that's gonna need a lot of geometry to smooth nicely. I hope this answers any questions you had, if not, do reply.
@Thanez thank you for taking the time to answer me.
For your first example, I had already made similar tests, the problem is that by adding this edge loop we modify the shape of the object.
The second example is interesting and gives a better result because it doesn't deform anything. I'm on blender maybe it's different on 3ds max but to do that I have to apply my subdivision modifier which is the equivalent of turbosmooth if I understand correctly and I don't like this idea very much if I can do otherwise.
@wirrexx Thanks, I like this technique, it's a good compromise that gives a very good result
Hey Thank you so much I really appreciate your answer, the last question that I have. How did u fix the non planar problem, can u share, wiith details please. I´ve tried to make the faces planar one by one but in my final result the "circular border" that I get looks so bad.
@Octavio I didn't. I made the same shape you did, except I didn't squish the large oval, meaning my cone didn't get squished on one side, meaning my cone had planar faces while yours didn't. I did that only to show you that both of them would meshsmooth nicely, and that you didn't do anything wrong. Also, the shape you're asking for is impossible. You can't squish one side of a cone and ask for it's faces to be planar. You can keep hitting the make faces planar button but all you're doing is trying to force a squished cone to not be squished, and you'll ruin both ovals and the cone.
I tried to explain in my previous post that you didn't do anything wrong. Non-planar faces in compound curves happen all the time. They do bring some smoothing issues to the table, but that's in part why we bake normal maps. As long as your highpoly looks nice, and your lowpoly is ready for baking, it'll look nice ingame.
The smoothing algorithm that smooths the reflections across faces has it's limitations and boi you have found them. Your model is perfect, it just needs a bit more geometry. Slap some supporting edge loops on that bad boi, meshsmooth it and bake the normals.
However, if you really want to be a stricler about the planarity of faces, the only solution I know to something like this is to boolean the pieces. Remake the cone so the faces are planar, and remake the big squished oval as a separate piece.
Then boolean out a transition between the parts. This will maintain the planarity (if that's even a word) and relocate the angular difference to the intersection between the parts instead of the faces of the cone.
Add some edge loops to conserve the geometry of the cone and squishy, and weld the verts in the intersection.
And would you look at that, it smooths nicely, even with those n-gons in the intersection.
And I would leave it there. Now it looks like a helicopter rotor wing thingy with a nice CNC-looking intersection.
How. ever. I feellike a person that cares this much about the planarity™ of faces won't be happy about N-gons in the intersection even though it's Good Enough™
So we go back to step one but we're gonna need more geometry because with this method, the curve of the squished oval will be robbed of geometry at it's sharpest point. We'll start with a 32 sided cylinder instead of 16.
We redo the boolean
And delete the faces of the squished oval.
The squished oval was only useful to give the cone's vertexes their position on the x axis that they needed in order to conform to the faces of the squished oval.
Now go to vertex selection and select any vertex that's only connected to 2 edges. These vertexes belong to the squished oval. They are traitors and need to be dealt with. Delete them swiftly.
Now, simply extend the border edges on the x axis to remake the squished oval in the cone's image.
Add some edge løøps
All the faces are planar
It smooths nicely
Glam shot
This, like all things, was not free. We sacrificed the consistency of geometric density on the squished oval; We took edges away from the sharp point and gave it to the top point.
This is why I said to go with 32 sides instead of 16. At 16 this would be a knife, not a squished oval.
But I digress. Your first attempt was Good Enough™. My first and second attempts were Good Enough™, and this last one is Good Enough™. In the end they all come at a cost.
There are many roads to rome. Travel them all and you will gain knowledge. Try to find the perfect road, and you will only find insanity. Poemtry.
I need some help with a little issue I am having with a model, I know that maybe it is easy, but I can't find the way to solve it or to get a better polygon flow.
Baisicaly I am modeling something similar of a screw but I am ending having this little peaks that I can't fix, if someone could give me some tips it would be awesome, and I would be very very greateful!
Sharpening unsupported corners on curved surfaces often produces smoothing artifacts that can be resolved with a few different modeling and topology layout strategies. Deciding which is approach to use really just comes down to figuring out how accurate the surface needs to be. Something that's often determined by how close the model is to the viewer.
Like @hanabirano suggested: look for examples with similar shapes and try applying those same strategies. This thread is a great place to start and there's often several examples of how other artists have solved similar problems in different ways. Below are a few links to some more in-depth write-ups about square cut outs in curved surfaces, managing how loops cross surface transitions and placing details on or between the edges of a curved surface.
Topology strategies for square cutouts in solid and hollow cylinders:
With subdivision models, it's generally considered best practice to use the existing edges of curved surfaces as part of the loop path for the support loops that sharpen the corners. Something that often requires adjusting both the loop flow and mesh density. Keep things relatively simple when blocking out the shapes and use the geometry of the primary forms to guide the loop flow.
Here's just one example of what the basic modeling process could look like: Create a basic spiral shape then connect the adjacent edges to define the vertical section connected to the base. Fill in the empty space and use an inset operation to create the basic loop path around the outside of the shape. Delete the left over faces in the cutouts. Generate the rest of the model with modifiers like solidify for depth, bevel for the support loops and subdivision for smoothing.
This topology layout uses the same pair of loops to control both the sharpness of the corners and the width of the edge highlights. Horizontal loops can be adjusted up or down and internal loops can be adjusted in or out.
Whether or not this level of surface accuracy and sharpness is acceptable depends on how closely the object will be viewed. Subdivision modeling is inherently imperfect. So, there's almost always tradeoffs. Sharpness and surface quality can be increased by starting with a higher number of segments in the spiral but this can also decrease the overall editability of the mesh.
Sharpness can also be increased by adding another pair of support loops around the existing loop path but this can decrease the overall accuracy of the surface.
The previous mesh is passable for most situations but there can be some subtle deformation artifacts that may appear when the model is viewed or lit from glancing angles. These types of artifacts are often cause by support loops that disrupt the segment spacing and produce subtle undulations in the surface. Sometimes it is possible to minimize the visibility of these artifacts by manually adjusting positions of the corner vertexes but this can degrade the overall accuracy of the surface.
Whether or not this type of tradeoff is acceptable really just comes down to whether or not the artifacts are visible. Low gloss or matte materials with lots of high frequency surface textures will generally cover these shallow artifacts. Offsetting the position of the cut outs or adjusting the segment density of the starting mesh can also improve the surface quality. Without having a negative impact on editability.
The position and width of the support loop path can also be adjusted to fit different size cutouts. Sometimes it makes sense to have a face or an edge between two perpendicular loop paths. Use whichever approach is easiest to work with and still produces clean results. Same for deciding how many segments to use.
Some types of projects do require quad grid geometry but if there isn't a specific technical constraint requiring it then it's often fine to use a few triangles or n-gons that are well supported and aren't causing visible smoothing errors. It just comes down to those tradeoffs between accuracy and editability.
Recap: Use the primary forms to route the loop flow. Use an appropriate number of segments to support the shapes at the desired level of surface quality.
I really helped me a lot! I spend a lot of time searching on the internet, and checked a lot of posts in this same thread but I coudn't find a solution so I decided to post for some help.
I always knew that I shoud practice more my modeling skills, precisely for this type of "hard" modeling objects. And @FrankPolygon I must say that your answer was impressive man! Thanks for your time!
So I´ve tried to make every single step that you told me and I can´t figure it out how u made the boolean :s. I´ve had apply the intersection with ProBOOLEAN
First I build the geo
But I have this result:
And what I want is what u had show me,
I know that I just can select the loop and extrude. Support loops and thats it.
It was unclear in your post if you still had issues. There's a critical step of removing some verts that belonged to the original squished oval. When you're at this stage:
Add an edit poly modifier to the boolean, (a) go to vertex manipulation mode, (b) go to Selection in your ribbon, (c) by numeric, (d) using 2 as input, then hit backspace. That'll remove the verts but keep the edges of the cone.
@Octavio Ah, that's because I capped all the open areas before doing the boolean purely out of habit. The end result is the same, you just don't have to delete the bits I did.
I did notice that I got some artifacts on my result. The problem was that my squished oval that I booleaned with was too low poly, making some of the verts of the cone out of place. I redid the whole thing with a 64 sided squished oval. The cone is 32 still.
You can have the model if you wanna peruse it but you'll have to wait a day because I, an intellectual, forgot to pay my hosting bills, so my webzone is down. I'll edit this post with some sort of squished oval cone transition or something.max in case you're interested
Long ago someone here shared the cheat sheet to use for number of sides but I cant find it on older pages, so like in example above
shape on left has 20, 16 and 12 sides for large medium and small details, changing the radius to align the segments and running boolean required minimum cleanup and subdivides ok. (Got this from previous posts)
On right I tried with 24, 20 and 16 thinking 4 being a magic number and it all fall apart for the smallest shape. I can make it work by lowering its sides and changing radius however it will not always be ideal to scale the parts if they dont match reference. I want to understand the maths behind choosing sides for intersecting cylindrical details. Thank you.
EDIT: I explored further and made it work, there are slight inaccuracies but not enough to impact normal map bake. Still need to figure out why certain number of sides work.
Thank you, I follow Frank's guide religiously however I am looking for that cheat sheet / trying to understand the number logic (20,16,12 sides) as shown in my post. It was shared very long ago and the images are not showing on older pages here.
Not sure what that is but it is usually about size of the cylinder (half the size, half the segment count) + experimenting. Not sure if that's maya or max but in blender we use screw modifier to be able to change segment counts to match other cylinders so we can try & fail easily.
Hey guys, im trying to get a clean typology here but i've tried a bunch of different approaches but im kinda stuck.
im trying to model these air vent things on a locker but i cant really figure out what the best approach is here.
ive watched a couple tutorials but they all do it differently and non really work for me, so it would be appreciated if somebody could lead me in the right direction :D
@Raphael_Bouch I dont know how it looks from reference images however when it comes to vehicles its best to have them in seprate parts as in real life unless you are doing super tight low poly with limited vert count budget.
Hi folks, I've been practicing the ol' cutting a cube out of a cylinder, and thanks to @FrankPolygon's tutorials I have arrived at a place I'm very happy at. I then wanted to try a cube from a sphere, and I have figured a way to make it work for me. Would you mind just looking over it to see if it is the most optimal way of doing it?
Started with a quad sphere and offset extruded the cube.
Bevelled the edges that were selected in the first picture, and set the bevel to 2 segments, but used radial mitering.
Corners ended up like this
I used multi cut
and then deleted the centre of the two tris
smooths pretty well.
Would you do the same, or is there an easier approach? Many thanks in advance.
@christrom There's a bit of subtle pinching caused by the extra loop between the base of the square and the loop path on the surface of the sphere. Dissolving the loop and merging the corner vertices of the triangular quads should resolve the smoothing artifacts while also simplifying the mesh. (See the third and fourth examples below.)
If a high poly mesh subdivides cleanly and provides the desired level of surface quality then it's generally passable but whether or not a topology layout is optimal depends entirely on what the constraints are.
Subdivision modeling is often a balance of accuracy, efficiency, and quality. When something needs to be done quickly then it may make sense to sacrifice some accuracy or quality by using some less than ideal topology routing to connect new shapes to the existing geometry. In cases where accuracy or quality is more important then it often makes sense to spend a bit more time matching the shapes in the references and a bit more effort generating consistent quad grid topology.
The goal should be to find a sweet spot in the workflow that matches the desired level of shape accuracy and surface quality while also using the minimal amount of resources like time, geometry, etc.
Unlike basic cylinders, quad spheres produce a consistent grid topology. An easier approach would be to line up the edges in the grid with the intersecting square shape then extrude off the surface of the sphere and bevel the edges around the feature to create the support loops. This approach is quick but it does require adjusting the geometry density. Which can be somewhat limiting if the intersecting shape is in an odd location or is a different size that doesn't fit the existing grid.
If the quads are too large then it can be difficult to support the shapes when subdivision is applied. Especially when terminating the corner loops into a quad triangle to prevent the support loops from running out onto the surface of the sphere. It can be tempting to try and resolve this by connecting the corner vertex across the adjacent quad but this moves the pole further away from the supported area at the base of the intersection. Which tends to produce visible smoothing artifacts. Sometimes these smoothing artifacts can be minimized by softening the profile of the support loops but it's often better to just adjust the mesh density or topology to support the area around the shape intersection.
When the new shape falls between the existing edges of the quad grid then it creates a natural support loop path around the base of the intersection. It is possible to use the same bevel / chamfer operation to generate the support loops but there needs to be enough space between the center and outside edges of the loops. If the added support loop disrupts the segment spacing around the shape intersection then it can cause overlapping geometry or pinching artifacts.
These types of smoothing artifacts can generally be resolved by over and under scaling the intersecting shapes to provide more room between the base of the intersection and the outside support loop. It may also be possible to minimize the smoothing artifacts by softening the profile of the support loops but this generally won't work if there isn't enough room between the loops.
Which is why it often makes more sense to either place the inside support loop on it's own or remove the extra outside support loop manually with a loop dissolve. The existing geometry in the larger shape will act as it's own support for the outside of the shape intersection. With some careful planning and experimentation it should be possible to solve most of these basic topology flow issues during the block out phase.
Increasing the amount of geometry will make it possible to carry support loops across the surface of the sphere without causing artifacts. This is mostly useful when certain types of corner topology are a requirement but there can also be situations where a high quality surface is required and in those cases it does make sense to increase the amount of starting geometry. With this type of topology layout it's generally possible to sharpen the corners by sliding the outer edges closer to the corner. Just be careful to avoid causing any unintended surface deformation. Which can cause it's own type of smoothing artifact.
There are also some situations where alternate modeling workflows that use floaters may be an option. This thread has a few previous discussions that cover different uses for floaters and examples of different topology layouts for panel lines and through holes. Definitely worth the time to do a quick search and skim through a few of those examples.
Recap: When a quad sphere's grid lines up with the outline of surface features it's often possible to extrude directly off the surface. If the intersecting shapes aren't aligned with the grid then make sure there's enough geometry to create a consistent loop path around the intersecting shapes. Try to avoid unnecessary loop complexity whenever possibly by relying on the existing geometry as part of the support loops. Solve the major topology flow issues early in the block out and avoid pushing corner poles out into unsupported areas of the mesh. These same strategies will also work with negative shapes like cut outs and through holes.
Replies
Thank you so much, alot of great information here. Would you ever recommend using Set-Flow/Edge-Flow to try and minimize any distortions in the sphere? Or does it usually fail because you are messing around with the even spacing of the native sphere?
Also, i find it very strange that in 3DS Max, I can only adjust the amount of segments in a standard sphere, but not the rings.. Pretty disappointing.
@guitarguy00 You can alter the geometry, but it's a bit involved.
So you make your Sphere/Geosphere demonchild, and that's when you notice it: The pinch.
You try to mitigate it by chamfering that edge, but you have little control before the pinch gets even worse.
Time to evaluate what the problem is. These edges come from the sphere and are "perfectly" flat on the X axis and of even length.
These edges are remnants of the cube that made the geosphere, and are not flat on the X axis, nor of even length.
Here are the three main culprits that end up as problems for us: First we get a curve that is supposed to give us a circular shape, but the edges that make up that curve are unequal in length. This will not make a circle when smoothed. What will make a circle is edges that are equal in length and have an equal angular variation between them.
Second, these two edges both lead up to the intersection where a new edge will be "chamfered" in. For that chamfer to look even and nice, they need to be equally long.
Third, and we can't really do much about them, are these polygons. They break up the edge flow and are the main culprit of the pinching. We can mitigate the effect by making them larger, which we will.
It's
morbin'modifyin' time. Go to your geosphere and select the first edge loop that is not a remnant of the cube you started out with, and while constrained by edge, scale to 0. This might seem unnecessary, but it no being flat on the X axis will negatively affect the result of next step.Next. Grab these pseudo-squares, cause we're about to turn them into pseudo-circles.
Constrained by face, and "Use Pivot Point Center" as your reference, scale down until...
...this polygon almost turns into a triangle. Triangle-shaped polygons don't do well on spheres.
I'm almost happy. These edges still have too much variation in length.
Grab these four polygons, constrain by face, use "Selection Center" as reference point, and scale on YZ until those edges above look a tad better. Be mindful of the polygons you're now making into a pseudo-triangles at this point.
Finally, add a spherify modifier to undo the hellish edits you did to this mesh and to make the geosphere actually spherical because they never were.
Then do the steps to connect the sphere and geosphere.
From left to right: Before any edits, chamfer severely limited. After making Pseudo-Circles. After scaling faces inward. Lastly a demonstration of how far we can push the chamfer now.
"Hold up," you think, "did this guy just make the ultimate geosphere?"
Nope, it only helps with transition into other shapes.
Thanks so much. Very informative.
Hi,
I'm practicing retopology and I'm trying to figure out how to properly retopo this model. I've done it as best as I could figure out. It's mostly quads (except for a few N-gons I can't seem to get rid of), but I can't help but think that the edge flow might be 'messy'. Is there a way to improve it? I've attached the OBJ file and screenshots.
Thanks
I'm in the process of beginning to model an F-14 Tomcat and looking at the shape, the area in the pictures seems to be the biggest hurdle I see. I have also attached an image of a test I did. I am getting back into 3D modeling after a long hiatus and would love any ideas how to to model this area and avoid pinching and distortion without making that area of the model too dense. As you can see it needs to flow down to a point where it meets the rest of the aircraft boy and terminates smoothly on both ends. I am using Modo but the solution is not likely software specific.
Hey @clark_tee
looking at reference I am pretty sure wing and fuselage are not one connected body. Also for hard surface stuff continuous mesh is rarely a case in real life so its best to approach stuff like this in a way how its built (section by section)
Thank you for this model ;-) tried some retopo myself.. have to triangles in (on half of the object.. resized and rotated it to my liking ~ 644 polys for a full object.. 802 was yours
).. Your big button on the back seems to have to need some more love.. it's disrupting the flow a bit too much. The general form does change a bit i my trial..
How do I model Korean roof like that? I have tried lattice, triangle modeling and sphere editing to no avail and I just don't know how to do this.
I hacked something in Blender quickly, take a look at the attached file. This is roughly how I would do it. You probably use Blender already judging from the screenshot, but if not, you might be able to adapt the method to another app also.
Oh wow, thank you!
Hi guys i wanted to challenge myself and i finally picked a gun that has complex grip. Before that i was making guns with very simple grips like makarov pistol and 1911.
So the question is how do i tackle this thing?
I made the top part in fusion 360 without any problems but when the time came for the grip i could not progress any further. Ive tried subd method directly in fusion but it turned out bad. I tried making it in blender using subd workflow and my shading was broken on the low poly.
it looks awfull because i wanted to figure out how do i optimize this thing for lowpoly. Before that my models were pretty simple and just removing the modifiers was enough to make the low poly. Clearly this workflow will not work with something like this. With round handle and square top part and this ergonomic indentation for a thumb. Whats the best workflow to make this thing? I need high poly and a low poly. Do i just need to apply all the modifiers and then manually clean it up?
I use both blender and fusion 360 and i use zbrush only to make highpolies when importing from fusion.
Please Help!
Edit: also, it does not have to be subd ready model. I just need the shading on LP and HP to be good.
my goal is to make it game ready
@solitudevibes
Evenly spaced loops for predictable/smooth shading.
Easy to edit/manipulate cage is key for these sorta organic parts. Basically less is more when starting forms out from large -> medium -> small. Don't have a lot of geometry as your base model.
@solitudevibes Block out all of the important forms and features that need to be visible in the base mesh. This will make it a lot easier to generate accurate high poly and low poly models that shade cleanly. Capturing all of the key details in the base mesh should solve the issue. Like Eric mentioned, an iterative block out process will work with most modeling workflows. Including boolean re-meshing, CAD, Subdivision, etc.
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2731601/#Comment_2731601
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2731727/#Comment_2731727
Non-destructive or modifier based boolean re-meshing and subdivision workflows will work for semi-organic hard surface shapes. It just comes down to capturing the details in the base mesh and setting up the order of operations so the density of key features can be adjusted easily.
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2768812/#Comment_2768812
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2777056/#Comment_2777056
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2776197/#Comment_2776197
The same basic modifier based modeling approach can be used to generate base meshes for both re-meshing and subdivision workflows.
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2768218/#Comment_2768218
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2773644/#Comment_2773644
Much appreciated @FrankPolygon for your insight. I do think that I should create a block out stage in future, as I can see it would help to see an overview of the flow and it would definitely help with planning. It is something I will look into further, as for the moment, I try to get one area perfect, and then move to another, which I realise is the enemy of efficiency. Its funny, but this is just like painting - it is arguably better to work on all areas of the painting simultaneously in a broad fashion, and then begin to refine in passes. I'm familiar with Andrew Hodgson's blog, and I will look into the other recommendations.
I feel with time, block outs will become easier, as once the knowledge of Sub-D methods really gets emhe made more easily. I really appreciate your time
Sorry, for some reason my thanks was not posted, so I've posted it now above, albeit very, very late. So again my apologies. I don't take advice and help for granted.
I have a quick question regarding my process (should be v simple)
Let's say I have the top and bottom vertex where I need them, and I want all the vertices going up the centre of the shape to follow these points. If I try to align the pivot to one of the faces, naturally it will throw the start and end point off when I scale the verts. At the moment I do the following:
Move the pivot to the top vertex, and then using crtl and shift, aim it at the bottom vertex to create a custom pivot. Then I go into vertex mode, select all the vertices that need aligning, select custom pivot in the move menu, and try to scale on all axes until the line is straight.
Like so. Seems like a long winded way of doing it though. Are there better options? I suppose I could snap, but that would possibly be more time consuming. Thanks very much.
Hi I got this problem, can u tell me how can I fix that shading, the major problem⚠️ is that in the final bake u can see this same shading(I dont seethe need to post how it looks if it looks same than the 1st image)
PD: I need that form of the cilinder (I can´t scale geo)
hope u can help me :D cheers
@Octavio Please post a shaded view with wireframe on the entire area, as it's very hard to analyze any issues right now. Either that or an FBX.
The lines you have are pointing to the polygon edges on the surface. If you go to the mesh properties and select "show hidden edges" you'll see there's a triangle edge there.
You could try selecting all the vertexes and welding them with a low threshold. To make sure you don't have extra vertexes - this may help.
But I'm guessing that the only way to fix this would be with extra subdivisions. Or a baked normal map from a higher resolution model would also fix the shading.
@sprunghunt hello thx for the answer but If I make the bake from a higher model it would be apper in the final shading(with the bake applied) I also try to fix manually the normlas with the modifier Edit Normals and I don´t have a good result, the gral target is to preserve the low vertex count with a good final shading in that part ☺️ Chhers
Hello, I'm modeling boot soles and the topology flow seems to be weird.
Please help me......
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2734531#Comment_2734531
Maybe this isn't really needed ???
Hi, I'm trying to train and I always encounter the same kind of problem, example with this simple model
The best result I found is with this method but it's not perfect, I still see small deformations... but am I still getting close to a correct method?
@chopsuey Hey bud, this is the classic "cutting a hole in a cylinder" problem. I suggest you look through this thread for some learning, because this is just one method to do this.
In short why you're getting stretchy no-no's is because you made an extrusion at the cylinder's established edge, and you are NOT allowed to alter the cylinder further without messing with it's roundness. What you should've done is keep that established cylinder edge as supporting geometry, and make your extrusion behind it.
First off you need the correct amount of edges in your cylinder. For an extrusion that takes up about a fourth of the circumference, that number of edges is ~48, imo.
Lookie, this is the area I want the extrusion in.
I'll create some vertical edges that will house my real extrusion
Then some horizontal ones
Weld these corner verts
Then make the extrusion
Bing bang boom.
In summary, cut between the lines, and use the cylinder's geometry as support geometry.
Edit: Eh, fuck it, here's another method that preserves that girthy growth better.
This one's easier to do, but at a cost. The highpoly has much more geometry in it, so may bake or render slower, take up more ram or storage space, depending on how you output this.
Start with as few sides as possible, which is 12, because for a curve to be convincing, you need three edges to properly define it. I want the extrusion to be 1/4th of the cylinder. 3*4=12 sides to the cylinder. OKLETSGO
Turbosmooth that mofo and until you've got enough geometry to support the extrusion, so just go ahead and make it using the polygons already selected. Oh and add this edge loop.
Catchphrase.
adding to what @Thanez already wrote.
you can also simply use a less dense mesh and move these edges to create even space
you can also see that i work on 1/4 of the mesh. so less headache
@Octavio Sorry I took a while, but here's my two cents.
I checked out your model and I can't find any fault with it, it's working as intended, and you didn't do anything wrong. The shading you see happens because when you scaled that smol oval into the big oval, you also squished it.
When you squish a circle like that, you make the edges of the polygons non-planar, revealing the fact that all quads are made of triangles. Turning on facets shading mode illustrates the issue perfectly. Here on the right, I stole your oval shape and remade the big part but without squishing it.
Here's looking down the barrel of those polygons, showing how yours aren't flat, while mine are.
Luckily this doesn't affect the model's ability to be used as a cage for a highpoly.
If you look real closely you can still see the triangles in your faces here, but the effect of it is divided by the amount of polygons that now make up the transitional cone.
When i turn off facets shading, it all disappears and smooths nicely. There's no way to tell yours apart from mine except that yours is flatter.
This means you can bake that smoothness into a normal map.
Edit: There's also a different factor, though it doesn't have as a big effect. The best way I can describe it is that we both have compound curves made up rectangles, and that sort of wobbles the smoothing a bit.
The only way to mitigate this is to add a bunch of edge loops until the compound curve is made up by as square polygons as possible.
Both are still good for highpoly, and should be baked down, as the main issue here is that this is a complex shape that's gonna need a lot of geometry to smooth nicely. I hope this answers any questions you had, if not, do reply.
@Thanez thank you for taking the time to answer me.
For your first example, I had already made similar tests, the problem is that by adding this edge loop we modify the shape of the object.
The second example is interesting and gives a better result because it doesn't deform anything. I'm on blender maybe it's different on 3ds max but to do that I have to apply my subdivision modifier which is the equivalent of turbosmooth if I understand correctly and I don't like this idea very much if I can do otherwise.
@wirrexx Thanks, I like this technique, it's a good compromise that gives a very good result
@Thanez
Hey Thank you so much I really appreciate your answer, the last question that I have. How did u fix the non planar problem, can u share, wiith details please. I´ve tried to make the faces planar one by one but in my final result the "circular border" that I get looks so bad.
@Octavio I didn't. I made the same shape you did, except I didn't squish the large oval, meaning my cone didn't get squished on one side, meaning my cone had planar faces while yours didn't. I did that only to show you that both of them would meshsmooth nicely, and that you didn't do anything wrong. Also, the shape you're asking for is impossible. You can't squish one side of a cone and ask for it's faces to be planar. You can keep hitting the make faces planar button but all you're doing is trying to force a squished cone to not be squished, and you'll ruin both ovals and the cone.
I tried to explain in my previous post that you didn't do anything wrong. Non-planar faces in compound curves happen all the time. They do bring some smoothing issues to the table, but that's in part why we bake normal maps. As long as your highpoly looks nice, and your lowpoly is ready for baking, it'll look nice ingame.
The smoothing algorithm that smooths the reflections across faces has it's limitations and boi you have found them. Your model is perfect, it just needs a bit more geometry. Slap some supporting edge loops on that bad boi, meshsmooth it and bake the normals.
However, if you really want to be a stricler about the planarity of faces, the only solution I know to something like this is to boolean the pieces. Remake the cone so the faces are planar, and remake the big squished oval as a separate piece.
Then boolean out a transition between the parts. This will maintain the planarity (if that's even a word) and relocate the angular difference to the intersection between the parts instead of the faces of the cone.
Add some edge loops to conserve the geometry of the cone and squishy, and weld the verts in the intersection.
And would you look at that, it smooths nicely, even with those n-gons in the intersection.
And I would leave it there. Now it looks like a helicopter rotor wing thingy with a nice CNC-looking intersection.
How. ever. I feel like a person that cares this much about the planarity™ of faces won't be happy about N-gons in the intersection even though it's Good Enough™
So we go back to step one but we're gonna need more geometry because with this method, the curve of the squished oval will be robbed of geometry at it's sharpest point. We'll start with a 32 sided cylinder instead of 16.
We redo the boolean
And delete the faces of the squished oval.
The squished oval was only useful to give the cone's vertexes their position on the x axis that they needed in order to conform to the faces of the squished oval.
Now go to vertex selection and select any vertex that's only connected to 2 edges. These vertexes belong to the squished oval. They are traitors and need to be dealt with. Delete them swiftly.
Now, simply extend the border edges on the x axis to remake the squished oval in the cone's image.
Add some edge løøps
All the faces are planar
It smooths nicely
Glam shot
This, like all things, was not free. We sacrificed the consistency of geometric density on the squished oval; We took edges away from the sharp point and gave it to the top point.
This is why I said to go with 32 sides instead of 16. At 16 this would be a knife, not a squished oval.
But I digress. Your first attempt was Good Enough™. My first and second attempts were Good Enough™, and this last one is Good Enough™. In the end they all come at a cost.
There are many roads to rome. Travel them all and you will gain knowledge. Try to find the perfect road, and you will only find insanity. Poemtry.
Hi Guys!
I need some help with a little issue I am having with a model, I know that maybe it is easy, but I can't find the way to solve it or to get a better polygon flow.
Baisicaly I am modeling something similar of a screw but I am ending having this little peaks that I can't fix, if someone could give me some tips it would be awesome, and I would be very very greateful!
Thank you for your time!!
@acarmona88 this shape is basically a cylinder with rectangle intersections, here is some info on how to do these shapes: https://www.artstation.com/blogs/frankpolygon/o7Pg/sub-d-modeling-cylinder-and-rectangle-intersections-fillets
the only difference is the rectangle intersection pushes inwards
@acarmona88 Welcome to Polycount. Consider checking out the forum information and introduction thread.
Sharpening unsupported corners on curved surfaces often produces smoothing artifacts that can be resolved with a few different modeling and topology layout strategies. Deciding which is approach to use really just comes down to figuring out how accurate the surface needs to be. Something that's often determined by how close the model is to the viewer.
Like @hanabirano suggested: look for examples with similar shapes and try applying those same strategies. This thread is a great place to start and there's often several examples of how other artists have solved similar problems in different ways. Below are a few links to some more in-depth write-ups about square cut outs in curved surfaces, managing how loops cross surface transitions and placing details on or between the edges of a curved surface.
Topology strategies for square cutouts in solid and hollow cylinders:
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2757713/#Comment_2757713
Managing support loop paths across curved shape intersections:
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2769713/#Comment_2769713
Placing details on or between the edges of curved surfaces:
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2772925/#Comment_2772925
With subdivision models, it's generally considered best practice to use the existing edges of curved surfaces as part of the loop path for the support loops that sharpen the corners. Something that often requires adjusting both the loop flow and mesh density. Keep things relatively simple when blocking out the shapes and use the geometry of the primary forms to guide the loop flow.
Here's just one example of what the basic modeling process could look like: Create a basic spiral shape then connect the adjacent edges to define the vertical section connected to the base. Fill in the empty space and use an inset operation to create the basic loop path around the outside of the shape. Delete the left over faces in the cutouts. Generate the rest of the model with modifiers like solidify for depth, bevel for the support loops and subdivision for smoothing.
This topology layout uses the same pair of loops to control both the sharpness of the corners and the width of the edge highlights. Horizontal loops can be adjusted up or down and internal loops can be adjusted in or out.
Whether or not this level of surface accuracy and sharpness is acceptable depends on how closely the object will be viewed. Subdivision modeling is inherently imperfect. So, there's almost always tradeoffs. Sharpness and surface quality can be increased by starting with a higher number of segments in the spiral but this can also decrease the overall editability of the mesh.
Sharpness can also be increased by adding another pair of support loops around the existing loop path but this can decrease the overall accuracy of the surface.
The previous mesh is passable for most situations but there can be some subtle deformation artifacts that may appear when the model is viewed or lit from glancing angles. These types of artifacts are often cause by support loops that disrupt the segment spacing and produce subtle undulations in the surface. Sometimes it is possible to minimize the visibility of these artifacts by manually adjusting positions of the corner vertexes but this can degrade the overall accuracy of the surface.
Whether or not this type of tradeoff is acceptable really just comes down to whether or not the artifacts are visible. Low gloss or matte materials with lots of high frequency surface textures will generally cover these shallow artifacts. Offsetting the position of the cut outs or adjusting the segment density of the starting mesh can also improve the surface quality. Without having a negative impact on editability.
The position and width of the support loop path can also be adjusted to fit different size cutouts. Sometimes it makes sense to have a face or an edge between two perpendicular loop paths. Use whichever approach is easiest to work with and still produces clean results. Same for deciding how many segments to use.
Some types of projects do require quad grid geometry but if there isn't a specific technical constraint requiring it then it's often fine to use a few triangles or n-gons that are well supported and aren't causing visible smoothing errors. It just comes down to those tradeoffs between accuracy and editability.
Recap: Use the primary forms to route the loop flow. Use an appropriate number of segments to support the shapes at the desired level of surface quality.
Hello again guys!
@hanabirano and @FrankPolygon thank you a lot for your aswers!!
I really helped me a lot! I spend a lot of time searching on the internet, and checked a lot of posts in this same thread but I coudn't find a solution so I decided to post for some help.
I always knew that I shoud practice more my modeling skills, precisely for this type of "hard" modeling objects. And @FrankPolygon I must say that your answer was impressive man! Thanks for your time!
@Thanez
So I´ve tried to make every single step that you told me and I can´t figure it out how u made the boolean :s. I´ve had apply the intersection with ProBOOLEAN
First I build the geo
But I have this result:
And what I want is what u had show me,
I know that I just can select the loop and extrude. Support loops and thats it.
Cheers. and sorry if I already bother you
@Octavio You could never bother me <3
It was unclear in your post if you still had issues. There's a critical step of removing some verts that belonged to the original squished oval. When you're at this stage:
Add an edit poly modifier to the boolean, (a) go to vertex manipulation mode, (b) go to Selection in your ribbon, (c) by numeric, (d) using 2 as input, then hit backspace. That'll remove the verts but keep the edges of the cone.
@Thanez Super Glad to hear it!!!
Oh! thanks but what I mean is that I can not make this step
You have all this shape
This is my setup and my result:
Result:
A: Settings Can u share your settings in order to have your result? B:Result
This is the part that I missed
Cheers.
@Octavio Ah, that's because I capped all the open areas before doing the boolean purely out of habit. The end result is the same, you just don't have to delete the bits I did.
I did notice that I got some artifacts on my result. The problem was that my squished oval that I booleaned with was too low poly, making some of the verts of the cone out of place. I redid the whole thing with a 64 sided squished oval. The cone is 32 still.
You can have the model if you wanna peruse it but you'll have to wait a day because I, an intellectual, forgot to pay my hosting bills, so my webzone is down. I'll edit this post with some sort of squished oval cone transition or something.max in case you're interested
Hey all,
Long ago someone here shared the cheat sheet to use for number of sides but I cant find it on older pages, so like in example above
shape on left has 20, 16 and 12 sides for large medium and small details, changing the radius to align the segments and running boolean required minimum cleanup and subdivides ok. (Got this from previous posts)
On right I tried with 24, 20 and 16 thinking 4 being a magic number and it all fall apart for the smallest shape. I can make it work by lowering its sides and changing radius however it will not always be ideal to scale the parts if they dont match reference. I want to understand the maths behind choosing sides for intersecting cylindrical details. Thank you.
EDIT: I explored further and made it work, there are slight inaccuracies but not enough to impact normal map bake. Still need to figure out why certain number of sides work.
Here you go. The articles explaining segment matching:
https://www.artstation.com/blogs/frankpolygon/e72b/sub-d-modeling-cylinder-to-cylinder-intersections
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2772692/#Comment_2772692
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2772248/#Comment_2772248
Thank you, I follow Frank's guide religiously however I am looking for that cheat sheet / trying to understand the number logic (20,16,12 sides) as shown in my post. It was shared very long ago and the images are not showing on older pages here.
Not sure what that is but it is usually about size of the cylinder (half the size, half the segment count) + experimenting. Not sure if that's maya or max but in blender we use screw modifier to be able to change segment counts to match other cylinders so we can try & fail easily.
Hey guys, im trying to get a clean typology here but i've tried a bunch of different approaches but im kinda stuck.
im trying to model these air vent things on a locker but i cant really figure out what the best approach is here.
ive watched a couple tutorials but they all do it differently and non really work for me, so it would be appreciated if somebody could lead me in the right direction :D
thanks in andvance!
You just need a flat evenly spaced loop around the vent before connecting it back to a flat grid.
i'm sorry but im not sure if i understand... i tried but it turned out like this:
Maybe like so (all quads):
nothing wrong with that, you just need to make sure that you have the supporting loops at the right places and thikness would help too
@Raphael_Bouch I dont know how it looks from reference images however when it comes to vehicles its best to have them in seprate parts as in real life unless you are doing super tight low poly with limited vert count budget.
Hi folks, I've been practicing the ol' cutting a cube out of a cylinder, and thanks to @FrankPolygon's tutorials I have arrived at a place I'm very happy at. I then wanted to try a cube from a sphere, and I have figured a way to make it work for me. Would you mind just looking over it to see if it is the most optimal way of doing it?
Started with a quad sphere and offset extruded the cube.
Bevelled the edges that were selected in the first picture, and set the bevel to 2 segments, but used radial mitering.
Corners ended up like this
I used multi cut
and then deleted the centre of the two tris
smooths pretty well.
Would you do the same, or is there an easier approach? Many thanks in advance.
@christrom There's a bit of subtle pinching caused by the extra loop between the base of the square and the loop path on the surface of the sphere. Dissolving the loop and merging the corner vertices of the triangular quads should resolve the smoothing artifacts while also simplifying the mesh. (See the third and fourth examples below.)
If a high poly mesh subdivides cleanly and provides the desired level of surface quality then it's generally passable but whether or not a topology layout is optimal depends entirely on what the constraints are.
Subdivision modeling is often a balance of accuracy, efficiency, and quality. When something needs to be done quickly then it may make sense to sacrifice some accuracy or quality by using some less than ideal topology routing to connect new shapes to the existing geometry. In cases where accuracy or quality is more important then it often makes sense to spend a bit more time matching the shapes in the references and a bit more effort generating consistent quad grid topology.
The goal should be to find a sweet spot in the workflow that matches the desired level of shape accuracy and surface quality while also using the minimal amount of resources like time, geometry, etc.
Unlike basic cylinders, quad spheres produce a consistent grid topology. An easier approach would be to line up the edges in the grid with the intersecting square shape then extrude off the surface of the sphere and bevel the edges around the feature to create the support loops. This approach is quick but it does require adjusting the geometry density. Which can be somewhat limiting if the intersecting shape is in an odd location or is a different size that doesn't fit the existing grid.
If the quads are too large then it can be difficult to support the shapes when subdivision is applied. Especially when terminating the corner loops into a quad triangle to prevent the support loops from running out onto the surface of the sphere. It can be tempting to try and resolve this by connecting the corner vertex across the adjacent quad but this moves the pole further away from the supported area at the base of the intersection. Which tends to produce visible smoothing artifacts. Sometimes these smoothing artifacts can be minimized by softening the profile of the support loops but it's often better to just adjust the mesh density or topology to support the area around the shape intersection.
When the new shape falls between the existing edges of the quad grid then it creates a natural support loop path around the base of the intersection. It is possible to use the same bevel / chamfer operation to generate the support loops but there needs to be enough space between the center and outside edges of the loops. If the added support loop disrupts the segment spacing around the shape intersection then it can cause overlapping geometry or pinching artifacts.
These types of smoothing artifacts can generally be resolved by over and under scaling the intersecting shapes to provide more room between the base of the intersection and the outside support loop. It may also be possible to minimize the smoothing artifacts by softening the profile of the support loops but this generally won't work if there isn't enough room between the loops.
Which is why it often makes more sense to either place the inside support loop on it's own or remove the extra outside support loop manually with a loop dissolve. The existing geometry in the larger shape will act as it's own support for the outside of the shape intersection. With some careful planning and experimentation it should be possible to solve most of these basic topology flow issues during the block out phase.
Increasing the amount of geometry will make it possible to carry support loops across the surface of the sphere without causing artifacts. This is mostly useful when certain types of corner topology are a requirement but there can also be situations where a high quality surface is required and in those cases it does make sense to increase the amount of starting geometry. With this type of topology layout it's generally possible to sharpen the corners by sliding the outer edges closer to the corner. Just be careful to avoid causing any unintended surface deformation. Which can cause it's own type of smoothing artifact.
There are also some situations where alternate modeling workflows that use floaters may be an option. This thread has a few previous discussions that cover different uses for floaters and examples of different topology layouts for panel lines and through holes. Definitely worth the time to do a quick search and skim through a few of those examples.
Recap: When a quad sphere's grid lines up with the outline of surface features it's often possible to extrude directly off the surface. If the intersecting shapes aren't aligned with the grid then make sure there's enough geometry to create a consistent loop path around the intersecting shapes. Try to avoid unnecessary loop complexity whenever possibly by relying on the existing geometry as part of the support loops. Solve the major topology flow issues early in the block out and avoid pushing corner poles out into unsupported areas of the mesh. These same strategies will also work with negative shapes like cut outs and through holes.