Alright so this is a pretty quick one, start with a 18 sided cylinder(12 may work too) make a few bevels to block out the main circular forms, make one last extra bevel to add a little padding on the outsides for the hard shapes, then go in and sellect 2 of ever 3 edges(select 2 leave one, select 2, etc) and remove them. Select the edges you have left over and chamfer/edge extrude(modo) them so that you have an edge on either side. In modo this will also give you triangles oddly placed, so simple remove those triangles, and re-cut edges back in that line up with the circular shaps. Add some loops to keep things hard and you're done.
You can play with the edge hardness a bit more, but unless this while actually be seen upclose, like the only thing on screen, i dont think you would want to make the edges any harder. At the distance you'de be likely to see this on a highpoly or in the normals, these shapes should read pretty well as there are.
Also as general note, if this was an object that i were going to instance all over the place, and use a shit ton of them, i would put a lot less geometry into it. This is 11232 tris, or 1,123,200 if i had a hundred, or 11m if i had a thousand of them in one mesh, which = major overkill for some details that may only end up like max, 8x8 pixels big on your normals map.
Cheers EQ! And thanks for the obj ref.
That nut has considerably less geo than the one I made so that will help the cpu speed! And yeah, if I was doing a normal map for this I wouldn't be using as many instances as I plan on using (or even paint these directly in the normal). But the piece I'm doing (the engine from metalmans thread) is more for some practice at new shapes and techniques. So the 20-30 or so nuts/bolts I'll be using are more to capture the level of detail in the original engine and not for a low-poly bake.
And here's the new hotness. The ugly green one was my first attempt. The second is after seeing EQ's edgeflow.
One thing that will help as well, if these are normal mapped to a relatively flat surface, the sides of the bolt wont show. A lot of times I'll throw a FFD on my bolts and scale the bottom larger to make the sides show in the normal map.
I've got a really simple question here. Something that should be easy to do, but for reasons unknown, I can't pull off without spending hours of tweaking to get things nice and clean.
I need a quick primer on how to make swirls, like these, inside of Modo? I've tried a number of different tools, curve extrude being the main one, but the end results are nowhere near as nice as the ones in the pic. Got any advice?
On another note, this thread is the greatest thing ever. After glancing through a couple of pages, I learned enough to make this awesome thing that makes no sense. Keep it up. Stark newbies like me can use all the help they can get.
For shapes like that cylinder (where the bullets go), I count the ridges and half of the recessed parts on each side, and divide: 360/n. This gives me the degree of each of those sections. Then I model the profile of that one section making sure that the ends meet at the proper spot or when you merge points/edges, it won't work. After you make the profile, just extrude and radial clone. Or keep adding detail and then when you get all the way to the back then clone it.
Pretty similar to above but im having a few problems maintaining curvature when trying to tighten edges on this mesh. The half cylinder has 16 sides which seemed enough for the detail I wanted to add. Modelling the low poly is easy enough but the problem occurs when tightening the edges. Should i bevel them as i have done or should i add edges in close proximity? What i have now kinda works but im not happy with it as an overall solution. i.e im still getting pinching and it looks a real mess
Same problem as above. A cylindrical form that I can't for the life of me tighten up. The solution no doubt lies in distributing the additional edges and terminating the loops in a clever way.If anybody feels like a crack at this then here is the obj. Enjoy.
Select all the vertices of your object and do hide selected. Then go into edge mode, and add the new edges you need. Especially in cases where you need to improve roundness of a cylinder you could add an edge in between all existing edges.
Then go back to vertex mode, and now only the new vertices that were created are visible, because the other ones are hidden. Tweak these to improve your overall shape, and finally do unhide all to reveal the old vertices.
Edit: This is not the standard hide from view. There are subobject hide and unhide options in your geometry rollout. For 3d max at least there are.
Thanks for the help. Yeah more polys is the way to go it seems for this type of thing. It's strange coming from a gaming background how you try to instinctively use as few polys as possible even when doing higher res stuff.
Well, while you probably dont need to use *as* much as johny has there, you'de be surprised just how many times these problems can be solved by just using more geometry. I spend a good deal of time, thinking about how many sides objects will need for certain detail before i even start modeling.
sorry its kinda crappy. i started using a new soft and didnt configure it before recording, so i was recording in microsoft video 1. And also, i only started recording after i started, so theres a part missing on the begining. anywho!-
One thing that i don't think has been covered (or maybe I missed it) but wrapping objects (repeating meshes etc.) specifically in Maya, bolts or trims etc.
The main step of Jordan's tutorial that you can't really do in Maya is the step where he uses a custom spline on the Shell modifier profile. It's something I've been looking into doing for Maya, I don't think it would be all that difficult. Haven't had time yet though.
I'm pretty sure Maya has decent tools for path deforming a mesh along a curve (although I am really not a fan of Maya's curve tools compared to Max's splines), I just can't remember the command off-hand.
After checking out Bitmap's bolt I decided to speed model the same bolt in max. After looking at the inorganic modeling tutorials I used some new techniques, but I can seem to get the bolt circular enough.
EDIT: I didn't think it would be that tedious just to sculpt a cross shape into a circular mesh but it was.
Thanks for that pic Johnny, I just learned something very important.
Thankyou again!
Hey by the way bitmap. Would it be okay to use that screw on a personal project? On one hand I like to model everything, on the other hand, saving 15 minutes is always good. I think maybe we could setup a highpolygon 'junkyard' here on polycount where we could post OBJs of meshsmooth-friendly details like such? Mostly sci-fi screws and classic hipoly 'knobs'.
Thanks for that pic Johnny, I just learned something very important.
Thankyou again!
Hey by the way bitmap. Would it be okay to use that screw on a personal project? On one hand I like to model everything, on the other hand, saving 15 minutes is always good. I think maybe we could setup a highpolygon 'junkyard' here on polycount where we could post OBJs of meshsmooth-friendly details like such? Mostly sci-fi screws and classic hipoly 'knobs'.
Such a great thread!
This is a great idea, we had something like this at one point(FLOATERS THREAD?) but it probably died off long ago. Any suggestions on how to set it up, feel free.
Maybe just start a thread, and have someone manage the first post, update it as people post new floater bits. IE ps brush thread.
stuck on how to continue (or terminate?) this edge loop. I guess I could of just made them seperate meshes, but since I got this far, its like a math problem I can't solve but must know the answer to
AH this is a good one- I too would like to know the answer- like EQ said you can usually smash anything out by just putting in more geometry, but in some cases, you rely on a lack of geometry to get some nice soft forms ( or in this case a perfect circle). So is it just good form to establish what these soft/round shapes are and try and keep them separate?
Yeah, I was gonna say, I'd do this using 2 meshes, there's no need to hack around with complex geometry trying to make it look good, when you could just shove two objects together...
Also, to all the people worried about how to terminate edgeloops... a lot of the time I just leave them as unterminated loops - just an edge (or several) ending up in the middle of another edge is fine - sometimes it's even better for sub-d, actually. Obviously you will lose any benefits of edge loop/ring select, but there are times when simpler, un-terminated geometry is much faster and worthwhile than trying to make a perfectly-quadded, nice-loops mesh...
Really you've just got to measure how large you want each link to be, an easy way to do this would be to create a cylinder with how many sides(# of links) you want, and then model 1 section of link to fit the size of one polygon from the cylinder. Then you just need to radial clone or however you want to duplicate the piece to fill the rest out.
Thanks man. I thought doing the array way looked too much work versus bevel/extrude alternate spaces.
Nobody's checking accuracy so I just eyeballed it (link spans). You can spot the distortion where I strayed from the curve guide. Molded it back more circular by temp grouping and scaling.
Hello everyone!
I am browsing Polycount now for a few weeks and decided to register. Well, now that I am here I have some questions.
My actual problem where I am stuck are the very basics.
I modeled a screw: http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/6186/bild3k.png
The edges are based on a plugin, which bevels all selected edges. I hope to finish the model without setting any edges manually.
Hopefully somebody can help.
Hey guys, im just a bit stuck on how to go about finishing this panel, the cylindrical holy bits are how I want them and overall it meshsmooth's alright, but think I could have taken a better aproach, like worked off a grid a bit more, instead of fanning out my loops in all directions, so really im just wondering what the best way to tie off my loops in situation like this, i've spent way too much time on this panel, so i figure im doinig something wrong.
Depends what it's for, but a lot of those things I'd just have done by cutting a hole in the mesh and then floating/intersecting the inset geometry around the holes, rather than trying to make it all one solid mesh.
But like I say, I don't really know what this is for, it looks pretty technical like it has to be perfect from a blueprint for 3d printing or something. In that case I'd say it was ok - if it's just highpoly geo for normalmapping then I'd say this approach is a bit overkill?
ok thanks mop, yeah i would have made it alot quicker if i had have done that, its for an ingame model, so ill be rendering a normal map from it, well i guess ill keep it and try and do more floating geo in future, cheers.
So, I have been messing around with sub-D modeling for the past few months and have learned a lot. Both from this thread, gnomon workshop dvds, and many other sources.
I thought I would share some of the basic thoughts that I have on the subject. I haven't really discussed them with anyone so feel free to rip them apart, I'm trying to figure out what I do and don't know here. At the most I hope to help clear up some fundamental confusion, at the least I might highlight some of my own misconceptions.
Okay, for me, the most confusing thing to do with a subdivision model is take a surface that is perfectly curved and try and punch a hole in it that has square(ish) corners.
Now, when I say "perfectly curved" I mean that every single vertice in the curved part of the mesh has a new value for its X Y or Z position and that number changes a constant rate between its adjacent vertices. This should result in a curved mesh with perfectly spaced geometry. A sphere is a simple example of this.
In this case its going to be impossible to cleanly put a hole in this mesh where the corners or edges of your hole need to be controlled so that they are more obtuse or acute (rounder or sharper) than they are right after you delete the faces.
The reason for this is because what makes this curve perfect is the very consistent rate of change between all the vertices. If you throw new edges into the mix that are not evenly propagated throughout the entire curved surface then you are going to get a bump, or a shift in the direction of the curve.
This, in a nutshell, is one of the biggest challenges that needs to be overcome when working with a subdivision models.
So, once I realized this there was only a few ways to deal the issue:
A) Create a sufficiently dense enough mesh to hide any bumps or problems, or if the object is going to be viewed from a distance just ignore the issue.
Subdivide your mesh evenly to the point where you can simply add in any details without inserting edges that would muck up your perfect spacing. This makes the mesh increasingly harder to work with because of its size but is sometimes the only choice.
C) In the rare instance where it is an option modify the mesh so that it is not a perfect curve or so that it has some planar faces.
Finally, if you need to add more geometry you can try and isolate the issue be separating the curved surface from the rest of the model. This way you can add as much geometry as needed and not have to worry about it affecting everything else.
In conclusion, the important thing to remember when working with subdivision models is that you are going to be creating all sorts of problems, and those problems are unavoidable. A perfect subdivision model isn't going to not have any undesired bumps or defects but will carefully hide those bumps and defects.
This is a very important concept to remember so that time isn't wasted trying to resolve tiny issues. They are just a byproduct of this type of modeling. You just need geometry that is dense enough to support the details you are trying to add and also dense enough to hide an problems that arise. While at the same time keeping the mesh as simple as possible to make it easy to work with.
The perfect sub-D model will artfully balance all of these issues, not avoid them.
Great thread! I was hoping that someone here could give me some input on this pice of geometry I'm working on right now.
As you can see in the reference shot there is a beveled-in surface in the middle of the pannel and I'm trying to understand how to make the upper corners of the beveled area look like the ones in the reference picture. The way I tried to do this was by extruding the center face and then scale it inwards. I tried to make adjustments in the beveled edge but it still doesn't look quite right to me...
So, does anyone have a more effective approach to modelling this surface and/or do you think I'm making some kind of mistake in the way I'm doing it?
Thank you in advance and keep up the inspiring work!
Replies
I'm making a hex nut now and am having troubles cutting the circle into the middle of a 6 sided hexagon. Should I start with the circle first and then harden 6 sides on the outside?
ref
http://www.global-b2b-network.com/direct/dbimage/50286862/Brass_Hex_Nut.jpg
Also, I don't need the inside threads, just a bit of an indent so that it looks like it will fit the bolt, which I've already got modeled.
You can play with the edge hardness a bit more, but unless this while actually be seen upclose, like the only thing on screen, i dont think you would want to make the edges any harder. At the distance you'de be likely to see this on a highpoly or in the normals, these shapes should read pretty well as there are.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/499159/bolt.obj
Also as general note, if this was an object that i were going to instance all over the place, and use a shit ton of them, i would put a lot less geometry into it. This is 11232 tris, or 1,123,200 if i had a hundred, or 11m if i had a thousand of them in one mesh, which = major overkill for some details that may only end up like max, 8x8 pixels big on your normals map.
That nut has considerably less geo than the one I made so that will help the cpu speed! And yeah, if I was doing a normal map for this I wouldn't be using as many instances as I plan on using (or even paint these directly in the normal). But the piece I'm doing (the engine from metalmans thread) is more for some practice at new shapes and techniques. So the 20-30 or so nuts/bolts I'll be using are more to capture the level of detail in the original engine and not for a low-poly bake.
And here's the new hotness. The ugly green one was my first attempt. The second is after seeing EQ's edgeflow.
bolts for everyone
http://edgesize.com/files/videos/bolt2.mov
http://edgesize.com/files/videos/bolt.obj
I need a quick primer on how to make swirls, like these, inside of Modo? I've tried a number of different tools, curve extrude being the main one, but the end results are nowhere near as nice as the ones in the pic. Got any advice?
On another note, this thread is the greatest thing ever. After glancing through a couple of pages, I learned enough to make this awesome thing that makes no sense. Keep it up. Stark newbies like me can use all the help they can get.
EQ, you've always been one of the inspirations for me when it comes to human faces, and i've always liked how you modeled your high res eyes.
the question, is how do you think the best way to bake that information down to the low poly is? (the concave iris etc.)
wip thread
http://uploading.com/files/XGKAMSEC/cylinderThing.obj.html
didnt even bother with right proportions etc, but i think its ok to show what i mean
obj : http://johnyontehspot.com/johny/shape_irreal.obj
Select all the vertices of your object and do hide selected. Then go into edge mode, and add the new edges you need. Especially in cases where you need to improve roundness of a cylinder you could add an edge in between all existing edges.
Then go back to vertex mode, and now only the new vertices that were created are visible, because the other ones are hidden. Tweak these to improve your overall shape, and finally do unhide all to reveal the old vertices.
Edit: This is not the standard hide from view. There are subobject hide and unhide options in your geometry rollout. For 3d max at least there are.
obj
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/93793/Bolt2.obj
edit::
i made a video of this screw.
http://edgesize.com/files/videos/Screw/ScrewMe.avi
http://vimeo.com/3223611
sorry its kinda crappy. i started using a new soft and didnt configure it before recording, so i was recording in microsoft video 1. And also, i only started recording after i started, so theres a part missing on the begining. anywho!-
Screw you all!
haah get it? get it? right?
lol
WHY GOD????????
Forgive me God, I had no idea!
One thing that i don't think has been covered (or maybe I missed it) but wrapping objects (repeating meshes etc.) specifically in Maya, bolts or trims etc.
I saw this link - http://www.mutantspoon.com/temp/howto01.jpg
If anyone can tell me how to do what he did in steps 6 and 7 using maya, I would devote my life to you.
You all rock!
I'm pretty sure Maya has decent tools for path deforming a mesh along a curve (although I am really not a fan of Maya's curve tools compared to Max's splines), I just can't remember the command off-hand.
Edit: link to Whargoul's explanation of deform along spline in Maya, I think this is pretty old so there might be a different way now...
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=47712
EDIT: I didn't think it would be that tedious just to sculpt a cross shape into a circular mesh but it was.
Thankyou again!
Hey by the way bitmap. Would it be okay to use that screw on a personal project? On one hand I like to model everything, on the other hand, saving 15 minutes is always good. I think maybe we could setup a highpolygon 'junkyard' here on polycount where we could post OBJs of meshsmooth-friendly details like such? Mostly sci-fi screws and classic hipoly 'knobs'.
Such a great thread!
and yes i think we should make a OBJ depository with screenshots of the models.
This is a great idea, we had something like this at one point(FLOATERS THREAD?) but it probably died off long ago. Any suggestions on how to set it up, feel free.
Maybe just start a thread, and have someone manage the first post, update it as people post new floater bits. IE ps brush thread.
Its also easy to model this in 2 pieces, not everything has to be 1 mesh.
Also, to all the people worried about how to terminate edgeloops... a lot of the time I just leave them as unterminated loops - just an edge (or several) ending up in the middle of another edge is fine - sometimes it's even better for sub-d, actually. Obviously you will lose any benefits of edge loop/ring select, but there are times when simpler, un-terminated geometry is much faster and worthwhile than trying to make a perfectly-quadded, nice-loops mesh...
Nobody's checking accuracy so I just eyeballed it (link spans). You can spot the distortion where I strayed from the curve guide. Molded it back more circular by temp grouping and scaling.
.
I am browsing Polycount now for a few weeks and decided to register. Well, now that I am here I have some questions.
My actual problem where I am stuck are the very basics.
I modeled a screw:
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/6186/bild3k.png
And here is my subdivision-problem:
http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/2203/bild5.png
The edges are based on a plugin, which bevels all selected edges. I hope to finish the model without setting any edges manually.
Hopefully somebody can help.
Cheers!
/edit:
Well, i continued like this:
http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/4472/screw1.jpg
http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/7454/screw2.jpg
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/8075/screw3.jpg
A quick render:
cheers
But like I say, I don't really know what this is for, it looks pretty technical like it has to be perfect from a blueprint for 3d printing or something. In that case I'd say it was ok - if it's just highpoly geo for normalmapping then I'd say this approach is a bit overkill?
Here's the timelapse for some parts of this model
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/93793/Videos/01%20Main%20Shape.avi
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/93793/Videos/02%20Stuff.avi
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/93793/Videos/03%20Useless%20Hole.avi
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/93793/Videos/04%20Lens%20Cap%20Front.avi
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/93793/Videos/05%20Lens%20Cap%20Back.avi
I thought I would share some of the basic thoughts that I have on the subject. I haven't really discussed them with anyone so feel free to rip them apart, I'm trying to figure out what I do and don't know here. At the most I hope to help clear up some fundamental confusion, at the least I might highlight some of my own misconceptions.
Okay, for me, the most confusing thing to do with a subdivision model is take a surface that is perfectly curved and try and punch a hole in it that has square(ish) corners.
Now, when I say "perfectly curved" I mean that every single vertice in the curved part of the mesh has a new value for its X Y or Z position and that number changes a constant rate between its adjacent vertices. This should result in a curved mesh with perfectly spaced geometry. A sphere is a simple example of this.
In this case its going to be impossible to cleanly put a hole in this mesh where the corners or edges of your hole need to be controlled so that they are more obtuse or acute (rounder or sharper) than they are right after you delete the faces.
The reason for this is because what makes this curve perfect is the very consistent rate of change between all the vertices. If you throw new edges into the mix that are not evenly propagated throughout the entire curved surface then you are going to get a bump, or a shift in the direction of the curve.
This, in a nutshell, is one of the biggest challenges that needs to be overcome when working with a subdivision models.
So, once I realized this there was only a few ways to deal the issue:
A) Create a sufficiently dense enough mesh to hide any bumps or problems, or if the object is going to be viewed from a distance just ignore the issue.
C) In the rare instance where it is an option modify the mesh so that it is not a perfect curve or so that it has some planar faces.
Finally, if you need to add more geometry you can try and isolate the issue be separating the curved surface from the rest of the model. This way you can add as much geometry as needed and not have to worry about it affecting everything else.
In conclusion, the important thing to remember when working with subdivision models is that you are going to be creating all sorts of problems, and those problems are unavoidable. A perfect subdivision model isn't going to not have any undesired bumps or defects but will carefully hide those bumps and defects.
This is a very important concept to remember so that time isn't wasted trying to resolve tiny issues. They are just a byproduct of this type of modeling. You just need geometry that is dense enough to support the details you are trying to add and also dense enough to hide an problems that arise. While at the same time keeping the mesh as simple as possible to make it easy to work with.
The perfect sub-D model will artfully balance all of these issues, not avoid them.
As you can see in the reference shot there is a beveled-in surface in the middle of the pannel and I'm trying to understand how to make the upper corners of the beveled area look like the ones in the reference picture. The way I tried to do this was by extruding the center face and then scale it inwards. I tried to make adjustments in the beveled edge but it still doesn't look quite right to me...
So, does anyone have a more effective approach to modelling this surface and/or do you think I'm making some kind of mistake in the way I'm doing it?
Thank you in advance and keep up the inspiring work!