I usally create these kinds of shapes with floating geometry. I prefer to do as much as possible inside of softimage or any other modelling package. So I have less post-work to do.
You got a tri going there. Down there at this little plank you made the front go along as it does but that creates a tri. But the other pinch in the middle...i guess someone else got something for you there
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, but but but, i mentioned that i didn´t tweaked the shape :D But yeah, the best method for this would be to create the control loops first and then extrude. So you don´t have to tweak manually.
I want to make the intersection of the main body and the wing as shown on the physical model. The slope angle is very narrow and it's curved, so it creates issues. Is there a better way to model this? Booleans don't work well.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2206821#post2206821 It's not quite as simple blending on top of a 90 degree angle, but it's the same idea. Create floating geo loops that match the intersection, and make it blend with the meshes.
Sub-d is just a method to get an end result. You can model by hand the same mesh that sub-d will create, the baker doesn't care how you modeled it, just what it looks like in the end. Its really hard to say anything other than that without seeing how you created the mesh in the first place. Here is a very simple example:…
In Max you can use create in subobject mode "poly" to click the verts to make a new poly, or you can select X + Y edges where each is a contiguous strip that doesn't touch the other and use "bridge" to fill the gap with polygons, or in subobject mode "border" you can select a border and use cap to fill it with polies.…
I checked back and could not find what SG meant or any examples on how this worked with creating a base mesh. Does SG mean Smoothing groups? Could you elaborate a bit more? Thanks!
You could just create a simple plane, add enough subdivisions to it and extrude the border edges down. Then you form a nice shape for the lowpoly and collapse the edges that you don´t need to hold shape.