I gave up for now on trying to finish the exact details of the shotgun I was working on and decided to move onto some other guns to keep practicing and improving. I think I learned a lot and made some decent models, but I decided to move onto something else that wasn't a gun. I chose a C-17 Globemaster cargo plane. Figured…
@ANAFREE Aregvan is correct: the smoothing artifact is caused by overlapping geometry and modeling this type of surface detail as a separate piece of floating geometry will be more efficient than trying to blend everything together into a watertight mesh. There's an extra edge loop that runs between the primary support…
@rogi92 Manually extruding and filling polygon strips can be a viable modeling strategy but some of the shapes in that mask could make it a tedious and time consuming process. Since you already have a solid start to outlining the shapes: consider streamlining this modeling strategy by using Blender's curve system to layout…
@UhhNope It depends on which critical part is going to constrain the surrounding geometry but the basic principle is the same: match the edge segments of the intersecting geometry. If that's not possible (because of some geometry restriction) then the next best thing is to either spread the error out over a wide area or…
@jdellinger98 Overall you have the right idea: using instancing, mirroring and other modifiers will reduce the workload and speed up the modeling process. Try to maintain a consistent shape transition when working with intersecting geometry on curved surfaces. Using a single base model for the high poly and low poly. It is…
Outside of specific project requirements, stock 3D certification programs and technical edge cases, there really isn't anything wrong with using triangles and n-gons in subdivision modeling. Flat surfaces are arguably the least effected by messy topology. As long as the corners are supported and the surfaces are co-planar…
@IronLover64 To add to what's already been said: try to simplify the mesh by dissolving and merging some of the extra geometry. Straightening and rerouting the remaining loops into the existing geometry on the back strap should solve most of the smoothing issues. Flat surfaces that are properly supported are relatively…
@ConvexSurface Overall it looks like you have the right idea but sometimes connecting directly to a curve's existing polygon grid can cause a lot of smoothing issues. In these cases it's often better to place the intersecting geometry between the existing segments of the curved surface and use the existing curve geometry…
@MegaSofteae Creating a detailed outline of an object's profile can seem like a logical place to start but in most cases this limits the way you think about the shapes by constraining it to a 2D space. This is why it's generally considered best practice to block out all of the major features of an object in 3D before…
@Yogifi There's a lot to unpack but the answer to most of these questions is: it often depends. There's a significant amount of overlap between poly modeling and subdivision modeling but they are still distinct processes that require slightly different approaches. What's "right" or "best" depends entirely on how a model…