I definately did this, in my third picture. For some reason it was still giving a nasty error, but not all the way down the cylinder. Like I said, I'm probably doing something else wrong, but I did terminate the loop.
Floating bits are most definitely used. I think theres an easy option to turn off shadow casting on backfacing geo in max, but no option like that in xnormal. But regardless, painting out the AO errors is WAYYYYYY faster than the alternative.
I use 3dsmax because it has almost everything i need and i learned to live with its annoying parts. Other choices would be modo because it´s awesome for just modelling or softimage because i just like it. ;)
Ok, I did this in like 3 minutes so it's not great but it may help. The trick is not to be too anal about your topology or triangles - mash in the shape AND THEN work cleaning up the mesh. Atleast that's how I would go about it.
Sense my stack was laughable he was making light of it. I didn't get uppity or offended. I know if Per says something there is probably some merit behind it. Even if its a joke. I just like arguing with him.
holy crap that video makes so much sense. Isoline display and keeping turbosmooth on and dragging edges. Something simple like that has just trippled my workflow speed! Thanks for hosting that video. Looking forward to the other parts!
Alright here is the mesh. The problem is the part just doesn't look smooth and clean like the other parts of the bike. Also when i add edge loops for the sharp corners, the parts that are supposed to be smooth get weird edges on them.
You can turn that tri into a quad like this: green: add red: remove You'll still get a pole there though which may not smooth very well, unavoidable really. Another even easier option, this time just removing:
Splines you could use for the base of an ornament indeed. However this "split/double edge" effect that you see is most likely the result of Zbrush's "mirror and weld" function where you copy 1 side of a mesh to another one.
oh man, don't mind that weird edge on the side of the tire in the 2nd pic (if you notice it)! looks like i welded those two points on accident but trust me, that's so not the problem of all this, i just noticed it! urgh...