Rounded edges on complex shapes

[Tim Nelson]

Here's my latest stumper.... I have this P I'm trying to create as part of a logo. I traced the shape and extruded it. And now of course I am running into problems if I try to chamfer the edges because of all the sharp corners and weird triangulation.

 

Does anybody have any idea how I can slightly round the edges on something like this? How would you make it? I tried to cheat and use a vrayedge texture for bump, but that looked terrible.

 

Thanks + 1 million

[Stephen Thomas]

Use a bevel modifier on the spline instead of extrude?

[Tim Nelson]

Use a bevel modifier on the spline instead of extrude?

Hey Stephen, thanks. It works pretty good. I wish somehow I could do more than 3 levels of beveling. But so far it seems to be giving me the best results.

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Bevel Profile gave me a nice first pass. The pointier points on the P extended way out kinda nasty. So I went in on those few spline verts and gave them a bit of chamfer to pull the extremeties in. One point chamfered in a way that didn't help so one of the resulting verts needed to be moved a hair and the connecting segment told to be a line not a curve. Walla.

[Tim Nelson]

Nice....I had tried beveled profile earlier, but I must not have used it properly since I got a completely unrecognizable result. I'll give that a shot again, but so far the regular bevel is probably giving me enough roundness.

[Tim Nelson]

I tried bevel profile again and it was great! Thanks for saving me. :-)

[Peter M. Gruhn]

I'm sure there's a logic to Bevel Profile in how it assigns orientations. Something no doubt to do with pivots. I always just create a rough profile first, see how it gets oriented on the final extrusion, then go in and tart up the profile with snazzy realitime feedback.