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Basic Poly-Modeling question


Dave Buckley
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I'm getting my head stuck into efficient modelling (more so correct modelling)

 

I think I understand everything now and am just practising on smaller things to try and solve problems as efficiently as possible.

 

In the attached file there is a basic mesh. If you 'Show-End Result' you will see that 3 of the corners don't smooth/round off.

 

I know I can eliminate this by adding a single diagonal edge and removing the horizontal and vertical ones as shown in the screen shot, but what about the side that changes direction half-way up?

 

I can't remove the horizontal edge as this would deform the geometry and I'd lose the crease. So how would I get that corner to smooth without losing my crease?

 

Any help is much appreciated. This is probably going to seem really basic to a lot of you, but I've relied to long on untidy modelling. I can do it but I want to maintain a quad mesh

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not quite

 

in the screenshot

 

top left - original geometry

 

top right - original with turbosmooth (3 corners circled don't smooth)

 

bottom left - adjusted geometry with diagonal edges rather than horizontal/vertical

 

bottom right - as bottom left but with turbo smooth, the two corners I've changed the geometry on now smooth

 

I want to be able to make that top right corner curve round as per the other two without deforming the rest of the mesh

 

hope that makes sense

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Sorry for not understanding that Dave. If it's a case of just putting a radius on each corner, you could ditch the turbosmooth, select the 3 vertices and apply a chamfer a few times to round them. It's midnight where I am so if I'm still not getting it, maybe I should just go to bed :)

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Essentially the problem is that the two horizontal lines you have at the moment are defining a single curve radius. If you want these to define two seperate curves/creases when smoothed then you need to add additional edge loops to define them. Select an edge then use ring and connect (adjusting slide parameter to suit) to do this.

 

Excuse my crude sketch!

 

If you want to know about hard surface poly-modelling then the best tutorials I have seen on the subject are here:

http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/inorganic_modeling_fundamentals_part_1

http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/inorganic_modeling_fundamentals_part_2

http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/inorganic_modeling_fundamentals_part_3

 

Everything you need to know and more :)

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You are understanding, the only problem with chamfering them is that the entire model will be turbosmoothed, or I will no doubt come across a situation like this when working with a fully turbosmoothed model.

 

also chamfering will just give me additional vertex points - leading to a non-quad based mesh.

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Essentially the problem is that the two horizontal lines you have at the moment are defining a single curve radius. If you want these to define two seperate curves/creases when smoothed then you need to add additional edge loops to define them. Select an edge then use ring and connect (adjusting slide parameter to suit) to do this.

 

Excuse my crude sketch!

 

If you want to know about hard surface poly-modelling then the best tutorials I have seen on the subject are here:

http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/inorganic_modeling_fundamentals_part_1

http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/inorganic_modeling_fundamentals_part_2

http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/inorganic_modeling_fundamentals_part_3

 

Everything you need to know and more :)

 

I've been watching those ;)

 

I simply want the 3 vertex points I circled to be rounded rather than right angled - but using a method that results in a clean quad based mesh

 

look at the next image

 

the first (left-most) plane has a turbo smooth with 3 iterations on it - it still looks square

 

the middle plane has the geometry changed - diagonal edges now going to the corner points

 

the right plane is the result of the changed geometry with the turbosmooth - it's now rounding

 

that's all well and good on a flat plane because I can remove the edges that I have highlighted and replace them with a single diagonal (as per plane 2) without deforming the base mesh

 

but this is where the problem lies in my original images - the problem corner cannot be solved that way because those back four poly's do not lie on a flat plane, so removing the edge indicated in screenshot 2 will deform the basemesh, which I don't want

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Ok, got it now I think! So you want all the sharp corners gone, but still have a crease at the right hand side? In that case you need to add two edge loops to define it before adding your diagonals and deleting the edges. See attached screengrab.

 

If you don't need the crease then I suggest you just get rid of the chamfered corner all together as it isn't doing anything at the moment once you add the turbosmooth anyway.

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perfect. that's how I originally solved it but when looking at it I couldn't help but think I had unecessary edges on the left hand vertical faces - more a question of does it really require the full edge-loop or could I find a workaround that results in fewer edges.

 

I'm just trying to make myself think systematically :)

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perfect. that's how I originally solved it but when looking at it I couldn't help but think I had unecessary edges on the left hand vertical faces - more a question of does it really require the full edge-loop or could I find a workaround that results in fewer edges.

 

I'm just trying to make myself think systematically :)

 

You could remove the two middle edges that meet the left hand side without altering the final shape, but generally I think it's better practice to leave intact loops if possible.

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