Hell's horses, wasn't expecting to be in the top3. Good to know about that even bevel technique; wasn't sure about having that triangle in the largest bevelled corner (Although it doesn't look as bad with catmull-clark subd, but that's not really a good reason). I'll have to try that bevel method just so it sticks in my memory.
Seeing all the different approaches even for a fairly simple shape was cool too. Thanks Per and nice work everyone, especially Pac_187!
Good info Perna. And yeah trying to figure out what you were looking for was probably harder than just making the mesh.
Good points on the curved intersection, and it certainly shows some space for better tool understanding in some areas.
Also someone posted the tide bottle a couple pages back.
I don't think mine was in the video but I wanted to post it because I want to know what people think.
[SKETCHFAB]8668942c4a77469a85902d2eac1b8288[/SKETCHFAB]
I don't think mine was in the video but I wanted to post it because I want to know what people think.
Seems pretty similar to mine, but with less loops. Like me you also had the triangle in the main bevel. Continuing the loops makes it easier to work with; double loops also helps the shading (as mentioned in the vid - since things average towards a point, surfaces that are longer in one axis will need extra edges to produce the same smooth curve. Working to grid helps with maintaining a consistent edge width too, sometimes it's quicker / more accurate to cut along the grid than to use a edge loop at whatever %). As a generalisation I suppose you only terminate loops when it actually interferes with your mesh; otherwise leave them for easy selection + cleaner topology.
Seems pretty similar to mine, but with less loops. Like me you also had the triangle in the main bevel. Continuing the loops makes it easier to work with; double loops also helps the shading (as mentioned in the vid - since things average towards a point, surfaces that are longer in one axis will need extra edges to produce the same smooth curve. Working to grid helps with maintaining a consistent edge width too, sometimes it's quicker / more accurate to cut along the grid than to use a edge loop at whatever %). As a generalisation I suppose you only terminate loops when it actually interferes with your mesh; otherwise leave them for easy selection + cleaner topology.
Thanks for your crit and model I just looked at it. I like how you didn't terminate any of the loops.
OK steps as promised.
1: Lay out some guide splines along the major curves so you can snap to them later. (or extrude them and use as boolean cutting surfaces maybe) Note that the splines are at low interpolation settings so their points are easier to use as guides.
Build the main body from a cylinder or cube primitive, Cut some more loops to hold the shape, and line up with the top and bottom of the main circle shape in the bottle.
Cut edges of that circle shape into your mesh, then remove the interior edges and bevel/inset to get the lip of the circle detail and cut along the curve denoting the transition label area.
Further bevel/inset operations on the newly created polygon for the label detail are. Then draw out another spline shaped to the handle hole. Make it a CV spline, turn on snapping to CV's in the snap menu and cut your handle hole. Clean up the geo as needed and adjust the spacing + control edges where needed. I wound up detatching the central detail from the rest of the bottle so I could add an exterior edge ring. Then fixing the geo. Could have planned that better.
Smoothed result, then after more adjustment.
oh hey we have sketchfab.. forgot about that.
[sketchfab]c3735af2c71b42e28ee465ffdc06a331[/sketchfab]
[sketchfab]446fc46bdf634af188718a7f37070ace[/sketchfab]
Great challenge!I had a lot of fun trying to figure out the best way of doing it!
As already said this should turns into a regular thing!
Thanks Per and Pedro for the video!!!
And congrats to everyone!
Hey Per I liked the video, I haven't done any proper sub-d modeling for a while so interesting to look at (and I did have a go too) but I've got some questions.
Why you like the constant width chamfer so much? Visually I don't like the shape it makes as the bevel get larger on the corner and I can't work out a fast way to make it based on the 3 provided mesh sections, can you explain the steps to make it?
If you had used 4 edges to the example curve would you still have gone with the constant width chamfer method as being best?
How did you get the profile of the curve in the first place? It's neither a quarter from a 12 sided circle nor a straight bevel/chamfer (at least compared to blender which is the same as the circle).
Aww... just 5th place(with my second try, first try was 11th if i looked right)
Thanks for your hard work Perna(and Pedro too) very amusing video and useful tips and tricks
Next time i won´t forget the double control loops
btw:
Was the 2.73 chamfer intentional or randomly picked?:poly142:
Aww... just 5th place(with my second try, first try was 11th if i looked right)
Thanks for your hard work Perna(and Pedro too) very amusing video and useful tips and tricks
Next time i won´t forget the double control loops
btw:
Was the 2.73 chamfer intentional or randomly picked?:poly142:
Lol. I was wondering the same thing on the chamfer.
If they were in order of quality, That'd be cool, I'd be in 4th
Went for the 8 sided cylinder on or in the ball.
Took a few tries, as the first set I failed at Rule #1: examining the complex areas. The transition from sharp edged octagon to the spherical base (or from the octohole.. same shape really) was the problem bit. Tried both standard spheres and a spherified box. The standard half sphere matched up better with the octagonal pillar in the end.
Once I remembered rule number one it was relatively easy. Needed a 32sided sphere to ensure that the sphere stayed spherical and could be mated geometrically to the octagonal pillar with its requisite support edges.
The sphere with the octagonal indent was a little harder, as a standard sphere has issues at the poles when subdividing. There's likely a better way but I patched the top like a box sphere. Made the object symmetrical so it was a full sphere, applied a spherify modifier to ensure it was actually round, then chopped the bottom back off and did the requisite cuts.
Most difficult portion after remembering step 1 was ensuring both a smooth transition from the octagonal sides back to the sphere and that the support edges on the octogon were tight enough to make the shape. Turned on max's edge constraint and rotated them as a group from the centerpoint of the object with angle snap turned on so the distances would remain consistent.
wondering if anyone can help me out with this shape. I have been having troubles keeping the outside bumps consistent while doing the little dip in the middle.. lol, poor explanation i know, sorry.
Would be nice if you could post your current model so it would be easier to help. To me this looks quite simple, just do a cylinder with enough segments and create some extrusions. The inset could be done with an Lattice.
Yeah. Looks like a matter of a ton of segments initially, and not being so critical of the top edge. It will be small in game, So try to ignore any imperfections or discrepancies.
Your basemesh looks really dense, you could go with less geometry. To make the inset you can try it with a Lattice. So you dont have to pick each single vertex.
Not perfect (as I'm also trying to get to grips with Blender) but I cut the dip first, then did the extrusions. You may need to play around with the amount of sides and edge width and stuff but from the actual viewing distance it looks decent.
Thanks for all the feedback everybody.. I guess I was just over thinking the shape too much. Thanks for that modifier too Perna, I'll have to check it out.
Here's how I made out. Might come back to it again later.
So, I wanted to touch on something Per mentioned a while back, BOOLEANS. I've been using them more and more lately, I was always sort of afraid of using them from early days when I really didn't know how to. But for certain stuff they save so much time.
I happened to be modeling a little screwdriver shape so I figured I do some gifs.
1. Block out shapes. Important to use sane number of sides(I used 36 because I want 6 cutouts, so use a divisable number).
2. Make your simple bool cutout thing, I tweaked my base shape so the edges roughly line up with where the boolean will cut, this saves cleanup
3. Cut shape
4. We only need to model 1/12th of this shape, so delete the rest
5. Weld verts, add some supporting edges
6. Mirror, radial clone, and cap edges
7. done, yay
Definitely. BOOLEANS ftw. I don't make it through a project or model without using them at least a couple times.
I've been having a strange problem with creased edges afterward though. Past few times I've ran subtractions or intersections (cuts) some portion of the mesh gets a creased edge and get hardened smoothing when turbo smoothed. The stranger part is the crease isn't even on the area of geometry that got modified by the Boolean. Tried dropping on an edit poly modifier to clear it, Smoothing modifier, Converting to Editable mesh and back. Only thing that works is exporting and importing again.
Anyone have ideas as to why this happens, and how to avoid it? Just thought i'd ask sense we're on the subject.
Blaizer: Booleans are one of those things that are really easy to do wrong and make a mess of things with. Hence the typical aversion. Its far easier to tell people "DON'T use this tool." When starting off rather than explain the methods that make it actually viable.
Per: Thanks for the commentary. I appreciate the time you take in this thread. Thanks to this thread I've been noticing that there are whole chunks of Max I don't know well or had always overlooked, like that volume select modifier.
Also, what modifier are you using at the end of the vid to make the depression? Displace?
Also, in answer to the mini challenge, I couldn't find a good modifier to conform one shape to another, so I wound up using edit poly and the conform tool with axis locks from the graphite toolset to conform the verts to an arc based disk before doing the top extrudes.
Make arc. Apply lathe modifier (or in the case below, turn to nurbs then make lathe surface)
selection from stack, then edit poly and use the graphite conform tool. Pick arc-lathe to conform to. Then continue as normal.
Perna: Affect region seems to work well for something circular like that. I just replaced your FFD's with that modifier and set the falloff to the radius of the knob and then adjust the bubble and the start and end point of the gizmo. Its much more accurate and interactive this way.
Edit: Also why does the vol.select modifier suck soo much when using the cylinder option? I tried what you were doing in that vid and I get different soft selection falloffs on each side of the shape. I think its even a little off in your image there. Thought it was a bug in 2012 but tried it in 2014 and 2009 and got the same result....
I did this model a while back over the course of various lunch breaks. There were enough interesting shapes in the original reference material to make it a good hard surface exercise. I was aiming for physical accuracy and not for ripping normals so I tried to keep the edge size realistic.
The topology is a bit sloppy but the final result looked good enough. For anyone interested in taking a closer look I uploaded the OBJ of this mesh - you can grab it here. If anyone has better solutions for any of the shapes post them up.
Yea it doesn't seem like Maya likes that file - it imports fine in everything else. Try fixing it using this method - otherwise I can export a Maya friendly FBX later tonight.
I did this model a while back over the course of various lunch breaks. There were enough interesting shapes in the original reference material to make it a good hard surface exercise. I was aiming for physical accuracy and not for ripping normals so I tried to keep the edge size realistic.
The topology is a bit sloppy but the final result looked good enough. For anyone interested in taking a closer look I uploaded the OBJ of this mesh - you can grab it here. If anyone has better solutions for any of the shapes post them up.
Don't know if you meant to use the .obj like this, but I edited the mesh flow in some parts:
Hey So I decided to try a shape and I did it two different ways, I didn't put the holes in the second one as I was more thinking about how to do the intersection. I'm curious how you guys would have done it and how I could have better topo, I know it could be a lot better. The topo on the hole in my first one is odd cause sketchfab triangulated my ngon. [SKETCHFAB]b9a053d9cb9a46d0ab27a2bf0b080165[/SKETCHFAB]
really stupid question, not really something related to directly modelling a feature of something, but i was watching one of the eat3d tutorials when it mentions deleting backfaces, but he shows some weird display mode i've never seen before
what exactly is he doing to make the model display like that? i feel like i've been stupid for trying to delete backfaces by moving the camera inside the model itself so i can select and delete them
Replies
Just playin, Good job to the winners! If this was a baking challenge though, I woulda stomped ya'll. :poly124:
Whens the next competition Per? I'm hungry for moar. Was cool of you to put this on and spend the time. Really appreciate it.
Edit: did I say competition? Errr. I meant. uh. Challenge. Friendly skill building exercise....
That I will destroy you all at:poly123:.
Edit: Also curious. Were the meshes in order of quality, or the time they were submitted?
Seeing all the different approaches even for a fairly simple shape was cool too. Thanks Per and nice work everyone, especially Pac_187!
Good points on the curved intersection, and it certainly shows some space for better tool understanding in some areas.
Also someone posted the tide bottle a couple pages back.
See attached. Process images coming later.
[SKETCHFAB]8668942c4a77469a85902d2eac1b8288[/SKETCHFAB]
Would hope for some more challenge lessons, maybe involving pro booleans (max), but i guess it takes up quite of your time.
edit: gif of double loops for anyone curious.
Thanks for your crit and model I just looked at it. I like how you didn't terminate any of the loops.
1: Lay out some guide splines along the major curves so you can snap to them later. (or extrude them and use as boolean cutting surfaces maybe) Note that the splines are at low interpolation settings so their points are easier to use as guides.
Build the main body from a cylinder or cube primitive, Cut some more loops to hold the shape, and line up with the top and bottom of the main circle shape in the bottle.
Cut edges of that circle shape into your mesh, then remove the interior edges and bevel/inset to get the lip of the circle detail and cut along the curve denoting the transition label area.
Further bevel/inset operations on the newly created polygon for the label detail are. Then draw out another spline shaped to the handle hole. Make it a CV spline, turn on snapping to CV's in the snap menu and cut your handle hole. Clean up the geo as needed and adjust the spacing + control edges where needed. I wound up detatching the central detail from the rest of the bottle so I could add an exterior edge ring. Then fixing the geo. Could have planned that better.
Smoothed result, then after more adjustment.
oh hey we have sketchfab.. forgot about that.
[sketchfab]c3735af2c71b42e28ee465ffdc06a331[/sketchfab]
[sketchfab]446fc46bdf634af188718a7f37070ace[/sketchfab]
As already said this should turns into a regular thing!
Thanks Per and Pedro for the video!!!
And congrats to everyone!
Why you like the constant width chamfer so much? Visually I don't like the shape it makes as the bevel get larger on the corner and I can't work out a fast way to make it based on the 3 provided mesh sections, can you explain the steps to make it?
If you had used 4 edges to the example curve would you still have gone with the constant width chamfer method as being best?
How did you get the profile of the curve in the first place? It's neither a quarter from a 12 sided circle nor a straight bevel/chamfer (at least compared to blender which is the same as the circle).
learned alot here
Thanks for your hard work Perna(and Pedro too) very amusing video and useful tips and tricks
Next time i won´t forget the double control loops
btw:
Was the 2.73 chamfer intentional or randomly picked?:poly142:
Lol. I was wondering the same thing on the chamfer.
If they were in order of quality, That'd be cool, I'd be in 4th
Went for the 8 sided cylinder on or in the ball.
Took a few tries, as the first set I failed at Rule #1: examining the complex areas. The transition from sharp edged octagon to the spherical base (or from the octohole.. same shape really) was the problem bit. Tried both standard spheres and a spherified box. The standard half sphere matched up better with the octagonal pillar in the end.
Once I remembered rule number one it was relatively easy. Needed a 32sided sphere to ensure that the sphere stayed spherical and could be mated geometrically to the octagonal pillar with its requisite support edges.
The sphere with the octagonal indent was a little harder, as a standard sphere has issues at the poles when subdividing. There's likely a better way but I patched the top like a box sphere. Made the object symmetrical so it was a full sphere, applied a spherify modifier to ensure it was actually round, then chopped the bottom back off and did the requisite cuts.
Most difficult portion after remembering step 1 was ensuring both a smooth transition from the octagonal sides back to the sphere and that the support edges on the octogon were tight enough to make the shape. Turned on max's edge constraint and rotated them as a group from the centerpoint of the object with angle snap turned on so the distances would remain consistent.
Also back a few pages Mr Digital posted a troublesome object.
Looks to be this foregrip.. more reference here that may help
http://store.magpul.com/product/MAG411/88
wondering if anyone can help me out with this shape. I have been having troubles keeping the outside bumps consistent while doing the little dip in the middle.. lol, poor explanation i know, sorry.
Thanks guys!
Heres what I have so far. Maybe I've got about it the wrong way making the bumps first?
Here's how I made out. Might come back to it again later.
I happened to be modeling a little screwdriver shape so I figured I do some gifs.
1. Block out shapes. Important to use sane number of sides(I used 36 because I want 6 cutouts, so use a divisable number).
2. Make your simple bool cutout thing, I tweaked my base shape so the edges roughly line up with where the boolean will cut, this saves cleanup
3. Cut shape
4. We only need to model 1/12th of this shape, so delete the rest
5. Weld verts, add some supporting edges
6. Mirror, radial clone, and cap edges
7. done, yay
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/499159/screwdriver.obj
This is a pretty simple shape that I could have done with basic poly modeling, but its so much faster and more accurate to do a quick boolean on it.
I've been having a strange problem with creased edges afterward though. Past few times I've ran subtractions or intersections (cuts) some portion of the mesh gets a creased edge and get hardened smoothing when turbo smoothed. The stranger part is the crease isn't even on the area of geometry that got modified by the Boolean. Tried dropping on an edit poly modifier to clear it, Smoothing modifier, Converting to Editable mesh and back. Only thing that works is exporting and importing again.
Anyone have ideas as to why this happens, and how to avoid it? Just thought i'd ask sense we're on the subject.
Well, i'm also happy to see that some people did the excersises from my blog
And exp/importing as .obj is indeed the only solution.
Or use the proboolean instead of the normal boolean.
Thanks for the tip
Per: Thanks for the commentary. I appreciate the time you take in this thread. Thanks to this thread I've been noticing that there are whole chunks of Max I don't know well or had always overlooked, like that volume select modifier.
Also, what modifier are you using at the end of the vid to make the depression? Displace?
Also, in answer to the mini challenge, I couldn't find a good modifier to conform one shape to another, so I wound up using edit poly and the conform tool with axis locks from the graphite toolset to conform the verts to an arc based disk before doing the top extrudes.
Make arc. Apply lathe modifier (or in the case below, turn to nurbs then make lathe surface)
selection from stack, then edit poly and use the graphite conform tool. Pick arc-lathe to conform to. Then continue as normal.
Modeling's Ace
Edit: Also why does the vol.select modifier suck soo much when using the cylinder option? I tried what you were doing in that vid and I get different soft selection falloffs on each side of the shape. I think its even a little off in your image there. Thought it was a bug in 2012 but tried it in 2014 and 2009 and got the same result....
my god
The topology is a bit sloppy but the final result looked good enough. For anyone interested in taking a closer look I uploaded the OBJ of this mesh - you can grab it here. If anyone has better solutions for any of the shapes post them up.
Perna - I think we need more info. What two pieces of geo were used in that boolean? Edge flow is a bit strange too.
Don't know if you meant to use the .obj like this, but I edited the mesh flow in some parts:
And here's the .obj
what exactly is he doing to make the model display like that? i feel like i've been stupid for trying to delete backfaces by moving the camera inside the model itself so i can select and delete them