How to model a brake disc?

[Iain McFadzen]

1) Which app?

2) Why do you need to keep the polys all-quad? You aren't going to meshsmooth/subdivide the mesh so what does the end topology matter?

[tkay]

1. C4D.

2. Mainly quad.. When applying a texture on a "drilled" disc there are visible flaws on the surface. What comes to smoothing, is there another way to model round corners besides smoothing?

[Iain McFadzen]

I don't know CD4 at all, but I'd suggest if booleans are ruining your mesh (which I can quite believe) it might be an idea to create a template of the whole disc, including the drill holes, and then extrude it out. That way you wouldn't have to worry about the booleans messing up your surface.

Some objects are just an enormous pain to model with polys and it's often more practical to use a different technique. Trying to create that disc with polys while keeping a smooth-able quad mesh looks to me like one of those cases. Depending on how close you are planning on viewing the disc you may get away with just chamfering/bevelling the edges to stop them looking too sharp.

[tkay]

As a bike needs 3 brake discs the enormous amount of poly´s created by drilling also dramatically increases the render time..


That template method sounds promising.. i will give it a try..

Thanks, mate!

[trybul]

I agree with Iain, the best way would be to create a template shape for the disc brake and the extrude it. I am not sure how CD4 handles chmfering edges, so if that does not work you can just add a few hiet segments and scale the top poly's to creat the beveled edge...

I hope that this makes sence.... If not let me know and i will try to explain better...

trybul

[tkay]

Thank you very much, fellows! The extruding (and duplicating) method helped!

Well, the technique is quite heavy and time consuming but great results can be achieved.

4764 polys. - And not a single triangle! :D

[trybul]

tkay....

that looks great man.. would you care to share the shape... that you used to extrude. I think that it would be nice to see how you made the shape... so it you can post that with the vertices showing that would be nice...

I think that this may help others when trying to create similar objects while keeping a clean mesh...

thanks

trybul

[tkay]

Sure thing. I´ll post it later today. Maybe even put in some explanation as well..

[Iain McFadzen]

Looks great, glad you got it working.

[tkay]

Thanks Iain.

Ok. Here´s the settings used:

[tkay]

... and after making editable and some fiddling and deleting etc. the slice looks like this. Now just make 6 (6 x 60 degrees)duplicates of it around x axis, connect the duplicates, merge edging points and do some extruding and voilá... :D

[tkay]

and with some fiddling you get this. After that; well, think you know already..

[dmcgrath]

That is truly a beautiful brake disc, but do you really need to make all those polys?
What I mean is how close are you really going to come to the thing? Cant you cheat it by some fancy texturing.
C4 has a great renderer, dont they make it so you can use a texture to cut holes through the discs? At close inspection it may look ugly. But lets face it, how many people really look at the brakes on a bike or a car? You could get the discs down to a couple hundred polys or less that way.

[tkay]

You´re right. Plenty of lighter ways exist (like texturing), but it was really fun learning a triangle-free way to model the sucker... :D

[dmcgrath]

I agree, :) Maya really prefers if you work in quads as well. Im sure it was a great learning experience. Have you got any pics of the rest of the bike?

[-wT-]

Originally posted by dmcgrath
I agree, :) Maya really prefers if you work in quads as well. Im sure it was a great learning experience. Have you got any pics of the rest of the bike?

I saw a thread at the Gallery when I did a search on topics of tkay, it had some pics in it... so fire up that search dmcgrath! :)

[dmcgrath]

Thanks -wT- will do.:beer:

[tkay]

That´s ancient history. This is what i´m working with now (Constructive critisism welcome... ;) )

[dmcgrath]

Its a very cool bike start. One crit though, OUCH!!!
That seat brings to mind some very uncomfortable positioning, of
*ahem*
certain body parts.
Now I can see where you might need a higher rez, brake disc.
But the seat is too deep and it also looks a little narrow.
:beer:

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