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View Full Version : Modelling fine tuning advice needed

odainton
02-10-2003, 06:17 PM
Hi all,

I'm modelling a car in polygons (having found NURBS a bit too much) and have reached a stage where I need to fine tune an initial model.

http://www.btinternet.com/~oliver.dainton/clam_poly.jpg

At this point there are some edges that I'd like to keep distinct and others that I've soften the normals to blend the edge out.

For example at the top right, the hard edge running back along the top of the wing won't go away with soften/harden, even though it's quite a small gradient change.

First of all, can someone explain why sometimes the soften/harden normals tool works and sometimes just leaves the edge as it is. Haven't quite got my head around how it knows if I want it softened or hardened.

I've also tried using the smooth tool which does a good job of larger more subtle areas but obviously also rounds off areas that I don't want rounded.

http://www.btinternet.com/~oliver.dainton/clam_smooth.jpg

Is there a way to selectively smooth areas or should I try using a completely different method to both of these to fine tune the model?

Thanks in advance for any advice, I've only been using 3D software for about a week so I'd appreciate any tips no matter how trivial they might be.

Oli
dmcgrath
02-11-2003, 07:01 AM
First of all, I recommend you don't smooth anything yet. Build the whole car and get all the parts flowing into each other as best as you can before smoothing. But if you want to, you can select faces and smooth them. Without having to smooth and entire object. It just becomes a real pain to do it that way all the way through your model.
-=TF=-
02-11-2003, 06:56 PM
you can also convert to subd and then crease the edges the way you like (soft/medium/hard).


lars
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