CGTalk - Hard edges with sub-d, completly wrong approach?

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Xphile1999

01-11-2011, 02:26 AM

Hi all,
Modeling is one of those things that I really need to beef up on. Since so many people use polys these days instead of NURBS, I'm trying to focus on them. Modeling a metal plate for my telecaster project at first seemed like a really easy task. But the holes in the mesh have created some problems. I have started by creating a flat plane in the shape of the plate, then used the chamfer vertex tool to create polyz which I deleted to represent the round holes.

I used a couple edge loops to create square hole in the middle, or what I hoped to be square. You may not beable to tell from the attached pics, but there is a edge loop very, very close to the hole.

This plane needs to be extracted in Y to give it depth, so all of the holes are going to become soft, curved holes as apposed to a sharp edge like a drill press would create.
I was hoping to used sub-Ds so that I could increase the detail to get a camera close to the model. Am I going about this completly wrong? Should this be a non-smoothed poly object with lots of polys to maintain smoothness near camera?

I have attached 2 screen caps that I hope will demonstrate my current progress. Oh and the application is Maya, and I has hoping to avoid the Maya specific "Make Hole" tool, so that these learned skills can transition from package to package.

Many, Many thanks!

Psyk0

01-11-2011, 05:36 AM

Here's an exemple (http://www3.sympatico.ca/psykopat/lnkz/plate.rar) of how i would do it.

I just started with circles and moved the edges to form the outher part of the rectangle, then i added the rounded ends of the plate, everything is still a flat plane at this point.

Once all the details were done, i added a shell modifier (it's essentially a 2 sided extrude) finally added support edges to keep the edges sharp where needed.

Xphile1999

01-12-2011, 03:42 AM

Thanks for the reply, read about but never used shell modifiers, but great idea to use them here!

I see that you used a good number or triangles in your model. In my model I was trying to keep quads, I should have mentioned that in my first post. I know that triangles will not fall victim to bumps in a mesh when they lie on the same plane. Is there a way to that? Still trying to tell myself that I should be able to make perfect meshes out of most models.

Thanks Again!

Psyk0

01-12-2011, 05:24 PM

Triangles are acceptable when they are on a flat surface, or anywhere else, just as long as they don't create undesired artifacts (and unfortunately they do a lot). Keeping quads will lead to a much denser mesh on some occasions so cleaning up as you go along is a good idea imo.

I highly recommend watching Grant Warwick's hard surface modeling tutorial:
http://vimeo.com/10941211

Good luck with the project.

Xphile1999

01-13-2011, 03:33 AM

Great Video, appreciate the help!

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