Smoothing and smooth angle transitions

#1

Hello… new to Wings 3d here, and I must say I am loving it so far. I come from an animation master background and anything that is as fun to use for polygons as AM was for patches then thats saying something :slight_smile:

I’ve been going through Paul’s excellent tutorials here
http://www.geocities.com/paulthepuzzles/spoiler.html

But I’m a little confused. What is “mechanical bevelling?” It seems he is turning one edge into three adjacent edges, but when I perform “bevel” in wings I only get two edges.

Even so I’ve been playing with auto-smoothing and different values and I think I’m slowly getting the hang of keeping edges hard. I just have a basic modelling question…

The model I am trying to make has a lot of 90 degree angles, but there’s no sharp corners at any of the vertexes, instead there are short, smooth transitions (like caulk).

I’m trying to model two cubes welded together with a smooth transition like this, but I can’t figure out a way to get a nice even curve between them when smoothed. Can anyone offer any suggestions?

#2

try this…

start with a cube primative.

inset the face you want to extrude.

extrude the face you want.

select an edge at the joint of the two boxes you have now.

press “L”

RMB => Extrude=> normal

move your mouse a little bit. you should have 3 edges now.

depending on the definition you want, select the middle loop of edges on the “caulked” or rounded area from you picture. and extrude => normal again. things will look a little funny now.

select the top loop of edges you just made with the last extrude. move it up along the central axis you extruded the inset face out of. RMB=> Scale Uniform => adjust it till it looks right to your eyes.

do the same thing with the bottom loop of the newly extruded edges, only move it down, and then scale it.

when you have the rounded transition you were looking for, you’re almost done.

to maintain the “hard edge” but not razor’s edge look, select all the edges of the the joined boxes except the smooth transition area. then RMB =>bevel => press TAB => in the numerical box enter 0.001 now, no matter how many times you smooth the box, you’ll have crisp edges and a smooth transition between the boxes.

there might be a faster way to do that, but that’s what i just figured out.

i had some help by reading thru the Theoretical Sub-D thread ( http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40373 ).

Skip

#3

another way to do it would be:

create cube

inset a surface

extrude the inset face

select the edges at the joint of the two boxes, RMB=>extrude, immediately LMB.

move the middle of the three edges up a little bit.

select the lower edge of the beveled surface, press g

then press c

scale uniform this new loop to where ever you want it.

you can repeat this again, selecting the lowest edges on the transition area. and scaling it to achieve the profile of transition you want.

then again, select all the edges, except those in the transition area, bevel, TAB, 0.001. and smooth til you’re happy.

this method ignores having to use scaling and moving on the additional edges you create. you only have to move once. after that is just continually halves the verticle distance between the loops on the way down.

#4

Thanks for your help Skippy!

My results are attached, looks good to me.

Now all I’d love to know is how to turn one edge into three along two faces like shown here

http://www.geocities.com/paulthepuzzles/spoiler.html

Beveling works to keep edges hard but I’d rather keep the 90 degree geometry… just haven’t found the easy way to do this yet.

Thanks again!

#5

Ack! Nevermind. I turned off my proxy and another whole half of the page loaded up - complete with instructions on how to do the ‘mech bevels’. Don’t I feel stupid… :slight_smile:

#6

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