select boundary edges... or hardsurface modelling workflow

#1

Hello there. I’ve been wondering about this for a while.

I think someone’s already put in a feature request for an overall bump channel and that MIB_round edges or whatever it’s called
which I second.

But in the meantime, how you all go about giving a nice bevel to a complex hard surface shape?

Say you’re modelling a complex window

You’ve laid the whole thing out without beveling edges as you go along. Is there an easy way to select only boundary edges to bevel? Beveling every single edge on the entire mesh seems like overkill. But if I could just bevel those edges which lie on the boundary of the mesh and which create thoes ugly hard edges I think I’d be golden.

Or am I go about this the wrong way?

Thanks so much!
s

#2

I’m not sure what you mean by “boundary edges”. Boundary edges are the edges e.g. marked in green on this picture: http://www.unwrap3d.com/u3d/tutorial_lscm.aspx (second one from top. Just a picture from a quick google search)

Thats not what you are talking about probably.

You want to bevel all edges that require a hard edge. No computer program knows what edges you want to bevel, so you have to select them by hand and bevel them. Or even better: use the new Pixar subdivs available in Modo 501 and simply adjust the edge weights of the desired edges. This way, no additional geometry has to be inserted.

#3

Right I gotcha…

I guess what would be useful would be something that selects only edges which are at close to 90º angles with their adjacent edges. Does that exist in any software?

like this:

#4

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