hello everyone , Sorry for my bad english but please try to help me
I am very new to blender and learning hard surface modeling right now.
I saw this image on pinterest recently and decided to try to model it.
first I tried with boolean but it created bad topology, then I tried to shrinkwrap a plane and knifeproject it but blender came up with the error “cant apply modifier with shapekeys”.
So I just knife cut manually and it is looking good now ,topology is clean but in general how do we cut hole on curved surface? I am also thinking about bending a plane around my cylindar and doing a knife project.
Thank you
There’s no “in general”. Modeling is done for a purpose, the requirements from that tells what is required from the structure, and that then tells what options there are to model it. Also have to be very specific if it’s an actual hole or an indentation.
How you model either can change drastically depending on if it’s for still image, animation, 3D printing, game asset, other purpose. Even the forms themselves can limit the available options. How far is it from the camera, does the surface deform, is the polygon count an issue, does it need actual geometry, is the detail baked, and so on and forth.
Even if the requirements are very similar you might make the holes differently. Could use subdivision surfaces and make a hole through a sphere and not have much difficulties. But cutting few holes for windows on an airliner model cockpit the same way would fail miserably with subdivision surfaces. It’s because there would be more holes, surrounded by narrow window frames which need more geometry focused on very small areas. Subdivision will be very uneven when the rest of the fuselage uses much less geometry for the smooth and rounded surface.
Trying to model it as connected geometry would have few options. Either have hard time controlling the geometry around the window frames and then find a way to hide the artifacts, or add geometry and lose the benefits subdivision surface gives, or use the modifier stack to help getting the holes in place after the subdivision. And then decide it’s easier to make as unconnected geometry unless there’s a requirement to do otherwise.
Everyone does things differently.
What works the fastest for me so far is simply using the knife tool to cut out the hole and then delete the inner vertices, creating an Ngon and then inset it to create supporting edge loops before deleting the Ngon. Some vertex pulling might be required though to hammer out any shading issues.