Hi, I am learning Blender from 1 year and now I’m doing exercices with topology. I’m new on this.
This is a base to shape a pencil sharpener, making it oblique ecc.
I want to understand if this starting topology is considered nice or not, and if not, why.
On the red spots you can see an error that I noticed, it was an incidental mistake (I deformed the geometry of the circle…). But I’ve fixed it now. The only strange artifact that is bad here is inside the cylinder, in the second image (with subdivision surface modifier), even if I use “Make planar faces”. Is those shadow very bad?
The mesh has no tris, nor ngons, I checked with an addon called MeshLint and I did all the possible to fix them. :eyebrowlift:
Yes, as I said this is a base to make it. Please can you judge my topology? I’ve no clues about how it should be as perfect in this case (I mean, I can’t really judge by myself).
You can take what I say at face value. I’m not a professional. But in my opinion the look of topology is unimportant to the finished mesh. It’s how it shades that’s the most important factor, for personal work at least. If the mesh shades well and doesn’t exhibit problems like pinching and twisting I wouldn’t be overly concerned.
I’m not saying topology is irrelevant as a concept. It’s still a good practice. Especially if you need to make edits, or have someone else work with the mesh. And of course in character animation.
I think it looks fairly clean. Apart from the inside near the top. In the last image. If you get the edges flowing around that opening, it should improve it.
The topology should follow the shape. The shape is incorrect. There is no benefit in having the topology perfect in an incorrect shape like that and no reason not to model it correctly from the start. The terms ‘base’, ‘base model’ or ‘base mesh’ are used in different context. If you are modeling a character for example, you might have a base model of general shape modeled and then sculpt more detail onto it. However objects like pencil sharpeners usually do not require this two part approach. You should really fix it. If you insist, there are no big issues with the topology, however, there is a lot of unnecessary stuff there. You could try to remove everything that is not absolutely required to hold the shape. It might make sense to have bevel as a modifier instead of having it in the mesh so it can be adjusted later. You might want to try avoiding the need for subdivision modifier as well. There is nothing wrong with having it there, but you can generally avoid it in this kind of non-organic shapes. There is no point optimizing the topology before you fix the shape though. You should fix it or have it right from the start while redoing it.
But it means only to make the upper surface oblique and the hole narrower… I didn’t expected that the right topology for it would have changed. I can retopologize it again… Anyway, I’ve used at first boolean modifiers to carve the cube and then I retopologized it mostly with the straight Knife itself directly on it. I know that I could have used the Snap tool but it doesn’t matter now because I’m trying to understand just how to combine the edges on different surfaces. Just theory, rather than a professional real application.
So, it seems, from you both, that the topology is ok except for unnecessary loops, and for the “manual” bevel. Nice, and thanks.
I’m onto this from days, trying to understand the better flow still keeping quads-only with these circles and those half circle on the top, so today I wanted to know if I’ve learnt something and I’m on the right way, or not. My main issues were about those half circle on the top that always created tris, and I took some time to fix them without ugly results. So this one is my best effort.
topo is nice when using Sub surf and need for editing it some parts
the most important thing is how it looks in final render
and how close your shot is to the object !
does not really matter if you have Ngon tri’s or quads
if it render nicely then it is good
there are so many things you can do with topo and subsurf
I mean it could take a long time before mastering all topo possibilities / tricks
I am also considering that it is easier to model the right shape from the start, because later it gets unnecessarily complicated to modify it. There are no benefits apparent to me in doing it any other way in this case. Also one important thing in my opinion is that there is no ‘theory’. There is a lot of theory about technical stuff, about how data is stored and processed, about maths, about how one can manipulate 3d data and so on. Everything else is real application. Concept of ‘nice topology’ comes from the practical application, not from the theory. Whatever works is good. It just so happens that tidy loops, quads and as little of geometry as possible is easiest to work with and easiest to modify later if needed. It’s not because there is a rule in text book, it’s because you want to work this way to make your life easier. You do not need to be afraid of triangles if they work as you need them to as well.
I think your mesh will be perfectly fine, if you’re otherwise satisfied with what you have. The inside of something as small as a pencil sharpener is unlikely to ever be seen or noticed.
MartinZ gives some good advice for general practice. The bevel modifier will reduce problems with making changes later on, if you decide to. Subdivision isn’t really necessary or worthwhile on simple hard-surface objects that don’t require a lot of mesh or smooth curving shapes.
Once you’re finished and happy with what you have, I would try doing it all over again for practice, using a slightly different approach.
