Hi,
I started work on a Aston Martin DB5 and I think I am coming along quite well, apart from these to parts where the topology feels way off. Any hint on improving the topology in the marked areas and the model as a whole are greatly appreciated.
In the circled area on the left, maybe you could move that vertex up along the edge loop a bit, and add another edge loop up there to make it all quads. Hopefully that makes sense (and is accurate).
Little update.
As always: comments more then welcome especially about topology
@TARDIS Maker
I’m sorry, but i can’t quite follow what you mean there.
Okay, I’ll try to draw on your image to explain it better.
For the red circle on the left, I think what you can do is make two cuts. First one completes the edge loop running behind the head light down to the fender. The second one runs along side of the head light toward the back of the car.
For the red circle on the right, the angle of the image hides some of the edge flow. I don’t know if it’s just me, but having odd numbers of vertices along a circle always gives me problems. If the circle below the headlight was six-sided, it might help with your edge flow. Otherwise, that’s a pretty dense area as far as detail is concerned so you might benefit from adding a few edge rings and loops to help give enough geometry to handle all the detail.
Thanks for the paintover. Looks much better than what I currently have.
No problem =)
Feel free to post any other problem areas if you have any!
Small car but real beautiful. For the topography just try to keep it clean. Not jumbled up and make things into different objects, like the hood cover, make that a separate object. Door as well.
Things that might help are more operation shortcuts and modifiers.
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For areas where there are too many vertices and were it needs to be smooth select the vertices manually or by alt+click on an edge, press X (delete menu) and then press on Edge Loops. It’s all be gone. Dissolve Vertices can help too. Thought try to keep things in quads.
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For straightening line segments select some vertices, press S for scale, then an axis–press X, Y, or Z, and finally 0. This will make them straight.
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The Shrinkwrap modifier can help a lot, instead of painstakingly moving vertex by vertex you can make one object stick to another. But obviously you don’t want the whole thing to get glued, you only want the one side, use the vertex group option for this.
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For making cuts the Boolean modifier might seem like a good choice but in reality it’ll just cause havoc. The way I like to make an opening in a mesh is by making some loop cuts, select the faces, extrude, then right after scale it down and then delete only the faces.
- To make things thick use the Solidify modifier. Extruding a whole section is not recommended and it’s going to be hell to uv-unwrap later. Along with this modifier use another called Edge Split. This just makes the edges more nice and sharp and defined.
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Instead of adding more and more edge loops use the mean crease, select an edge and press shift+E and drag, this will make the edge more defined.
Biggest thing that will make the difference is separate objects. This is the way to go for better topo.
Hope it helps. Feel free to ask any questions.
Above is a good post, I would like to add a couple things/give my opinion. Many of these things though depend on the person, and style you are going for.
Have your topology be straight and preferably even before/without the subsurf. subsurf will change/move the topology, but if it is good before, it will be good afterwords.
I don’t use the solidify and edge split modifier combo most times, it adds extra faces where you don’t need them, and the edge split gives too sharp edges, and depending on where they are located, isn’t the best option. (if you are going for a highly detailed/accurate style and not game model, and the cut is in a prominent place.)
Again depending in the style/detail, but be careful where you use edge crease, depending on your mesh density it can give poor looking edges. Again, depends on person and style. In main areas of the mesh, I usually end up with a loop cut.
If cutting holes with inset gives bumps, see this post:
For the last two, these options will give denser results, but better meshes.
