Best tricks/programs for correct topology holes in hard surface

Support Modeling
1

There are a few discussions on how to do holes (circular, polygonal) into a single quad. However, the workflow gets quite manual and requires quite a bit of planning and edge loops if you are completing the following specific objective:

Repeating instances of a polygon hole into a surface that consists of multiple arbitrary quads.

I have attached a file that illustrates specifically what I mean:

I know how to accomplish this manually with a planned out approach by:

brake_disk_1.blend (910 KB)

  1. modeling the polygonal holes and extruding their edges to create the surrounding hard surface
  2. adding edge loops to the instance so that the repeating instances can have their edges bridged easily
  3. aligning it to the bridged repeated instances to the target mesh’s existing surface
  4. adding edge loops to the 2 meshes (the repeating hole mesh and the target mesh) so that they can be easily bridged/merged

My problems with this workflow is that it is quite slow and one cannot easily preview if they are satisfied with the result before embarking on the long and well planned journey (hence I suppose the evangelization of the workflow of sculpting and then retopology in Zbrush for hard surface).

(It is also destructive to the mesh in that it adds a lot of edge loops if you want to maintain quad topology but that is expected regardless of any sort of automation presumably.)

The faster alternative is to use a sculpting program and hope that an automated remesher results in a sufficient accurate solution, but I cannot imagine that this works 100% for game engine production quality models.

In the instances where presumably ZRemesher doesn’t output something useable, what is the best program (namely the one that has tools beyond basic vertex operations) with the best tricks,shortcuts,features for accomplishing this?

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You can do it the way masterxeon1001 does it with his Hard Ops addon. Don’t care about topology, start with an n-gon cylinder, bool the holes into it and set the edge bevel weight (CTRL+E menu) to 1. Then add a bevel modifier and set Limit Method to Weight.

holetopo.jpg1190×843 137 KB

But you have to keep an eye on the edges leading away from holes. They need to be as straight as possible so they don’t destroy your edges (red circle).

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I think this will be of much help .blend. If you want to know how to this is made don’t be afraid to say so, I’ll either post a video about it or type a detailed instruction.

4

Ctrl-Shift-B on selected vertices in combination with LoopTools addon Circle can make a gazillion of perfect holes in seconds. Pivot to Individual Origins and extrude, scale - easy to make enclosing face rings. So, shape your curve for the centers of small holes, Spin, select vertices, make holes.
If for some reason ngons are absolutely not welcome - manually finish one section and Spin again.

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