Here is the final result after joining 2 cylinders. I used a Boolean modifier set to Union. I wanted to ask if this is the best way to do this, as you can see the resulting faces by the join, or is there a more accurate and better way to do this?
The object I’m building is is supposed to be a shifter, possibly for a throttle.
A second unrelated question is, can someone recommend some tutorials on making small gadgets like this. I mean has anyone out there put together a series of tuts like that? I’m looking to make a control room with chairs computer screens and so on or a cockpit of some sort, as on a ship or spaceship and I did not find any real projects like that out there, except finished images.
Akk, no thats a horrendous method. you need to make a circular section within the mesh that you want to join the objects to. add loopcuts around the mesh with ctrl R so you have some vertices around where you wish to join the handle then delete those faces and poke your stick into the hole and connect the vertices by selecting them one pair at a time and pressing f.
there are simpler ways, but being simple they are way more complicated to explain!
I kind of follow you, but I’m not sure I understand. Since I am working with 2 cylinders, I can’t figure out how I would make a circle perfectly to go around the cylinder. So basically, the exact object in my first post is what I’m trying to get at. Can you maybe show an example or direct me to a tut on what you mean? I’m very very interested. I read somewhere that I want to keep as many quads as possible, but I found that to be very difficult so far.
This is what I got so far from your comment. It definitely is better. I know what you mean by horrendous now! But I have an important question. Please look at image 2. I was able to select edges that go around the circle, to move the dominant points to the correct level at an angle. I just did cursor to selected followed by scale to 0 to the cursor. Those last 2 points go in either too far or too high. This is because the edges I use are not exactly at the same level as the vertices. Is there a good way to align those to the plane? I don’t want to move them freely, since I’m trying to be accurate by snapping to the correct position. This is in case, I have dozens at different levels. How can I do that.
yes you pretty much got it, sorry i couldnt make picture like the other guys. i would add one mire loop right in the center to catch that last vert. i’ll try and post an image soon, my comp is busy at the moment though
All the advice is generally good except no one mentioned “bridge edge loops” from the mesh/edge menu which has the option to create new set of faces or merge the loops at a prescribed point in between, probably the way to go if you have your geometry already, but it’s better practice to grow the handle out of the head or vice versa.
You should understand that N-gons are generally detrimental to good modeling and smoothing. Your example has two Ngons where the handle attaches, try to get rid of them by putting the loops inside the attachment area that are now outside being useless.
DruBan, what I did after you mentioned the ngon, was subdivide the vertices at the top and added an edge to the middle vertex of the ngon. Is this sufficient or do you have something else in mind? It looks the same as yours, except there is only 1 loop for the circle instead of the border you have around yours. That is why I’m asking about what you did. Is there a simpler way to stay away from the ngon when I start out?
The best way to eliminate ngons is not to have them in the first place. Don’t use subdivision on one or two elements. Use inset or add edge loop instead.
The process I used was: add 3 edge loops horizontally and one vertically and position them symmetrically. Choose the center vert and dissolve it, and use looptools circle to even out the polygon. You now have an octagon to extrude - I used a couple of little steps to put a containing loop at the edge (against too much blending). Then every time I wanted to change dimensions on the handle I would stop and extrude again, scaling etc.
