Hello…
Which would be the easiest way to model a surface like this?:
I.e. circular/rounded at bottom, with this planar area in front, and cubic shape at top…
Thanks.
use boolean with a plane and the circular extruded object!
happy blendering
Ricky, why on Earth would you suggest that when there are so many threads here with people trying to figure out how to fix their broken topology caused by boolean modifiers?
The easiest way would be to subdivide a cube and get the basic blocked-out shape with just a few polygons, then use subsurf and an edge split modifier to get a smooth curve with a sharp crease. Add more detail as necessary. Don’t use booleans just to avoid work; you’ll just make more work for yourself later. Booleans look easy, but 9 times out of 10 they just make things harder than they need to be.
i use boolean many times and it works fine
but there is a way to use it
follow instructions on wiki page!
now there are more then one way to do this shape
so your free to pick a method and do it
here is example with boolean
this looks not bad at all wtih boolean!
happy blendering
I guess if you’re happy with that godawful topology, then sure, it works “fine.” Hope you don’t ever need to do anything with it that requires good topology, like UV unwrapping or animating.
I am not by any definition a skilled Blenderer (Or any 3D at all) But I figured it could be a quick little practice… a few minutes gave me this :
All I did was, starting with a cylinder, add a subsurf modifier then just began shaping it, double edge loops where you need it to sharpen it a little bit.
Also if anyone knowledgeable happens to stumble upon this post, I would like to know how creasing and mark sharp edge works, since I never really used these since they doesn’t do anything as far as I can tell.
Best Regards
//Morgan
I see where you are coming from, but it personally took me a few minutes tops to fix up the topology using a similar boolean operation. Trying to create that shape by hand using all the SUB-D methods I know of, I gave up after 15-20 minutes of fiddling. I could have done it, but it would have taken a while.
-After the boolean union, you’re left with a selection you can merge to a single N-Gon.
-Mirror across X-axis to save some work.
-Collapse edges to clean up the topology around the outside of the cut-out until you’ve got all quads and 1 central N-gon.
-Select the N-gon and Inset.
-Alt+S to scale along normals to give yourself a little bevel.
-Inset again to cut the inner N-gon in half.
-Collapse every 2 edges of the N-gon to create groups of 2 tris along the outside of it.
-Convert the tris to faces.
-Fill in the rest of the N-gon with quads – it should be easy now with the topology reduced. It’ll be easier still if you start by filling in a quad to maintain the central edge ring along the mirror line.
As you can see, it’s all quad and would be no trouble to UV unwrap (the animation bit is a moot point since a wooden dummy doesn’t deform, it bends on ball joints).
The topology could be improved, but I don’t see the point. Hopefully that helps.
One Knife cut on Cylinder, Inset, Loop Tools, n-gons and subdiv.
Creasing makes illusion by rotating normals on edge ( i might be wrong). Next, in some game engine or render planes are separated in this place, close together, while normal information tells how ‘sharp’ it looks.
Sharp is more like parameter for different modifiers which do the job. Again, better look in the wiki for all this.
Its really not a hard shape to make.
I start with a circle with 16 verts, then extrude it up to the break, scaling out also. (I actually made a basic shape to be my guide as I went up with the shape. A tapered cylinder.)
Then i extruded agan and only slightly pulled up in teh z axis. Then I deselected the far left verts, and PULLEd the rest upto make the angle,and scaled out as I went up. Then I deselecte the left verts and pulled up again. Then I just had to simply fill in the hole that was made in the side. Then I added a subsurf, a couple loops to make the sharp edges.
This isnt perfect, but less than 5 min to get here and it can be refined easily to meet the shape more perfectly. You get the basic principle here…
high poly solution: proportional editing using a grid as a flattening tool
(edit) whoops thought I was just taking a screenshot of the 3D window. sorry about that.
Attachments
Mark Sharp works only when you have an Edge Split modifier that has only the Sharp Edge option enabled (and the Edge Angle option disabled) when in smooth display
Creasing works only when you have a Subdivision Surface modifier.
Hello mates… Thank you all for the detailed replies. 
It’s really a pleasure to see so many ways/techniques of model this shape…
Just thinking, “Easiest way of model something” would be a great theme for a new forum section here on Blender Artists, it looks like it’s a great way of learning, what do you think?
Btw, this image is from a tutorial for Maya that I didn’t watched (premium stuff), here is the link: http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-maya/creating-and-rigging-a-non-deformable-wooden-character-in-maya-part-1-tuts-premium/
Again, thank you all, and more techniques are welcome… 
Tools are in active development so the “easiest” way might not be valid a very long time. People are not happy to find old tutorials and guides and even the finding part is sometimes problematic when the threads grow too big.
What doesn’t get old quick is topology and maybe there could be much more to put under that subject than what already exists.
there’s a lot of good info in this forum. it would be worthwhile for us to sift through it, and condense it into tutorials and sets of basic principles and modeling methods, including discussion of topology. we could even make it into a book, and use the sales to benefit the blender foundation.
(edit) chapter 1 might be something about tris vs quads, since that seems to be the most common topic.
@Modron: would you mind describing in a couple of words what exactly you did with that grid/cylinder couple? Most i could imagine was Cast modifier but that did not work well.
As to the triangles/quads - these are complements anyways; before transfer to game engine or renderer quads turn into tris afaik.
So if you go really low poly - tris, love modeling comfort - quads.
@eppo: back in the day some one dubbed it ‘modron tooling’ because I came up with the method originally. I am simply using the grid like a stamp, with proportional editing activated. I added the grid while in edit mode, so that it’s part of my original object.
so: add grid or other object in edit mode >> select vertex >> select linked vertexes ( ctrl L ) >> activate proportional editing ( O ) >> grab / move toward object to be affected. ( or scale or rotate ). it can be used in other ways, such as for animation too.
While i’m thinking about it, when you use boolean, a method that can help you to “clean” the horrible messy topology is to press X -> Limited Dissolve, then play with F6 to change the angle value until you’re satisfied.
By example a sphere with a cube used to cut it with boolean :
After X -> Limited Dissolve :
I obtain a ngon that i can now easily rework to redraw a cleaner topology than the boolean one by just selecting vertices and pressing J or using the knife (and with 2.68 it will be even better as J will be able to cut over existing edges to join 2 vertices, no more need of knife then for such case)
Thanks, Modron, my jaw hit the keyboard. No worries, no harm done to either ;).
And good idea of that sifting forum too, still it would take some time to get material done and that would be partly old news again…
Let’s hope forum stays intact and search functionality improve.
why you need such super clean topology if there are no derformations on the item in question!
for UV you can always use Project from view and it should work well even with tris or ngon!
but in any case always fun to see different ways to do things in blender!
happy blendering
Who said anything about “super” clean? I would settle for basically good. If you constantly tell new learners to do things the laziest, sloppiest possible way instead of encouraging and teaching good techniques, they just learn bad habits that cause more problems down the road. A lot of questions on this board would be unnecessary if people were more encouraged to learn good modeling habits.
Good topology is useful and necessary for more than just deformation. If you don’t understand that yet, you really are not in a position to tell people they can just ignore it. Shading is strongly affected by topology. Smoothing is affected by topology. The behavior of many modifiers is affected by topology. Your ability to create good topology when you really do need it is affected by how much you practice it.
And Sanctuary, your demonstration of how to fix boolean-generated topology is fantastic. All of these suggestions are great, and show just how many ways you can approach a problem.
I like the idea of a thread collecting these sorts of demonstrations, maybe instead of “The Easiest Way” it could be “Methods for Modeling Various Surfaces.” People could throw out basic shapes that they’ve encountered and then share their approaches to the problem. Then perhaps by way of cleanup, someone could curate those demonstrations on some other website and we could get a sticky thread that just lists them in an organized form so when someone comes to the forum wanting to start a thread titled “How Do I Model This?” it’s already there. :yes: