Edge Strength = Odd Results? (Even weirder with Set Smooth)

[Zeusbwr]

Ok, as you can see from the four pictures below, i have a … “mouth” that i want to have a sharp defined edge, and a nice smooth round organic head.

Now i understand at the moment its so wonderfully simplistic i can simply set to Sphere and it will be about as round as i can get it. But i am going to be using edge sharpness in one form or another on many of my projects, so i figured i’ll get it down now right? Now i took Greybeards subdivision tutorial, and in which he goes over edge sharpness in two forms. Simple vert adding (what i’m used to), and Edge sharpness.
Now the 3rd pic shows the edges i have at full edge sharpness, i had just the edges that were extruded in so that all the corners were selected and made to have a sharp edge, but it had slightly odd results and from my understanding to give an edge… or a vert, you have to select all of the verts poles to make them sharp also?

Like i said, iplayed around with the given edges, and no matter what it seems to make awesome results on the mouth, nice, sharp, but the mesh away from the mouth always gets a bit distored.

Also, as you can see from pic#2, there is a very ugly smooth problem. It looks like the normals are inverted but that is not the case, i set normals outside many times, and as you can see from one of the pics, it shows the normals pointing outward right?

A few small questions also while were on the topic
3.) Is there a way to see which edges have an altered strength? Usally you can see it in the mesh and whatnot, and just figure it out, but like the Draw Normals, Edges, Faces, ect. viewing options, is there any highlighted edge strength option?

4.) Kind of off topic, but is there a way to have one objects vertices spread across multiple layers? Like you can do this with multiple objects, but can i take a face, or set of faces, put them on layer 2, while the rest of the object is on layer 1? This would just be like hide and reveal but just a bit easier to manage.

5.) I am sure by now some of you recognize i am going for a similar robot from the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, dunno if it will be exact or an artistic recreation, most likely a bit off, but i love that little pethetic robot… though i have yet to see the movie… ANNYYWAY, The inside of the “Mouth” is like a slightly glowing green, how can i set part of an object to recreate light like that. Just off the top of my head, not that i know how to do any of thise, but i would figure you could A: make the mouth cast light, similar to some projects i’v seen people do. B: Make it recieve light from a green lamp? Well… actually i am quite limited on idea’s, i am sure i could figure out the lighting (though i do not know how to make objects emit light), my concern is how to make just the mouth emit the light? And its not a ton of light, but at the same time i dont want it to just be colored green. Is my only option to like duplicate the mouth, shrink a bit, move to a dif object, and use that? (Keeping the original mouth to make sure the lack of vertices do not distort the outside mesh?) Advice on this would be greatly appreciated also!

Thanks to any replies!

[Bagration]

I understand you’d just like to have a smooth sphere with a sharp creased mouth? It seems you have enough vertices to use Set Smooth alone, without needing to turn on Subsurf too. I tried to make the same model you have and the ugly streaks disappeared when I turned on both Set Smooth and Auto Smooth.

@Zeusbwr

3.) Is there a way to see which edges have an altered strength? Usally you can see it in the mesh and whatnot, and just figure it out, but like the Draw Normals, Edges, Faces, ect. viewing options, is there any highlighted edge strength option?

Do you mean by “strength”, edge creases? In the Edit buttons there’s a button “Draw Creases” under “Draw Edges”.

@Zeusbwr

4.) Kind of off topic, but is there a way to have one objects vertices spread across multiple layers? Like you can do this with multiple objects, but can i take a face, or set of faces, put them on layer 2, while the rest of the object is on layer 1? This would just be like hide and reveal but just a bit easier to manage.

As far as I know, unfortunately not. Can’t you turn them into separate objects and join them later on?

@Zeusbwr

5.) I am sure by now some of you recognize i am going for a similar robot from the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, dunno if it will be exact or an artistic recreation, most likely a bit off, but i love that little pethetic robot… though i have yet to see the movie… ANNYYWAY, The inside of the “Mouth” is like a slightly glowing green, how can i set part of an object to recreate light like that. Just off the top of my head, not that i know how to do any of thise, but i would figure you could A: make the mouth cast light, similar to some projects i’v seen people do. B: Make it recieve light from a green lamp? Well… actually i am quite limited on idea’s, i am sure i could figure out the lighting (though i do not know how to make objects emit light), my concern is how to make just the mouth emit the light? And its not a ton of light, but at the same time i dont want it to just be colored green. Is my only option to like duplicate the mouth, shrink a bit, move to a dif object, and use that? (Keeping the original mouth to make sure the lack of vertices do not distort the outside mesh?) Advice on this would be greatly appreciated also!

What should it look like exactly? Should it emit onto objects? Only the inside of his mouth?
If you have enough vertices, you could try Vertex Painting. (I couldn’t find tutorial for it, but it’s pretty straight forward.) If you aren’t going to animate the guy, you could add it in post-pro (select, gaussian blur).
Maybe the glow sequence plugin works better for you? (Look at “Isolating and glowing individual objects”.)

edit:/ Are you going for this look?:

I don’t know if it’s the robot you’re talking about, but it’s eyes don’t really seem to glow. A slight Emit value would probably do.

[Zeusbwr]

ya, well until after i posted, i swore the commercials looked like it glowed more. But none the less it looks like it “would” emit light, rather than being painted (if it were real, you know?)

And ya, i assumed emit sounded possible. But i’ll try the setsmooth, i relized i didnt have to use subsurf but i was doing so out of experimentality if you will, seeing as i havent messed with edge creases before and i wanted to learn because often i need to do things similar to what im doing now.

That and id like to stick to a pattern, seeing as the rest of him im most likely going to use subsurf to make it a bit easier for me.

Anyway, any advice on getting the ugly lines with subsurf and shadows(or whatever) when setsmooth is on; to disapear?

Id prefer to keep it subsurf, because like i said i’ll be using it for the rest of him and at the same time i’d like to learn. I spose worst case scenerio i could add verts, but i kinda like edge creases.

Thanks

[Bagration]

The ugly lines started to disappear when I turned Edge sharpness to 1.0 and Subsurf to 3. Still the edges weren’t razor sharp. As you said, you could add extra loops really closely around the edges you want sharp; it doesn’t seem like a “worst case scenario” at all to me.

I don’t like Blender’s Edge creases; they always look weird when you don’t crank it up to 1.0 and I feel like I’m losing control because I can’t directly see how sharp I’ve set it. I recommend you to make his head a separate object with no Subsurfing and both Set Smooth and Auto Smooth on. It certainly is less memory and processor intensive and you want that when you’ll start rigging.