I’m trying to emboss text onto a metal disk with a boolean union, but the text has many verts along the bottom edge where it meets the disk that need to be dealt with before I apply a subsurface modifier, as you can see here:
So I was wondering how others with experience would handle this. I was even thinking of just leaving the text as a separate object, since it looks not so bad as it is here:
Any thoughts?
You’d have to do a considerable amount of work on the text mesh itself to get it to a stage where it could take a subdivision surface modifier. Then you’d have the problem of joining a relatively high poly object (the text) to a relatively low poly object (based on a 32 vert circle).
You could either leave them as separate geometry but joined into the same intersecting object, and if using Cycles, you could use the Bevel node in the material editor to make a nice transition between the two at a shader level).
Alternatively, you could just get rid of the text as an actual object and emboss the text using a normal or bump map.
Thanks for the ideas, @JohnMalcolm1970.
I’m not sure what you mean by “joined into the same intersecting object”. Do you mean a third intermediary object?
I’ll try the bump map idea.
I meant that if you are using the Bevel node, which works only in Cycles, the text and the circular object would have to be the same object (joined with Ctrl+J) for the Bevel node to work properly. In the example below the example on the left has two objects intersecting. The bevel doesn’t appear at the intersection. The example on the right is the same but the two cubes were joined with Ctrl+J. The intersection is bevelled.
I had no idea there was a bevel node.
So how do I add that in when I already use the Principled BSDF node’s Normal slot for bump mapping?
The Bevel node has a Normal input. Route whatever you were using before into that.
Oh yes, I see the input node there. Thanks!
