I chose a Sony MiniDisc Player for my first project as seen below.
Hey,
I started with a square, extruded it into several squares. After that I Subdivided what I had to create more vertices to work with. My biggest concern is that it ended up really messy. I look foward to your advise.
Don’t use triangles, select everything and press alt+j, i think.
Instead of making such a complicated mesh, it would probably be far easier to use a subsurf modifier (that would probably mean: redo it all, but easier…)
What sandrew said. If you started again and used subsurf you’d get a whole lot of improvement.
Also, big tip, when making mechanical stuff like that, never ever try to do what you did, fusing it into one big mesh like that. Look at the camera itself, see how it’s made up of different pieces of plastic attached together? No-one would try to make a camera case out of one plastic mould, so neither should you. Make all the pieces separately, and it’ll be a lot easier and better looking.
Also, if using sub-surf, stick to quads as much as possible, triangles tessellate like crap. 
Thanks for the comments. I am mainly trying to build the body of the device and then add the buttons and other objects. But I see how it will be a whole lot easier to make seperate pieces and go from there. It got messy when I started building the sockets for the buttons and display. Is there a better way of making a hole without creating triangles and odd faces?
Well, the only thing I can think of for that is being careful with how you plan your mesh, like, see if you can sketch out a flow, first.
I agree with BlackBoe. It is important to plan out your mesh, so that you can get rid of triangles. Blender doesn’t like triangles, and they tend to screw things up.
Try retopoing it.
I extruded my square until I thought I had enough vertices to add the details. As you can see it still looks a bit messy, is there was to start out with a simple mesh and only add vertices where the details are in the mesh? Also I still ended up with some triangles when I had to add details after the fact. Some of them looked bad and some did not. I also found it difficult to stay away from them while editing my mesh, any advice on this?
Thanks for taking a look
Hi brianmg5,
From trial and error I’ve come to learn that less is more when it comes to creating a model. You need to save your work in stages and get the shape down in its basic form and then once you have it start to add detail one section at time. If it does not work go back to the basic shape and try again. Do not add more detail to your model until you have each section under control.
I tried to clean up your model but there’s a lot of flow issues. If you go into face mode you should be able to select a row of faces and see a flow around the model. Once you start to lose this flow problems start to occur. I’m not sure how you did the LCD screen part but I though I’d show you how I would do it. Have a go at it with the model I sent you.
Hope this helps.
http://uploader.polorix.net//files/3/Mini.swf
Thanks for the advice, its making this so much easier. Below is my latest, the digital display and the round buttons turned out great. I’m having a hard time with the rectangler buttons, they end up as ovals. I’ve tried subdividing but that created triangles that looked bad and I tried anding a line (cntrl R) but that went through the button to the left and messed it up. Any thoughts?
Thanks
Hey, starting to look pretty nice, there. Anyway, I dunno, but creasing[ctrl+e] might work. I mean, it can be a little dodgy, but it might be what you’re looking for.
wow this is turning out really great! looking foward to seeing more progress!
OK, So this is the finished Front Piece of the MiniDisc Player. Theres a couple weird bends in the top that don’t seem to effect anything, other than that I think its ok. Thanks for looking.
Looking better now!
Hey, there you go. You’re getting the hang of it. :]
Below is the completed mesh. I added some mats for fun. Just wanted to say thanks for all the helpful comments. When I put the rest of the mats in place I will post the final render.
Ok,
So i’m at the point where i am going to add the graphics to the mini player. I have read the online tutorial and haved played with UV Mapping a little but I can’t seem to get any good results. If anyone has any ideas of what they would do please list them. Quick question: If I crop the details of a pic and line them up with the UV Map of my mesh, do they distort if I were to render a zoomed in image of the detail?
Thanks
Brian
