Hey everyone!!! Some of you may already know about this “trick” but for those of you who are new to modeling this is very handy if you want an object to look more realistic. The trick is to bevel. This may sound simple but it is very important. If you want something to look realistic you must bevel all 90 degree angles. In real life almost every 90 degree angle has a bevel. If you look at the edge of a table it has a bevel, even if that bevel in only 1mm or smaller. If an object has a perfect 90 degree angle it would most likely cut you. Another reason why you should bevel a model other than the above reason is because of lighting. When I model the sets at work I have to bevel all the edges before I give it to the texture artists. A beveled edge will catch light and add shadows. I don’t know if this makes a lot of sense so I did a search and I found a great page that says basically what I said, but it has pictures. Here is the link.
correct all that you said…the problem in Blender for beveling is not the esiest thing to do…but it may be resolved by using subsurf and extruded faces…but not very much …
Like anything else in Blender it’s all there it just takes more steps to do. extrude and size. Not fun when creating the top of castle walls and such. This is the biggest reason I donated to the project. I came to believe a long time ago that this is the only way we would get focus on the modeler is by going open source. NaN was too busy trying to go 500 directions at once. Hope was worth all the money I donated.
Can I suggest you change the title to ‘a general modelling tip’? Coz\ I’ve been modelling for 2 years now, and I still love picking up little tidbits like that
ok I changed the title. Now in blender it may be done with subdivision. But its still the basic idea. I do all my base modeling with wings and I use the bevel ( well, not all my base modeling. I use lightwave at work). Thats why i didn’t mention the subdivide, a subdivided edge is still a bevel. The pics on the link were done in Animation Master which has no bevel tool, its a spline based program, but the rounded edge is still called a bevel. But trust me, if you spend the time to bevel the edges it will make the model look a lot better, and it doesn’t have to be a massive bevel, even a small one will help.
for a sharper edge cube keeping low polys, dont subdivide till its sharp, subdivide twice and move the lines of vertices near the corners… the more concentreated the vertices are at a corner, the sharper it will be :o woot!
im not sure who it was but i told a few guys about these exact beveling tips on msn messenger group conversation …
Another way is to rewrite some of the rendering code. It’s fully possible to let the renderer apply those effects that would be the result of fine edge beveling. I seem to remember that the LightWave rendering engine uses some kind of algorithm called ‘micro-beveling’. That way the geometry doesn’t have to include the actual… emm… stuff.
But of course, we do need a real bevel tool and a knife as well! A fork could also come in handy sometimes. And spoons, lot’s of them.
I guess beveling can be a problem in some kinds of modelling. I usually extrude or add single vertices and then it isn’t really a problem (don’t think I’ve used the cube primitive more than once or twice).
If I want a beveled cube (and if I’m not using subsurfs) I’d make a corner triangle and spin dup it to the four top corners, make the faces between them. Then mirror it to make the lower part and put in the faces in between.
I know it takes a little longer (not much if you know what you want to make), but it gives full control of the model.
I think a rolling pin would be a good tool to have And maybe a chainsaw or one of them big medieval claymores for the rough cuts.
I don’t know why people think beveling is so hard in Blender. Most of the time I work with curves to create more complex shapes and beveling a curve is only a matter of setting the Ext2 value. After that, using Alt+C to convert it to a mesh (if you want it as a mesh) is easy. Using a method like this, you can model something like a tire (which MUST be beveled) in less than a minute or two.
Beveling only gets harder when you want to bevel none flat objects. You can only use the curve trick on two-D objects.
An example of a difficult to bevel object :
for example your computer mouse. Take a good look at it. You will see quite some ‘90-degree’ corners. (eg : where the mouse buttons meets the lower part) These parts are full 3-D, and can’t be bevelled using curves.
It would seem that someone would have written a python script to do this to a mesh. But the last time I looked, no one has. It would be a neat tool that would let you enter the corners degrees and needed bevel resolution and viola!, a beveled object.
Of course, sometimes you do want a sharp, sharp edge on one part of your model, and a beveled edge on another. In that case the tool would be a real headache.
i’ve always like the lightwave bevel tool. Its fast and no numbers, and typing in numbers seems to slow modeling down a bit. Now all we need is CTRL-W to weld vertices.
That a lot of steps just to weld two vertices. it would be easier if it was just a matter of selecting the two vertices and simply pressing W or CTRL-W.
scaling them together and remove doubles is very quick and it’s not really needed alot (at least not by me, but my modelling “techniques” may be a little suspect ;))
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Hey guys, MORE POSTS LIKE THAT!!