So, I tried modeling an acoustic guitar, but I ran into a problem. I wanted the sides to be smooth, but for it to also have defined edges.
Below is my failed attempt at a guitar:
A: This is actually a hole in the guitar where I just deleted some faces and then moved the surrounding points manually into a circle. This made the area around the circle all wavy and scrunched up. Anyone know a way to put a hole in a mesh that won’t do that when subdivided?
B: This whole face should be flat. As you can see, the edges are rounded and weird. How can I make it so that this area is completely flat even though I’m smoothing out the sides?
C: Right now, the sides look okay. They are smooth like I want them. But this is because I subdivided the entire mesh, which screwed up the front. Is there another way to make the sides smooth without having to subdivide?
Click the ‘auto smooth’ button, next to the ‘set smooth’ button. Also, it’s better to make your mesh a nice even net of quad faces, rather than stretched out quads or tris. This is important particularly when using subsurf, and it also makes it easy to make loop cuts around the edges for good subsurfacing, as opposed to massively subdividing your mesh.
I found the auto smooth button, but I’m not sure how it works. Could I have a brief explanation? Also, what can I do to make a circular hole is the mesh without having stretching the quads or using tris?
To cut a hole in the mesh, simply delete some faces.
If subsurf makes this give odd results, then either a) use ‘edge crease’, with Shift-E, or b) add a couple edgeloops right next to the hole to accentuate it.
I deleted faces in the guitar model that I made, but this gave me odd results. Is there any way to create a hole in the model without having to delete individual faces?
I’ll try the edge crease, although I’m not sure what those do. And I’m not sure what edgeloops are or how to add them or use them; could you elaborate?
Exhibit B: But they have different topology. One is all quad-faces, and the other has triangles. One has edgeloops that follow the shape of the guitar, and one has edges running willy-nilly around.
Exibit C: The triangles have no idea how to behave when subdivided, as the following picture shows (subdivision turned on)
Render results:
Moral: avoid triangles as much as you can when using Subdivision. really narrow and pinched quads are also bad.
Umm, I didn’t really touch on your question that well, but what I kept the edges rounded in the demo to illustrate the smoothing issue, but yeah, select your edges (all the ones you want to be sharp) and hit [Shift-E] and move your mouse away from the pivot point to increase edgesharp.
You’ll notice that in my example picture, I also have cut additional edgeloops that run close to the original edge. This is also a way to make an edge sharper. I find this way more controllable, but increases your polycount.
the results of the auto smooth button cannot be seen in the 3D window, you have to actually render to see the result. basically, it makes sharp edges look sharp, based upon their angle. so, if an angle drops off sharply, it does not get read as smooth, but appears as a sharp edge would.
searching blendernation for tutorials could also be a good start.