Hardedge and Softedge

Support Modeling
#1

I come from Maya and i miss a lot of features in Blender that makes Blender a little bit unattractive for me in modelling.

In Maya i can select an edge and click soft or hard. Same with points and same with faces.

Now i see there is in Blender a modifier “Edge Split” that makes such in dont want to say “normal manipulation” but it try to make something in this direction.

Maya has a different Mesh-Representation i think, so Blender is not able to do normal manipulation in this way like Maya do… or?

The problem is when i use the “edge split” he splits the edge (thats great) but other edges too (thats odd).

I have really problems with the always smooth or always flat look in Blender. How can i solve this?

#2

The edge split modifier has 2 settings, one automatically spliting edges by angle (angle that you can adjust) , the other setting will only split edge you manually marked as Sharp in Edit mode (in edit mode select an edge, press CTRL+E -> Mark Sharp)

So do not enable the “Edge Angle” setting in the Edge Split modifier but enable the “Sharp Edge” one, so only the edges you will mark as sharp will be split

#3

Wauuu. it works …that is very complicated in workflow.

I hope the will make it someday easier to use.

Nice!!! But it works.

#4

And there is the next problem. Instancing and Hard Edge and Soft Edge.

Ok i see i have to make the modifier on the instances too that the hard-edges will be shown too.

#5

I see this is all a little bit buggy.

  1. Some “Mark Sharp” Edges i cant clear after applying it!
  2. Some meshes has hard eges on places where they shouldn’t be! (dont know … instancing problem perhaps… i have to test it on non instancing perhaps too)

Ok i see my problem … i forgot to deactivate Edge-Angle on the instance modifiers. But 1) is still there.

#6

If you have applied the Edge Split modifier, you then have physically split the edges on your mesh, no amount of CTRL+E -> Remove Sharp will clear that because the edges are now really split.
You’ll need to select all W -> Remove Doubles to remerge the split edges

Basically the rule is to only apply the Edge Split modifier when you really need to apply it, if you do not absolutely need to apply it, just keep it in the modifier stack.