How to create a smooth face in this horrible render?

Artwork Works in Progress
1

Hi there,

I was wondering if you could help me figure out how to create a smooth surface (with bevel) out of this design, so I can 3D print it.

I am fairly new to 3D design and when I imported this file from illustrator (and gave it thickness) blender created this normal out of it, which doesn’t show up great in the render and creates an impossible face to work with.

sl logo problem face
sl logo problem face1913×1002 155 KB

I thought to remove the front and back face and create a plain normal, but this doesn’t help the render and I don’t know if that will create problems for the 3d printing since a normal doesn’t have 3- 4 points of connecting. (I cannot add another image unfortunately to show this, but the render shows up exactly the same)

Another option is to hand trace it with a bezier curve, but it won’t be as precise. And when I try to bevel it, it doesn’t seem to work (too many points?)

Any suggestions how to fix this or what steps to follow?

Thank you already for the time!

Renee

2

I would take the form ( outline ) and export out of Illustrator as an SVG…that will give you a smooth curve to import into Blender…then you can convert that to Mesh and extrude etc…

SVG-Import
SVG-Import1202×911 316 KB

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That does work! I can now insert, but the symmetry from the mesh is still the same mess (as in the picture until I delete the face and fill it with a plain face. I can insert before creating a plain face, but afterwards it seems like the face is floating and not connected somehow. If I delete vertices by distance it seems to not be able to select the whole row. Will this cause for problems once I want to 3D print?

and after the render I still see lines?

render logo
render logo1913×986 117 KB

So something still doesn’t seem right?

4

convert to mesh
convert to mesh1920×1009 171 KB

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Capture
Capture1916×1003 133 KB

6

This one looks OK, is it the one you say the faces seem to be floating? Will this mesh work for what you want? You can turn on the 3dPrint addon ( included) and it will check your mesh for possible problems and mark areas that need to be fixed…

For the 3d print, you want to make sure the mesh is manifold…( No loose parts, no holes, etc. and no duplicate vertices/faces or edges.

If you can send me the SVG and Ill check it.

PS… How did you add the surfaces in the first render image after my post?

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I added the surface by extruding and inserting.

I think the floating happenend once I deleted vertices and some overlapped, when I went a step back to repair this, this didn’t happen.

This is the SVG
SL Logo

8

Ok, that makes sense, make sure to test it with the 3d Print Tool-kit…I’ll look at the SVG here in a moment as I am in the middle of a huge Node Group at the moment…

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As soon as I replyed, went for a coffee, and realized the problem…you imported as a filled SVG…That’s where the problem is…for a filled SVG you have two sets of vertices, one for the Curve and one for the Fill (as you can say to place fill above or below the curve )…

So I converted it to a mesh…and then deleted the faces, selected all, and merged and the result was…

Problem
Problem706×747 176 KB

so…remember only send a VECTOR Curve -UN-FILLED :slight_smile: :wink: :wink:

also if you look, I missed a vertex in the upper right…there were 3 more hiding there!!

I would do a cleanup and see if there are any loose bits in the mesh…

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10

I completely overlooked this reply and had to step away from the project for a second. Thank you! That is great advice that I was never ever able to figure out myself! Looking so much better!!

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