First of all sorry, I’m sure this kind of question has been asked many times before but I was unable to find it on this forum. Also, after looking a lot of tutorials on YT, I still haven’t managed to find good solution.
By “good solution” I mean being able to create any kind of variation of this cut, knowing how to approach it and how to create good topology, without moving any vertice where it shouldn’t be.
As you can see, when I make this cut and apply subdivision surface, everything falls apart.
So, if you could just point me to some tutorial, which I believe exists, where this is solved, I would be more thank thankful!
Subdivision modifier will need supporting loops around the cut. The verts and geometry around the cut will no doubt need merging and cleaning up, then you can select all edges around the cut/Boolean, and make a chamfer or bevel, (ctrl b) make 2 or 3 segments. Then the sub d modifier should work better.
There are many different approaches depending on what add ons etc you use.
I forgot to mention that I’ve made quite a few loop cuts, somewhere around 14 if I’m correct, but result is still very bad.
Yep, I’m aware that verts and geometry around the cut need cleaning, but I don’t know how to do that correctly. I saw some even quite popular YouTube tutorials where people are moving vertices to merge them etc. Well, that’s not acceptable solution for me, because in the long term I would need this knowledge hopefully to edit some technical drawings. Therefore, being precise is very important to me.
So, my main goal is good topology with the understanding of the whole process.
Some quick fix with addon that will leave “good enough” result is not what I’m aiming for.
As far as I am aware there is always a need to tidy things up after making Boolean and such cuts, even when using add ons to help with efficiency in this area.
This guy has many tutorials on these kind of things. Hope it helps
Well yes, that guy is one of two “BlenderBros” that have a gazilion tutorials on YouTube, and I’ve even went through one whole their course, but to me it seems that they don’t really have strong enough technical background.
Their approach is more from the artistic side of someone who wants to make really nice looking and very detailed technical models. But unfortunately, in all their tutorials I’ve seen, when they meet situation like this one, they are moving vertices everywhere where they want, merging them however they want etc.
I mean, nothing wrong with that if your primary goal is artistic, but for me it’s important also to be very precise and not to deviate from original blueprints.
So, if somebody has some good suggestion in that direction I would really appreciate it.
Well, they are not “my blueprints”, but blueprints in general.
And yes, they in fact define where every vertex should be in this kind of edges.
For instance, if in the top view you have defined center of cut, and its circumference, therefore you have defined the position of all the vertices in that edge. At least in the top view.
Well, Cad software is definitely the best for this type of things, but it’s really overkill for me to go and learn totally new software just for one, or maybe few projects.
In fact, I don’t really need precision at the level of CAD software, let’s say that I need to make visualizations of some machine parts. So, they really need to be presented as precisely as possible, but again, not at the same level as CAD drawings.
The most important thing for me is to know how to achieve good topology on these kind of cuts.
When I did stuff like that for my 2 movies, I presubdivided the model to the resolution I know I would need in the final result and then made the cut. In other cases I would just not apply the boolean operation if I can, so I could go and increase the resolution for both the cutting element and the mesh itself if I want to. The collections are very good for it. And you can disable stuff from viewport and rendering.
This is a simple boolean operation with autosmooth at 10 (normals)
If you imported CAD data into blender you wouldn’t ever have “good topology” which I assume you are talking about quad modelling.
Yeah, but I think the idea is to have it as one model without the need for a modifier. And when a modifier like subdivision surface is used, so it would still look good.
Yeah, I know. That’s what I do most of the time myself. But it’s kind of a nice challenge to come up with a topology that can handle this shape with a subdivision surface modifier.
I came closer than the OP but there is probably a way better way to do it. And I am now also wondering what is the right way to do it. Like the right topology for it.
