I’m attempting to model a simple 3d key using a reference picture, and I can’t figure out how to deal with this one little problem…I’m modeling the key itself by inserting a circle and grabbing its vertices to the outline of the key, then giving it a face, extruding, subsurfing, setting smooth…and it’d be fine, except that the key has a hole in it on the bottom, and I’m not sure how to cut that hole into my extruded key (before subsurfing/setting smooth).
Delete all the Faces in the flat part where the hole will go (finger pad), Select the Verts around where those faces were, hit E to extrude, enter to cancel extrusion, Alt-S to Scale inwards along Normals. You may have to build some faces to close it all up inside the hole by selecting 4 verts and pressing F. You can cut a set of faces to delete with Shft-K in Edit mode with Edges you want to cut selected.
When you’re done try making the same key with Curves (Bezier or NURBS). If you add one Curve inside another it makes a hole.
delete all faces you have
at the handle where if covers the hole of the key.
than select the CV which outline the handle hit extrude and scale only along 2 axis!
this means hit s for scale and than shift x or y or z depending which axis you want to lock and scale down to create the wall thickness.
than all you need is to select cv from top and place them at the right spot so it follows the shape of the hole of the key.
tada you are done.
also try this out.
draw a circle
dont leave edit mode
draw another circle bigger or smaller.
than select both rings and hit shift + f!
it filles the space between the rings. thats what flight was talking about!
K well I got the hole working…now the subsurfing looks horrible…I think I’ll just make different parts of the key and then put em together.
Thanks for the help.
If you are going to use subsurfing you should have three edge loops defining all edges. If you have the verts of triangles on an edge your subsurfing will be ugly and even “set smooth” will not look good. Start with the hole shape and extrude outwards to shape the key head. Then extrude the key head depth and finally the shaft.
Nice work GreyBeard! How did you do that? Did you use a plane, a cube or circle? GreyBeard how about posting the blend file so Dudewithasock can see what you did.
Oh I know how to do it alright. I’m just waiting for GreyBeard. It’s like poker, you always let someone else show their cards first. But this ain’t Poker, we’re supposed to sharing! This is Blender. Come on GreyBeard show us your cards, sorry I mean your Blend.
Dudewithasock you can do using a Plane, a cube or even Bezier curve if you wanted it to, it’s really up to you. But what I was getting at earlier was, see how GreyBeards faces on the Key image are nice and neat, well that’s what I meant. That way you don’t get weird deformations when you hit the sub surf button.
If GreyBeard don’t give you a Blend file by tomorrow, I’ll send you a blend. Probably when you see the blend you’ll say that’s so easy, why didn’t I think of that. But it’s always easy when you know how.
Ok lets say GreyBeard used a cube to model the key, which he subdivided twice using the w key. He would end up with area highlighted in yellow.
Then in edit mode, he spins the top vertices on the cube 90 degrees. See the green highlighted area.
Then he did the samething for the bottom part of the cube. See Blue highlighted bit.
Now he’s got a half moon shape, he duplicates that (red area), spins it around and joint the 2 halves together and removes doubles.
Lastly see the purple bit, he selected those eight vertices and extruded out to form the rest of the key.
That’s one way GreyBeard could of done it. The other is using a plane and adding k cuts. and following the practically the same method as above.
But more importantly, see each face on the model is a square. Blender likes square faces and dislikes triangle faces. Dudewithasock, on your first model you have stretched triangles and they don’t look good when rendered. It’s neater to have square faces.
That sorta makes sense…but because of the smoothness being where it is on the key I think I’ll just use Bezier curves, I’m a little more comfortable with those.
I didn’t keep a blend file – just made the picture and dumped it. If you watch the following video it should show you the skills you need to make your key.
Anyways he’s explaination is more detailed than my. Dudewithasock show us how you went.
It’s like poker, you always let someone else show their cards first. But this ain’t Poker, we’re supposed to sharing! This is Blender. Come on GreyBeard show us your cards, sorry I mean your Blend.