Hi folks,
Some days ago I’ve found out this tutorial on how to model a “Companion Cube” (yep, the Portal’s one) using Modo. The tutorial is available here: http://www.vertextutor.com/model-the-portal-2-companion-cube-in-modo/
The exact moment that make my mind blows up is: 06:15
You’ll see that the guy use a tool named “Axis Drill”, which give a really pretty nice result. I tried to make it in Blender using the Boolean modifier, but its really not the same thing…
Using Boolean is certainly one way to go. But as you found out it’s going to create hellish looking poly mess.
Here is different way of tackling the problem. The main problem is to create the circular geometry with transitional vertices located where outer feature emerge. Those features lines up pretty good with 64 sided circle. I used that. From it, I stated to extrude edges out and then started to fill in the rest of the area as you can see here:
When you are done with filling in the outer faces, the original inner circle faces can be deleted to create a hole.
Not fully related, but to use with booleans, the Bmesh limited dissolve function can be interesting to repair the topology horrors
By example, boolean can do problematic topology :
Select the messy part
Click on Mesh -> Dissolve -> Limited Dissolve
(note : in the Toolshelf operator tab, or press F6, you can modify a Max Angle setting to tweak the limited dissolve result)
It will result in with a Max Angle to 1 :
(Bmesh current implementation do not support fully holes in a face like this, there must always be a minimum of 2 edges to support the “hole”, and we see the result of the limited dissolve leaving 2 edges)
You can then tweak more easily to get the topology you want from there with the knife (K to cut or SHIFT+K to cut only the selected faces) and with joining vertices inside an ngon (key J)
While there’s no such nice tool, there are at least two i can think of being used:
tinyCAD addon and Witold Jaworski intersect.py script http://samoloty.wjaworski.pl/scripts-253_e.xml
This is tinyCad used
@ridix : i dont give the full meaning of what you wrote but i catch the general aspect and that seems like useful thanks!
@zerator : i already tried it and the result is pretty nice, however what i want to obtain is a bit far from a hole. is something more complex (as in the video tutorial), you should get the shape of a hole but in the mesh itself. Really like the boolean modifier does.
@Sanctuary : i didnt know this tool! this could be really useful also out of this thread! Big thanks for the tip
@eppo : actually maybe the best way or, at least, the most professional way to get this problem solved! I’m going to try both the addon and the script.
I’ll post every next step to keep you informed about the situation.
And again, thanks for your help.
Really nobody know a possible answer?
thanks!