Oh nevermind, I got it.
One way is to have an edge loop following the cut line, bevel it a bit, then maybe extrude in and delete faces to have the bottom part separated. How you block the daylight going through doesn’t matter much
Ok, this doesn’t seem to work on my updated blender file. Maybe I just don’t understand correctly? I am having trouble understanding edge loops, I know what edge loop select is, but not anything else.
Attachments
untitled.blend (766 KB)
An edge loop is a continuous and connected set of edges that go across a junction of 4 edges (a vertex with 4 edges connected to it). So,
- This edge loop consists of 4 edges and it stops between the triangles because there isn’t a 4 way junction to go across. Vertices on both ends have 5 edges connected to them (5-edge pole) and the edge loop stops on those
- selected edge loop goes across whole mesh part
- this one goes around the mesh and comes back to itself so it’s a continuous loop
- this one is not an edge loop but selecting open edges, like edges surrounding a hole, as edge loops are allowed for convenience reasons
The mesh parts have edge loops all over the place, I just selected few of them.
Not sure if you gave the right file but by the looks of it, you have ignored my suggestion to not have subdivision surface modifier visible on the editing cage while building the model structure (last button on the modifier header). It’s your choice of course but I didn’t suggest having that off just for the fun of it but to save you hours upon hours fixing the mess you will make with that.
What I meant was having one edge loop aligning with the cut line
Once you have that, you could
- Select it
- Bevel (ctrl+B)
- Switch to face select mode, extrude (E) and shrink the faces in (alt+S)
- Then you can delete those and work on the bottom part, then sharpen the edges on both. There will be a gap because the faces were deleted but if you need to close that, could use whatever method is the quickest. Could for example extrude the edges from both parts and W -> bridge edge loops. It probably won’t have equal vertex count to have a neat connection but doesn’t matter much.
I exaggerated the gap for the screenshot
Top viewport, modifier visibility settings: The subdivisions are very predictable on a quad mesh so it’s not necessary to see the subdivision result while building the model structure. Could do that by going to object mode to check (tab key) once in a while.
Bottom viewport: The default is to show both the editing cage and subdivision result but that’s not always a clear option. Could make it more clear by using a matcap from the 3d view properties.
But it is necessary to see the editing cage
From left:
- subdivision surface modifier visibility on the editing cage. The selected vertices won’t move closer to each other or the center vertex
- subdivision surface and the actual editing cage
- removing doubles, which is a common thing to do, merges the vertices at the center and there is no clue why it did that since the vertices seemed to be far away from each other and the center
- and the result which looks nothing like what was edited. Worse still, the actual mesh now has four triangles and two severely non-planar quads
That was when controlling 12 vertices. Having 200, or 2000 to juggle without knowing where the vertices actually go and a horrible mess is pretty much guaranteed.
Ok, I took your advice and turned off the subdivision surface modifier while modeling the mesh. I don’t know what I was thinking before.
How would I get the details on the selected faces? I guess I should extrude in, but how can I get the shape of the groove without messing up the surrounding geometry?
Attachments
I found a reference image much more accurate than my previous one, so I am basically going to remodel from the beginning. I think it will come out much better this time.