After many attempts and many tutorials on making holes on curved surfaces, I can’t seem to figure out a way to make good topology for the screw holes on the edges that are both tilted and beveled. I’m going to 3D print this piece and would like to learn how to make something like this properly.
Any good tips or know some tutorials that might have a good solution?
Here are few more images that show the shape better
Master Xeon 1001 has a couple of videos on good topology, e.g.
If you make the hole as a low-poly mesh like in your picture, there is basically no way to do it perfectly, as this kind of shape will always have at least a slight imperfection in the shading (though that might not matter as much if you are going to print the model).
The closest I can get it to looking perfect is like this:
The trick is to get edge loops in both directions, adding extra horizontal loops where needed instead of adding vertical ones. That way, the vertices of the bevel can remain at equal distance, which will avoid some major shading issues.
There is a way to make it look a lot more perfect, which is to make to model subdividable. To do this, you need to add extra edge loops on each side of every hard edge of the model, so their shape is preserved:
That looks really good! Thanks for the great tips!
How did you do the hole to match with the bevel so well?
Depending on your situation, there are 2 ways:
-If the bevel already exists and its scale is important
Create a cylinder to be used as the hole. Adjust the number of sides and the scale of the cylinder so it gets as close as possible to the existing edges. Then use the boolean tool to carve the hole and then you can merge the vertices that are close enough. Once you reach the area where the hole’s vertices fall in between 2 edges, you start adding horizontal loops to connect them.
-If the size of the hole is more important than the bevel
Create and roughly place the cylider that will become the hole before you do the bevel. Then, you can create the bevel and adjust its size and the number of edges so it matches the cylinder. Then, you can refine the placement of the hole and use boolean to carve it in.
Gotcha! Well explained! I was not sure did you have them exactly aligned and I was wondering which method you used!
Thanks I’ll make a new version using these learnings!
