So I have modelled this section of a mocha pot and need to add a hole to it.
For that I want to add a few loop cuts just to this area so that I can model the hole.
But adding loops breaks the smooth flow of the geometry and introduces hard eges, even selecting all the faces and subdividing it doesnt work.
Im attaching pictures to show what I mean.
I know there is a way to make the loops strictly follow the surrounding curves but i cant remember it please help.
The first picture is the default pot, I want to add edge loops but keep this shape
if you want to subdivide your object and don’t want to sharp the surfaces, use Subdivide and in the Operator box (bottom left of the 3D View) give it Smoothness. If you dont give it smoothness the new edge will appear exactly between the 2 existing edges and it will tend to flat the surface, while smoothness will use the normals to interpolate
using smoothness introduces unwanted issues in the top of the pot which is easily fixed by scaling to 0 along the z axis, but it does end up introducing way to many faces. Isn’t there a way to do this with just loop cuts along the faces where i want the hole? (Tried smoothness in loop cut, it didnt work)
When you press Ctrl-A to make a loop cut, you have the ability to slide the edges before you click the mouse button to set it. It won’t change your geometry.
I found out a neater solution to fixing the main problem (shading artifacts on a low poly mesh) for which this question off adding loop cuts was initially raised. Posting below what I did if anyone wants to know.
This is actually thanks to Josh Gambrells video and worked flawlessly for this.
I had already (thankfully) created the hole in the geometry on a duplicated object.
So all I had to do was add a Subdivision Modifier to my original geometry (the one that did not have the hole cut in) and then apply a data transfer modifier to the Geometry with the whole (Target Geometry)
Then on the target geometry I turned on Autosmooth (angle of 30 is fine) selected the Original Geometry in the Source Object in the Data Transfer Modifier.
Then did the following
Select (click the chekbox) Face Corner Data
Select Custom Normal
In the Mapping drop down selected Projected Face Interpolated. (this worked for me if it doenst for you you could try one of the other options)
This solved the entire shading issue perfectly! I then just applied the data transfer modifier and was done.
I love blender
The original question was about keeping shape though. Fudging shading may indeed hide surface artifacts, but it won’t correct the silhouette. A more appropriate solution for this case is provided by the EdgeFlow add-on:
i was taking about my issue only, the reason I was adding edge loops was to make the mesh more dense so as to hide shading artifacts. For me the objects silhouette was fine, I did use the edge flow addon but it didnt give me the results I was looking for. The data transfer method, however, did.
Instead of adding more edges manually, I just used one iteration of the subdivision modifier to get more geometry to make the hole and then after cutting it out used data transfer to fix the shading.
