So I’m relatively new to Blender…as you will soon see. I am creating a conical spacecraft, similar to the Apollo command module from a cone. I cannot figure out how to create a hatch with rounded corners.
I have the cone mesh generated, and a “rectangular” area pulled out of the mesh to serve as the hatch and this hatch now has angular corners. I want to put a nice smooth radius on all 4 corners. Problem is - the hatch is curved in the horizontal plane and linear in the vertical plane, and overall, the hatch is on an angle formed by the sidewall angle of the cone.
I tried the mirror modifier, but since the “vertical” mid line of the hatch is on an angle, none of the mirror planes actually mirror about that mid line.
The other issue is if I manually try to create the curve, it’s not clear how to keep the vertices “in-plane” with the adjacent areas of the hatch since the hatch is curved. I figure manually moving vertices will lead to a mess.
select the edges you want to round off and use the bevel tool on it. I think W accesses the menu. You can control the type of bevel over on the left in the toolshelf before finalizing the operation by left clicking.
Some quirks: bevel wont work on plane which has no thickness however if you add and apply Solidify mod you can select corner edges and bevel them. It is possible to even get away with some ngons but on the capsule itself it is better to go without them so you will have to add some loops which will cause slight distortion on surface - it wont be round. Use LoopTools -Circle and Space on loops or parts of them to correct that.
Ah, this is good - thanks for both responses. I had tried to use the bevel on the hatch, but as you point out, it does not work without thickness and I was holding out on using the Solidify command until I got the general shape (mostly because of fear that I’d not be able to handle the manipulation of the solidified mesh).
You have also answered my back-of-mind 2nd question about the hatch hole in the capsule wall. Loop Tools, circle and space is something that I’ve not come across yet, so I’ll check that out.
