I consider myself a complete beginner though someone with a weakness for perfection.
I wanted to model our bathroom and thought I started with something simple in form - the basin. Here’s a reference image of that basin: http://www.ikea.com/de/de/catalog/products/90180799/. For the sake of simplicity I ignore the three holes cut in to it for now.
So basically it’s a cuboid with something of the form of pill substracted from it. This is very easy to with the boolean modifier, but then my sense of perfection comes into play and I want the model to look realistic in the renders: It should have all the rounded edges along the edges of the cuboid and along the cavity.
Subsurf or beveling modifier works for the cuboid alone, but when the geometry gets complicated by adding the cavity I’m stuck.
I guess there’s a clever way to model the basin but I’m too unexperienced to see it.
Anyone willing to help? Maybe there’s already some kind of tutorial for it…
I would not use bevel modifier nor subsurf. I’d do everything in editmode instead. Try using tools like bevel (CTRL+B), extrude (E) and inset faces (I).
I had a go at making the basin, I’m not an expert so dont now if it the right way but, it seems to work.
I started with a sphere (16 segments 8 rings) Delete the top vertex (pole). Make the top into quads by joining edges and loop cutting to fit. Then select all, Alt+Shift+S (scale to sphere to make the top rounded). Next delete the bottom half of the sphere and rotate all 90 degrees, now delete the top half of what’s left then add a mirror modifier and move the mesh outwards to establish the length of the basin hole. Apply the modifier and then bridge the edges of each half. Then add some lop cuts across the join to make the resulting quads as square as possible. You should now have half a pill shape. Select the upper edge loop and hit E, then rightclick, then alt+S, and scale this extruded loop outwards just slightly(this will effectively give you an outer edge loop for the rim of the basin hole.
Select the new edge loop and hit Shift+S (cursor to selected), whilst still in edit mode add a plane and scale it to be slightly bigger but the same proportions as the ‘pill’. In face select, select this new face, and hit X>faces only. Now subdivide this empty plane (ctrl_E) to get enough vertices to roughly match the hole’s. Next start making quads by joining the pill to the new mesh. I found it better to join the end pieces first (because they matched well after subdividing) then get the rest to match by subdividing edges and moving the resulting vertices around a bit, just remember to make quads. Now add a lower edge loop for the rim of the basin. So now you should have 3 loops making up the basin edge (no creases, this is why there was the extrusion earlier). Then you just need to extrude the back edge to for the overall shape of the basin. Add some edge loops along the outer edges to make the corners more angular.
For the holes I selected 4 faces then extruded and scaled them in to size. Then extrude into the model to form the hole. Now hit X and delete faces. You should have 2 square shaped loops made up of 8 verts each. Select 1 loop and hit Alt+Shift S (scale to sphere), do the same with the other loop. Go into face select, and selct the whole inner faceloop by alt-Right clicking on an edge the runs 90 degrees to the direction of the loop, Extrude and alt+s just slightly to form an outer edge loop for the hole (same reason as earlier, just done in a different order). Add an inner edge loop to the hole.
When I extruded the first outer edge loop, I for some reason used just S (not alt+S) that’s why the verts dont line up along those to loops. But when you do it it should be fine. Hope that explanation makes sense, and remember it could be all wrong
I Started with a cube, added subsurf level 2 (ctrl+2) and applied it (alt+C -> mesh)
deleted 3/4 of it and moved that piece in edit mode to the side
Next mirrored that to the other side: 3D cursor as pivot (period), selected all, duplicate (shift+D), cancel movement (esc), mirror along X (ctrl+M, X).
Connected those pieces: Selected two edge loops from both and then W -> bridge edge loops
I then added a cube in edit mode (add to mesh),
scaled it and positioned the top flush with the top vertices. Used vertex snapping (ctrl+shift+tab) for that, moved along Z, and holding down ctrl pointed at target vertex
Then I added two loop cuts on each direction of the cube to get the sharp edges and corners
I planned to keep the most of the geometry on the top side but it needs vertices, so I used Sanctuary’s trick to do just that while maintaining quad only topology (right viewport):
I loop cut (ctrl+R) the cube in half, then selected the largest faces on it and inset (i key) it once. Then immediately inset it again with inset individual (i key twice)
Next I selected those two faces again, grew the selection once (ctrl+numpad_+), deleted faces. Then selected the edge loop from that, W -> smooth a few times (shift+R to repeat), scaled it a bit excluding Z (shift+Z)
(left viewport): There were some concave quads left after that smoothing and scaling so I changed the transform orientation to normal (alt+space -> normal), switched the pivot point to individual origins (ctrl+period), selected edge loops in edge select mode and scaled them along normal Y (S, YY) to get normal quads. Didn’t do as good job as I should’ve but doesn’t matter.
I then added loop cuts evenly to have equal amount of vertices on both edge loops to get insides of basin and the outer edge connected, then selected both loops and W -> bridge two edge loops. Then slided edges around that to sharpen the edge on the top side
All that was left to do was to inset, looptools -> circle and extrude all the holes
I also did an alternate version where the top faces are left untouched from loop cutting enough vertices to make the connection between the top surface and the inside piece, but I did reduction on the outer edges.
Here’s the file. If you want to see the subdivisions, uncheck simplify from the scene properties. basin_ja12.blend (1.07 MB)
