I’m modeling a car - my first in Blender. Everything is going well, except for one part - see the marked area on the pic.
I’ve tried using edge reinforcement, marking sharp, setting sharp to 1, edge split.
See the screencap from Blender - 1 is an example of what I’m aiming for, 2 is what I get after reinforcing edges and 3 after cutting in extra edges vertically and horizontally - almost works, but not quite. If I go this route it will either cause a huge imbalance in the distribution of edges across the model, or I will have to terminate the extra edges near the insert - problem is there are no flat areas near the insert, so I’ll end up with pinching.
In Hexagon. there is a function to exclude parts of a mesh from smoothing, but I’ve not found this in Blender. What I have been thinking of doing is to complete the model, leaving a hole in that area, apply the subsurf, then model the insert in.
Blender having so many great functions, I though to ask the experts first
Set the edge sharpness of the perpendicular edges. You have the edge rings on #2 set as sharp (creased) but do not have the edge that go into (y axis) the mesh. You need to set them to sharp to pull the edges up more like #3. It will take a bit of adjusting as 1.00 is too harsh. I hope this helps. Let me know if you need the .blend edited.
Thank you for the advice - in the meantime I have been experimenting and found that it seems correct practice to set the sharpness on the subD cage? This would be the equivalent method of Hexagon’s “breaks” tool. Pretty much the same function, but Blender has weighting on the tool.
Should I also set sharpness on all the edges inside the extrusion, or only on the main edges?
Interesting comment about 1.00 being too harsh - i’d appreciate it if you would edit the .blend file so I can see what setting you use:)
Here’s a pic of the model - just experimentally set to subD level 2 - I don’t like going to that level of smoothing in my models, but just tried it out. Working reasonably well, except for the dings where I terminated the extra edges too close to the extrusion.
Something I found experimenting on a cube with an inward extrusion is that it gives exactly what I’m looking for when set to flat shading after applying the subD - I dont suppose there is any method of doing that to a portion of the mesh, other than separating it from the main mesh?
You have what’s known as a ‘pole’ right on your corners, this is a vertice with any other than 4 edges connected to it. Poles belong on flat or hidden away surfaces, but if at all possible they should be eliminated. I think in your case you shouldn’t terminate the extra edges, just carry them across to the center.
Thank you for pointing that out - eliminating the pole smoothed that area out nicely. Oh, the shame of it - I’m pretty anal about poles, ngons and tri’s, don’t know how that slipped by!
Quite strange - even with the uneven distribution of main edges, I get a perfectly even distribution when subDed - Blender must have something in the smoothing algorithm that Hexagon doesn’t have.
Something that’s bugging me - I’ve searched high and low, must be in the preferences somewhere, but I can’t find where to change the thickness and color of verts and edges so I can see them more clearly against my reference pics.
In the File -> User Preferences, in the Theme panel, click on “3DView” and look for the “Vertex” / “Vertex Select” / “Wire Edit” / “Edge Select” to change colors of selected/unselected vertices and edges :
If you scroll down, you can even change the vertices display size in case they’re too small for you.
