Challenge:
My four main corners are still a bit rigid and I want to make them more roundish, while keeping most edges looking sharp. What do you recommend I do to accomplish this?
I was thinking about using normal maps (very, very new to normal maps). However if I choose to play in VR, maybe additional geometry would be ideal? Should I start over with a new model (making me sad), or is there an efficient way to start splitting up some faces but not others? So far I can see splitting up the faces and “eyeing” the movement of vertices to make some edges more round.
I’ll keep playing around and will post something if I come up with a good plan. Thanks for your feedback!
To get the corners looking more round, you can add more geometry or add a subdivision surface modifier. Then to get the other edges looking sharp, try then adding an “Edge Split” Modifier. Make sure that they are in the correct order as well as this will affect the outcome. Let me know if this helps
Blender_Mania,
Thanks for the great feedback. I started with modifiers, but they seemed to cause all sorts of extra curves and other undesired distortions. After reading up a touch, I do agree though that additional geometry is needed.
Currently I’m going about this a different way. It’s been time consuming, but I felt these game tiles needed some love as they are the most important visual of the game. For better or worse, here’s what I’ve done so far:
Another challenge is going to be remaking the top face (UV mapped separately in another object). I’m wondering if there’s a way to select vertices from multiple objects at the same time?
If that’s the basic shape, you could achieve the results you want in a few minutes with a cube, sharpened edges, inset and some bevels on the corners. There’s no need to sub-divide like that. Unless I’m misunderstanding what you’re trying to do.
selected one larger face, shift+G -> area to select similar area faces around, inset (i) in and added depth by holding down ctrl. Could also inset and then alt+S to add the depth
Second:
Selected corner edges around and ctrl+b to bevel
Third:
selected and scaled edge rings along X and Y (S, shift+Z)
selected and added edge bevel weight of 1 (ctrl+E ->edge bevel weight, mouse move) on the corner edges
added bevel modifier with weight limit, adjusted values
The reason to add geometry in the first place is the silhouette which smooth shading and normal maps wouldn’t affect
No. Could join the objects together (ctrl+J) and then edit. Shouldn’t need to have separate objects, but could separate selected geometry to its own object with P -> selection.
