im trying to improve my surface modeling ability and i wanted to know if people had some tricks for how to better model very smooth surfaces? I can place vertexes and faces in what appears to be the right spots… but obviously - it takes a bit more than just following the lines… there is some techniques for knowing how to make your faces all smooth and nicely formed…
when I look in the modeling viewports with shaded rendering it appears ok… but when I got to do a final render - its quite obvious that my faces are not smoothly placed…
How does one learn better surfacing technique? can anyone provide some guidance here?
for instance if you look at the roof I think i got it almost right… but it was easier to do.
The grill however - I obviously screwed up… it looks like a wrinkled mess to me in the real render - but its hard to tell its off via the modeling view windows. Can you see what I mean?
Instead of flat shaded mode use the ‘set’ smooth’ setting. To set which edges you want t keep sharp try using the edgesplit modifier http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Modifiers/Mesh/EdgeSplit
There is also the option to use a subsurf modifier to get real smmoth geometry.
One other point, use quads rather than triangles, especially with the subsurf.
I thought smooth shading just has to do with the shading type and would not be fixing my problem in the choice of how I set my vertices or set my triangles / or quads? Smooth shading seems to be more just about how it chooses to render that shape and not really about how that shape is set…? when i set it to smooth it still looks wrong - just in a different way. doh!
What Im asking is more about how to properly build surfaces that are always nice and smooth…
for instance last night I tinkered and found the Nurbs surface - which appears to be one of the ways that one is supposed to build a curved but very smooth surface…
but I think that even beyond that - by knowing how to properly place your vertices and extrude your edges you should be able to make smooth surfaces.
Ill keep trying… thank you for the input! You have given me a few more things to look at / think about.
