Smoothing (sculpting and editing) and the multiresolution modifier

Support Modeling
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Recently I was working on a project that seemed like it would be a simple thing to do, but I ran into unforseen problems and issues I didn’t understand.
I needed to sculpt a bean, like a navy bean or a kidney bean. Easy peasy, right? Well not as much as I thought. I was given a profile views from front and side. I started off with a subdivided cube and I moved points around to conform to the profile views. I decided to use the multiresolution modifier and the sculpting tools. I subdivided four levels. I did not check “sculpt base mesh”, I just started sculpting on level four.
One problem that I ran into was the corners of the cube. I had triangles, which of course don’t work well with subdivision surfaces. I have eight points in my mesh, (poles?) where I want to have a smooth surface, but I have little bumps that can’t really be smoothed away and seem to get worse with more subdivision. I can’t see a way around this. Is it even possible to have an object made of all quads? I can’t think of how it could be done. Starting out from a cube seems to be the way most people start modeling organic shapes. Is it possible to eliminate these bumps? That’s problem number one.

Number two, is the smoothing algorithm not doing what I expect it to. Sometimes, smoothing results in a less smooth object. This is true of the smooth brush in sculpt mode, as well as the smooth vertices command in edit mode. When I use a smooth modifier at extreme settings, it seems to explode the mesh rather than smooth it out. I want it to work like my hands do when I’m actually sculpting clay and I rub my hand over the surface.

Also, something I don’t understand is when using the multiresolution modifier and sculpting, is the sculpt data stored in the mutiresolution modifier? If I turn it off, the base mesh hasn’t been modified at all, and if I instead use a subdivision surface modifier, there is no sculpting. What exactly does the “sculpt base mesh” check box do that’s different from not checking it?

In my first version, I sculpted lots of detail, which the client said they didn’t want, but the liked the overall shape. So, I had to try and get rid of the detail without changing the shape very much, which was difficult because the shape was stored in the modifier along with the details. I tried to smooth out the fine details, but it was difficult to do without changing the overall shape in the process.

I guess I’m done with this project, but any advice?

2022-04-11
2022-04-111919×1037 370 KB

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I personally wouldn’t start from a cube- you could use a UV sphere, switch to sculpt mode, and make one drag out and up with the grab brush (with symmetry on) and you’d have a kidney bean shape. That’s not really helpful now that you’re done, but the best way to deal with the sharp corners of a cube you were talking about is to not use a cube. No sharp corners that way :slight_smile:

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But, then it’s all triangles, right? Or is it quads with triangles at the poles? and wouldn’t that give me pinching somewhere as well?
As you can see, it has a very specific shape, and I want to be able to edit the overall shape, and also the fine details, which I had to get rid of in the end, but I didn’t know that when I started. And, I started off doing polygonal modeling, not using the sculpting tools. It was important to have nice smooth curves. I didn’t want to have accidental lumps and bumps, which I wasn’t really able to avoid anyway.

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Oh, I remember now what I ran into. I had added geometry to be able to add the hilum and the micropyle and folds and cleavages, but then, when they said they wanted it smooth and abstract instead of a realistic bean (it was too graphically sexual looking), I wanted to get rid of that geometry, BUT, of course editing the geometry completely messed up the sculpting in the multiresolution modifier, and now I had big mess, so that wasn’t an option. I ended up smoothing it as it was, and I created another version with simplified geometry, and used a shrinkwrap modifier to conform it to my original. So complicated for such a simple object.

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IMO after knowing it should be a simple shape the best strategy would be to abandon the complex mesh and start again from scratch.

Sounds like you did a great job of modeling a bean. Too bad the client didn’t want that detail.

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Thanks. The shrinkwrap modifier did the trick. They had approved the overall shape, so I had to try to save that, while eliminating the fine details. Yes, a UV sphere would have eliminated all but two of those bumps. That would have been better. Unfortunately they started cutting it over the weekend, so, no more changes.