Some shadow issues

Support Modeling
1

So im working on getting my 3d chops up to par and i decided to start trying to model real life objects that i have lying around for practice - up to now ive only done 3d models sort of ‘off the top of my head’ - making them up as i go. so anyways last night i grabbed my phone and started to model it. i havent spent much time on it and its going ok so far but there is one issue that has always been a problem for me with blender that i would like to figure out how to resolve.

heres a render of what i have so far:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b334/guitarmonky55/testrender.jpg

around the edges of where the screen is and inside of the little touchwheel i get those wierd shadow artifacts. they always appear in various forms when i start adding subsurfs to a model and sometimes i can get rid of them by tinkering and other times, like now, they just wont leave. this mesh has a subsurf modifier and most of the stuff there is set to smooth as well. what is causing this and how do i fix it? ive found that playing with the creasing values can alleviate it sometimes, but in this case it only lessens it a tiny bit and it wont go away.

also a question for later: my phone has the screen sunken in so to speak, with a clear plastic window overtop that is flush with the top of the phone. i want to replicate this so should i use a face with a material with ray transparency enabled or do i have to something additional, because so far its not turning out right.

thanks in advance!

2

i’ll leave that question for later :p.
uhm, i guess it’s probably not that you need to recalculate your normals?.
(ctrl+n in edit mode)
it would rather be that you need to set ‘auto smooth’ :wink: or something like that.

3

If Ctrl+ N doesn’t work try using a edge split modifier.

And for the later question. That should work, try adjusting the alpha values while having the RayTransp on. And try adding a hint of RayMir and if that doesn’t work use the alpha slider with RayTransp on. Hope that work out for you.

4

much thanks! that edgesplit modifier worked like a charm. and once i did the edgesplit i found that the clear window was looking wrong because of the shadow artifacts i had before. i spent a few mins after i got it working adding a few more small details, and im gonna try to finish it later tonight. heres what it looks like now:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b334/guitarmonky55/testrender-1.jpg

5

Yea glad I could help, looks a lot better now. Great work, looking forward to the next update!