Hey I’m working on a beetle model and I get problems with shearing in trying to make the outer shell - I need to cut away space for the body in a half circle but every time I either try to remove faces or use booleans I get screwups in the mesh. the images are below. I’d also like a nice outside beveled edge around the hole. Am I going to just have to delete faces by hand using the knife or is there a way to clean up the mess left by booleans?
Booleans will always screw up your mesh, don’t use them. As for deleting faces, I don’t know.
I have never tried to use booleans. But I have seen so many horror stories about them in this forum that I dont think I ever will. I can’t really make out what part you are trying to recreate. Can you show us a picture of a beetle and mark the portion you are trying to get?
well, booleans are obviously out for such a nice curve/edge extrude I’m going for, I think pretty much I’ll never use them either after looking at some of the same posts… here’s the part I’m trying to make in the pic below: I’m pretty new to subsurf modeling in practice, however I have been reading a lot about it in theory and I have a good working knowledge of blender at this point. Do the majority of people use box modeling or how do most people start their models from scratch? this is my first big project I have the two pieces of the shell down pretty good, and I’m going to mirror everything once the body is done, then make duplivert/groups for the sectioned legs and antennii.
Any tips on starting the jaws / face would be much appreciated, I was thinking of box modeling using the extruded faces from the oblong body shape. would curves help me at all, maybe just for the jaws? what kind of stuff should I be thinking about if I wanted to animate it?
one more - how should I do the vertical ridges in the rear shell? should I do it with face loops and crease the geometry, or use a bump/displacement map?
