Tracing Gone Wrong

I’ve looked all over and could only seem to get horrible tutorials or outdated ones. I tried tracing something so that I could later Boolean difference the following from a cylinder for a logo. I did what I was able to figure out to trace it and the problem I think is there’s far too many planes when I try to boolean it and Blender crashes.

I’ve tried solidifying it and stuff to make it solid, I’ve even tried scaling it down really really small but Blender still crashes. I should also note this is the very first thing I’ve ever worked on, so I’m new to Blender.

Well since you have over all layout already, you can just trace it and make the face as you fit.

http://i1135.photobucket.com/albums/m626/cabby24/Blender%20Pics%201012/profile.png

Remember, computer cannot read your mind, and do the work for you. You need to tell it what you want.

It looks like what you did there was simply go over what I had and just not use so many planes? I’m alright if I have to go over and re-trace but if there’s someway to use what I have to Boolean difference this from a cylinder that would be awesome.

Edit: Playing around a bit and managed to merge out some of the squares on the plane that really served no shaping purpose. I’m hoping that I simply had too many planes and that doing this will help.

Considering the amount of parts you have, you should prefer the solution of retracing that ridix suggest, not only it will be the quickest method (as boolean the objects one by one, then apply, then delete the duplicate to avoid crashes would take a very lot of time), but by retracing you’ll be able to make the whole thing becoming one object without all those separated parts and the horrible topology .

After that if you need quads, you can always extrude the whole model to give it a depth and give a try to the Remesh Modifier.

Alright after some playing around I reduced the amount of faces by 900 of the 1500 faces there were. Also I was able to do the Boolean without a crash, however when I set it to difference and selected the raptor and symbol as the object it says “Can’t execute boolean operation.”

When you say topology, I don’t actually need what you see, I just need to subtract that from a cylinder.

Alright I’m now retracing it as ridix showed. Once I’ve got it traced how do I go about making it so I can boolean difference it from a cylinder?

Edit: I’ve got finished using the method ridix showed but when I try to use Remesh it totally destroys what I made. I tried a couple extrude/boolean and that still didn’t work although there’s far fewer faces on this now.

I’ve finished it and have just the outline, but I extruded it and used the remesh you suggested and it completely destroys it.

You should upload your retraced .blend so someone can give a closer look and so help better on this problem.

This is what I want the final to look like basically: http://www.mediafire.com/?mhb0s0jes9uu8ly
And this is just the raptor: http://www.mediafire.com/?fca3lpauzldgssq
Although I’ll probably redo the entire thing to get placements of stuff correct and generally make it better. But knowing how to properly trace the raptor and the bottom of the logo for later would be great.

For the tracing, make sure there are no overlapping faces like this :
http://i.imgur.com/C2qaJ.jpg

as it will create some problem for the boolean step.

Now try this :
In Edit Mode, select your whole traced model, and extrude it so it has a depth.

select it all, press W - Remove Double in case of a duplicated vertice problem
then press CTRL+N to recalculate the normal, you don’t want inverted faces/normals when trying to use a boolean.
(you can select Textured view, select Smooth to see if there’s an inverted normal, they allow to see them quickly)
get the model back to Flat.

Now always having the whole model selected press P then select “By Loose Part”. Because the booleans do not like much models that are a combination of separated parts but are joined as 1.

So every loose parts of your model will be its own object.

Add a Cylinder, resize it how you need, and add a Difference Boolean (or whatever kind of boolean you need) to the Cylinder, and at the line Object, select one of the loose parts that are now separate model, once done, click Apply and delete the loose part.

Do this one by one for every of your separated objects, in the end it should work without crashing or destroying the whole model.
http://i.imgur.com/Hb3MU.jpg