I’m trying to model this rectangular indent into this curved surface. I think the topology itself is good? The problem is that it’s very hard to get the transition from the indent to the curvature to look smooth. Any idea what techniques I could try? I’m on blender 4.0, open to use addons 
The topology indeed looks good (at least, on the top section), the problem seems to be that the curved surface is lumpy and uneven.
Something that could help is the “loop tools” addon. It comes with Blender, you just need to activate it.
This addon adds some tools that work on one edge loop at a time. Its relax tool is especially useful and can help make the edge flow smoother.
Hey, I use loop tools relax a lot but it was hard to understand how to apply it here because of the poles
I would relax each parallel edge loop in sequence going in one direction, then do it again in the other direction. The 5-poles don’t really matter for this process, I would still relax the edge loops that pass through them, like this:
Maybe they will need a bit of manual sliding afterwards to re-place them, but that should be easy.
The only area to avoid would be around the hole, as you have a very specific structure that shouldn’t be disturbed.
If you are using relax already and that’s not enough, you might have better luck with the retopology workflow.
1- Start by modeling the shape of the object as accurately as possible at any cost, without caring for topology. You need booleans and voxel remesh to get the shape right? Go for it. At this step, getting the perfect shape is all that matters, even if the polygons are messy
2- After you have the perfect shape, you can use it as a template for retopology, rebuilding the model with a clean structure. That way, you can care about the edge flow as a separate step from trying to shape the object and you can shrinkwrap the final model onto the accurate shape you were going for.
Yeah working on a remesh would have made things simpler probably if the remesh was good. I tend to avoid it on hard surface because I’m not very good making exact shapes in sculpting, I only do rough concept shapes with the intention of making them exact on the subdivision stage if I do hard surface. I selected everything except the hard edges and did Smooth Vertices + Alt S scaling and relaxed it like in your picture and it looks a lot smoother now, I also had to add some more loops in the middle. Not perfect but not a disaster anymore at least. Thanks for helping out
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i think maybe the best would have been to save a version of the mesh without the hole, and project on that when making it
In my opinion, the simplest thing would be to prepare the various primitives, perform Boolean operations and clean up the geometry.
There’s no need for projection or retopology for a simple object like this.
It’s very useful to know how to correct a surface (and you need to practise doing it), but it’s even better to avoid it, don’t you think?
Not really any need for a boolean, either ;).
Boolean operations make it very easy to search for a shape and give you a real surface intersection (not an approximation).
I think it’s a shame to do without them.
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For some transitions it is easier to thing about for example the proper division of a cyclinder to match the to-be-connected object to make a “clean” topology than to use a boolean and then clean it…
…of course you then can see the problems and choose a better suited topology for one of the objects.
So… it depends on the context… modeler skills/experience vs. model complexity…
…or using CSG/MDF …
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If you don’t think about the number of divisions for the cylinder before performing a Boolean operation, you’re not going to get anywhere.
No wonder some people think this method creates too many problems…
Sometimes it’s even interesting to replace the cylinder (or any circular/revolution shape) with a curve + the Screw modifier. In this way, the number of divisions remains adjustable.
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Boolean is great for making something quickly.
If the remesh function gets better, I think I’ll just use Boolean 
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Well… if you do have a look at this thread:
…then you will see that there are hundred of solutions which are by far cleaner than any boolean and cleanup can do… because the guys over there just do this for years (and decades) and learned to model from the ground up before any “fancy tools” and some are masters of topology.
And for some more complex model a “simple boolean” just will give you more headaches…
…but your suggestion to try/fiddle with the best matching divisions with some generated geometry is also a nice idea.
But discussing this further doesn’t even matter because the thread was marked as solved even if the original questions asked for techniques (plural)… 
so it ends up in : whatever suits you.
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Ohh yes 
The good old italo and italo coop movie times… everything just worked… and was fun…
Linking a 187 pages thread and leaving like a boss.
What can I do? 
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