Cleaning Topology for Smooth Problem

# 1 13-10-2011 , 11:01 PM

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Join Date: May 2011

Posts: 39

Hi guys,

I'm trying to smooth out a mesh after having used boolean operations to cut cylindrical holes into it and am having a bit of trouble adding edge-loops to stop the mesh from collapsing in on itself. Here are some shots of what I'm trying to do.
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The best I've managed to come up with is plastering the mesh with edge-loops and trying to connect the boolean cuts to the nearest vertices. It just doesn't work for me as it makes the mesh really messy and when smoothed creates strange artifacts. I'm sure there's a standard proceedure for smoothing a boolean'd mesh, I just don't know it :'(
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Thanks for any help you guys can give me user added image

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# 2 13-10-2011 , 11:43 PM

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Join Date: Jan 2004

Location: Michigan, USA

Posts: 2,998

The boolean approach works best if you are not intending to smooth. If you want to smooth it is still an option but you will have to do some cleaning up of the topology.

I think for this surface a more efficient approach would be to start with a 6-sided cylinder and build the geometry for a single hole. Then duplicate that tile to create the rows and cols of holes. Which is an idea I have proposed before - Start with the holes and then build the surface around them.

Here is a video I tossed together. Sorry for the length, I rambled a bit and was not keeping track of the time.

howto make a surface with holes - YouTube

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 14-10-2011 at 02:27 AM.

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# 3 14-10-2011 , 01:16 AM

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Join Date: May 2011

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Wow, thanks a bunch for that! Was NOT expecting a whole tutorial just for me :p

I got to work as soon as I saw your first reply so my methods were slightly different, but I got somewhere similar. One thing I did was create the recessed part of the whole first, not sure why I did that, perhaps I was thinking too literally!
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Had a real *doh!* moment when I saw that you'd used the lattice deformer to shape the surface, I was struggling for ages trying to get mine to the right shape and I never thought of that. I also left my panel as a floating bit of geometry so as not to add a load of new polygons to the main model.

Again, thanks so much, not many people would record a whole video for such a simple problem. I'll be sure to check the rest of your vids out tomorrow, looks like I could definitely learn a thing or two! I've gone ahead and subscribed to your channel too user added image

Also, just incase you're wondering what the panel is actually for;
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It's a tiny little air vent on a shipping container.

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# 4 10-11-2011 , 08:52 PM

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Join Date: May 2011

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All of this University silliness has really slowed down my modelling progress! Anyways, a good month or so later I've finished the model and made a few colour variants to spice things up a bit.

Here's a Mental Ray render (low-poly model),
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...and a real-time in-game render rendered in the Marmoset engine (low-poly model),
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Polycount is around 3,000 tris, which could be current-gen if it was a small map, but more likely next-gen.

I quite like it, myself! Feedback is appreciated! And thanks a load for that tutorial ctbram, no way I could have made this model without it, really taught me a thing or two about building models for smoothing. The final smoothed mesh was 1.1 million polys, and the normal map really benefited from it. Easily the best quality game asset I've made so far! Always progressing user added image

Martin.

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