3D Modeling Tutorial #15 - Topology Part 1

hello and welcome to part 15 of my 3d modeling series today let's have a talk about topology so I'm gonna go ahead and make a plane here I want to make sure it's centered by right-clicking on my x-value and y-value and let's talk a little bit about materials if you don't have any sort of rendering plug-in like v-ray you just have to go ahead and use a standard material so you can see you can set your material right here you could open up your material browser by clicking on this button right here it looks like a circle with a bunch of checkers on it or I can simply press M that will bring up your material editor now here you have a bunch of the materials to change this go on to options and you can write here cycle different slots so I now I have six if I click it again I'll have 15 and if I click it again I'll have 24 so the materials that are here this is not the limit you can have much more than 24 here but you just have to you just have to swap various materials out for example let's say make a red material okay a red material and I go and I assign it to the selected objects by pressing this button right here assign material to selection so this is how you go about assigning materials to different to different models you simply click it or select a group of models and click on this button right here and of course make sure you're in the you have the right material selected here so let's say I make this red material and I'm gonna click on this button next to the fuse all right now I'm using a viewing material I'm gonna go ahead and switch to standard so I'm now using a standard material I'm gonna click on this box next to diffuse I'm going to select checkered and in order to make your map visible in the viewport click on this button right here show standard map in viewport so now my checker map is visible in the viewport and I'm gonna give it a few more increase the tiling options here to about 4 so here's my here's my map and I've got a checker material in the diffuse slot you can also do this by expanding this the maps panel and clicking right here you can you know change your material here your texture so let's say that my material editor is packed full of materials and I want to make a new material how do I do that well I'm gonna click on this X right here and it's gonna give me a dialog box it's gonna ask me do I want to delete this material in here and in here so in the editor and in the viewport in the scene or affect only the editor slot I'm gonna click on the second option which is what is the default option and click on OK now the material has been deleted from the slot but it's still available in the scene so this is how you can go about having more than the materials available here you simply delete it and make sure the second option is selected so now if I want to work with this material and here again I'll simply click on this this eyedropper icon if you hover over it it says pick material from object I'll select the object select the object with the let's here that I want to work on and my material appears back in an editor ready for me to work with it so anyways when you're modeling you want material I usually gray I use like a gray material with black object color the reason for this is that it allows me to read the topology of my model very easily and so if the if the material is a different color with a different object color with a different edge color it'll be a lot more difficult for me to read it and understand what's happening with the geometry so click on the full of diffuse the regular default gray color was fine 150 okay now for the specular highlights you want to go ahead and increase that by default when you make a standard material it will have zero for the specular color and 10 for the glossiness and you want to change that to like 25 for the level and 25 for the glossiness that's what's comfortable for me we can always do like 50 50 or any other number that you like as long as you have some specularity and some glossiness that will make it easier to see what's happening with your model so then go ahead and assign material to selection and then you can minimize or close it so topology let's go ahead and talk about how we can have good topology so once again I'm going to move this edge I'm going to hold shift and now hold shift click click and drag and then click so here's a simple object I'm going to go ahead and apply the turbosmooth material I'm gonna go ahead and give it three iterations so this is what's happening remember when you're working the show end result on/off toggle is very important for me it's activated when I press the spacebar so whenever I press spacebar I can see what the end result will look like so what I can do is I can select this edge ring from a connect operation and move this segment by moving this slider right here so watch what happens I'm going to press spacebar to activate this show end result toggle and then I'm gonna move adjust the setting now you can see it showed me what the end result will be in real time as I move it with the turbulence move applied and if I press spacebar again I can now see what it's like without the turbulence move applied so now that I've add this edge here you can see it's become a lot tighter so I'm going to go ahead and remove the edge now and watch what happens it's gonna become a lot more curved so the closer your edges are together the sharper they will become when you apply a smoother a smoothing operation like turbo a smoother mesh smooth if you want to be really tight go ahead and add three edges very close together and that would be very tight here so that's pretty much the basics of how topology works but there's a lot more to it so one cut one concept that I'd like you to understand is called establishing curvature I'm not sure if that's the official term for it that's what I call it that's the name that's the term I came up with I like to call establishing curvature so as you're modeling you might run into a few problems for example let's say I want to make an extra detail here I'm going to go ahead and delete this select these edges hold shift and drag them out and then I'm going to select these edges as well and I'm going to apply the make planar Y option and that's gonna make all those edges planar to the y-axis so before after before after and now now here's an important thing to realize when I drag these edges out you can see they're not connected to these edges so when I smooth it these edges are not connected right here these vertices are not connected so when I apply the planar option it looks like they're connected but they're actually not so I'm gonna go ahead and select all the vertices and apply a weld operation so here in the statistics on the left pay attention to the number of vertices right now it's 30 when I weld you can also see the number right here a number of vertices 30 before 30 after 28 so that's proof that your vertices have been welded okay so now I want this part to be tighter so I'm gonna go ahead and so there are three ways you can go about tightening up your models using the cut tool using the connect tool with the edges connect and using the Swift loop the Swift loop is available right here in the top under the graphite modeling tools we have three sections here graphite modeling tools freeform and selection I'll go ahead I'll teach you about the graphite modeling tools later on for now just find where it says Swift loop if you click on swift loop whenever you hover over an edge it will create it will give you a preview of what the edge will look like that's that's pretty much a faster way of doing ring connect and doing this the Swift loop the Swift loop is pretty much a faster way of doing that so I'm going to go ahead and use the Swift loop under graphite modeling tools under the Edit panel Swift loop here I'm going to select this this edge ring connect - I'm gonna right-click here in the slider panel to bring to bring it back to the middle and I'm gonna increase the pinch value until I get those edges on the outer part here okay now I'm gonna press spacebar to preview okay I'm going to go ahead and also Swift loop here okay so here's the first topology problem pinching pinching is when you get on desirable results you can see I want this form this form right here I want it to be round I wanted to be a round smooth form but I want this but I want the other form this form to be tight around the edges here but when I add an extra edge loop to tighten up this area I get this pinching here that I don't want in other words the tightness these edges here make this part tighter but they also affect the surrounding area and because there's two edges close here together that will that will ruin the the roundness of this part so what's the solution for this increase the geometry so I'm gonna go ahead and move this over to the right make a copy holding shift I'm gonna go ahead and undo and this time I'm going to go ahead and establish curvature now do this by adding some edges here I'm plying a turbosmooth operation giving like two iterations and now I'm going to apply it and it'll probably modifier on top of the turbosmooth so now all the results of the turbosmooth that can actually work with it now I have established the curvature of this geometry and now it will be much easier to make small details when you will make small details guys you really have to establish that curvature this code especially is important for cylinders and any curved surfaces of course it's very easy to work with you know blocky services you don't have to establish new curvature but when you're working with curves that's when things get a lot more difficult but I'll show you some ways to get around there so now that I've established premature we have a lot of extra geometry here and a lot of geometry that I don't really want or need some go ahead and get rid of that I'm going to select these loop and remove and don't forget to hold ctrl when you remove it or create a shortcut that removes it and the vertices as well because remember if I just press this and switch to vertex all these vertices are still here but I've gone ahead and I've made a shortcut that will also remove the vertices so you can go ahead and find that when you customize your hotkeys so I'm going to press my hotkey and remove all those vertices all those edges and I also don't want these so I'm just gonna go and remove the extra edges that I don't really need now another important tool here under the graphite modeling tools is set flow what that will do is that will take your selection and it will attempt to well actually let's actually read what it says for it says adjust adjust selected edges to fit the shape of the surrounding mesh so just like just like I just said it will try to fit that selection to fit the curvature of the surrounding area the surrounding geometry and that's similar to establishing curvature the set flow tool helps you to establish curvature so when the excess my shortcut or press the button you can see it took those edges and move them here why because it's trying to maintain this curvature the curve the flow of this model geometry and so you can sometimes use the set flow tool to help you establish curvature as well okay so now that I've got a lot so now that I've established my curvature and I have enough John want you to work with I can try to do again what I did here but failed I failed here because there's a lot of pinching a lot of pinching going on here so let's let me try again over here and these are these edges that that add sharpness are called supporting edges so I recommend you as supporting edges as the last thing you do so I'm gonna remove supporting edges for now I'm gonna go add them after I've established all my forms as you can see now that I've got more geometry it looks a lot nicer there is still a tiny bit of pinching going on here I'm not sure if you can see this but you will be able to see this if you follow this example in your program all right so the next concept that I've introduced to you is edge flow how your edges flow around your model as you can see I've got one edge loop going this way I've got one edge loop going this way and I've got another edge loop going this way I'm going to go ahead and use my target weld tool to weld this vertex to this one and this vertex to this one then I'm gonna go to my edges so I'm gonna select this edge loop remove and when I remove this one as well so now I've got a much better edge flow and you can see there's no pinching on the right side whereas there is pinching on the left side that's because I've enhanced I've augmented the edge flow so it's very simple you usually do it this by welding vertices a very important concept to learn I recommend you guys even if you're not using 3ds max this all the principles I'm covering right now will affect all programs not just 3ds max so these principles apply everywhere so go ahead and try it out what I just did you know all programs have the basic options of you know extruding edges and welding and extruding all good programs have that so the same principles apply so I've done that for the right side but there's also the left side to consider I'm going to go ahead and streamline the process by adding a turbo I mean a symmetry modifier I'm gonna click on symmetry and as you can see it goes and performs the same operation on the left side there's no symmetry by default symmetry will occur at the pivot of the object so this objects pivot is right here so that's where the symmetry will occur and even if I select why so the symmetry modifier is a good way to speed up your workflow and so right now I'm going to apply several similar modifiers first I'm gonna apply a symmetry modifier to Symetra file on the x-axis I'm gonna go ahead and click on symmetry again and this time choose under this parameters mirror axis I'm gonna choose Y and then I'm gonna go into the sub object mode of the symmetry modifier which is called mirror it's just how it just has one sub object mode I've been talking to you guys about edit poly for a while now and I'm not done with that yet there's still some things that the curl to edit poly modifier but the Edit poly the edit poly modifier is one of the more complex modifiers that's where the majority of your work will be done lots of other modifiers are very simple as you can see with the symmetry modifier there's not a lot to it there's just you know mirror I'm just gonna go ahead and and when you when you modify the mirror you can once again you can now rotate it and move it scaling doesn't really do much so scheme doesn't really work with all modifiers but I can move it to change the axis of mirroring where the mirroring will take place so if I don't do that by default the mirroring the mirror operation the symmetry operation will take place at the at the pivot of the object which is at the moment is right here that's the pivot so I'm going to go ahead and modify it to be not at the pivot but like right here and I will give me a nice hard surface result and it will save me a lot of work so definitely make use of that symmetry modifier and I can keep applying different symmetry modifiers I'm go ahead and cover the symmetry modifier and more detail later on but for now just know that whenever you find yourself doing work on one side when you've already done on the other side it's probably a good idea to apply the symmetry modifier so that's that for this model so that's one topology problem solved establish curvature increase your geometry will make things much easier okay here's another common problem that I'm gonna go ahead and show you so I'm gonna go ahead and then start make a cylinder here I'm just gonna work for a bit without really saying anything and I'll start talking once we arrive at the problem actually I'm gonna go ahead and connect these two vertices I'm gonna go ahead and select them don't forget you you have to become good at quickly moving around your camera and you know rotating it to where you want it to be so when I want to select these top vertices I'm going to go ahead and just move my camera and select them now I apply the Kinect operation and the same for these bottom ones go ahead and delete this select these edges and then deselect hold shift and move amel okay we got we got an example of bad topology here we've got an N gone which is a polygon with more than four faces to fix that I'm gonna select these edges perform a ring operation connect make one segment in the middle select the vertices connect connect all right bad topology solved okay I'm gonna select select these loop there's multiple ways of doing things guys I always remember that there's multiple ways I can if I wanna select these edges here on the edge I can either select deselect I can select loop so that's that's two ways of doing the same thing and then deselect these edges and bridge okay and at this time we're gonna go ahead and take the object color changer black alright then apply a new letter probably modify on top okay all right so now I'm going to go ahead and give give this object supporting edges to make it smooth the way I want it to so I'm gonna go ahead and add turbosmooth three three iterations okay as you can see it's very very muddy almost like soft clay or something it's not the how it's not the hard surface object I want it's like putty right now so I'm going to go ahead and add those support edges so I'm doing that by selecting ring and connect increase in the segment's to two and changing the pinch value the pinch value will determine how close to the outer edges your pinch operation will make the edges so by default it's in the middle when they decrease the value to negative it's gonna go closer together and when I increase the values can go further apart thus making these edges much tighter when I apply turbosmooth and one supporting loop here so what happens is without the supporting loop when it's smooth it's gonna make more of an oval shape it's gonna try to move in between there and I'm going to go ahead and add a edge a supporting loop here so it's gonna keep that circular shape and not make an oval shape okay so here we go I want to add some more detail once again working with the Edit poly modifier working with the layers so if I don't like what I've done I can always delete the Edit poly modifier nurse I want to add some details here deselect move this down just want some ridges here for detail I'm going to select these edges and these ones ring connect all right so this is what it looks like so far I'm gonna go ahead and select when you when you ring or connect an object it follows the the topology of the model so what I mean by that is you can see with this topology we have the edges going up and down here so when I ring and connect you can see the edges follow the topology of the model so that's a problem that's not a problem with these top ones they're fine where they are they're following the topology is fine but the problem is the bottom once we're on the bottom it's flat so I want this supporting loop to be flat as well I'm gonna go ahead and apply that light make planar Z operation and move it down and that will make all the edges flat once again this is what it was like before not flat not planar I press Z and it becomes planar and I'm gonna go ahead and move it down there we go all right now we've got a little problem here and that is that the these sides are very too curvy to smooth I want it to be a hard edge here so I want to go ahead and select the middle here I'm gonna go ahead and use the Swift loop tool to insert a loop here and the loop here okay there we go now it's what now it's just like I want it maybe not tight enough but tight enough for now oh but now I have a problem and that's because we inserted these supporting loops here to make these edges tighter but now they've gone and ruined our circular shape here as you can see they're going right through here and because these two edges are close together it has changed our circular shape into the shape so what's the solution well what we can do is we can modify our topology to be the way we want it to be and that's this way I'm going to go ahead and apply the cut operation and cut it let me go ahead and zoom in closer cut it like so and at the bottom I'm gonna go ahead and weld these vertices and remove these edges and now I've modified the topology I've modified these edges to go instead of going through here I've modified to go around and follow the curvature of the model and so when I smooth it now you can see the bottom is fixed the edges are no longer going down here they're going around so this is very important guys this is a this is something beginners have a lot of problems with but here's a simple solution but I'm going to show you an even easier solution what I'm gonna do is I'm going to delete a little poly modifier and this is what I'm gonna do I'm gonna go ahead and select all these faces and I'm gonna apply in in inset operation and I'm going to increase the inset amount and so it's very important to selected right at the right polygons you want to select these polygons you want the polygons go around around and at the bottom as well so when I inset now it's in setting those polygons and you can see it's doing this for me although we now have an edge going all the way around the model and all the way around here and all the way at the bottom giving me that needed support edge to increase the sharpness here but not affect the curvature of this shape on the left side and so when I applied turbos move now I get a nice hard surface result thank you for watching and take care

Channel: Arrimus 3D

Views: 163,454

Keywords: 3D Modeling (Profession), 3d, Autodesk 3ds Max (Software), tutorial, walkthrough, arrimus, geometry, vertex, mesh, edge, polygon, element, topology, examples, learn, tip, hotkey, shortcut, education

Id: CpSAG85Rsk0

Length: 28min 51sec (1731 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 17 2014