7 Topology Tips Every 3D Artist Should Know

when working in the VFX industry as a modeler you are oftentimes required to model with a sub D workflow this basically means that when rendering the object a subsurf modifier is applied to your mesh if you've ever used this modifier you know that adding this will bring out all the bad topology in your mesh and you have to add supporting Edge Loops to keep the shape if you're not doing it right this can leave your mesh very messy that is why I've put together this list of seven tips on how to handle your topology tip number one let's say we have this simple Corner when adding a subsurf modifier it completely loses its shape so we have to add supporting Edge loops a lot of people leave it like this which might work for this simple example but with a more complex mesh it gets very messy very quickly as you can see we have three Edge Loops close together where we don't need them this is especially bad if we have a curved shape right besides where it's important to have an even distance between Edge loops also if we apply the modifier you can see that the tessellation is much more dense in these areas which might cause problems when adding a displace modifier or deforming the mesh luckily there's an easy fix to that in edit mode press k for the knife tool and cut a diagonal Edge from the corner like this you can now delete the inner Edge loops on both sides now your Edge stroke goes around the corner when applying the subsurf modifier the tessellation is much more even here's an example on where I used this method as you can see I'm using it very often which makes the topology of my models look very clean tip number two for this next step let's create a UV sphere and extrude some faces if we add a subsurf modifier everything gets smooth so you might think to use creasing to sharpen the edges this might totally be enough for what you need it for in VFX though this is not really the way to go first of all you can see that the smooth shading looks a bit weird on the edges also creasing might cause problems when exporting the model to other software since it might not be supported there or work a bit differently so let's instead use supporting Edge loops we now again have these Corners which we know how to fix from the previous step but let me show you a different method for adding the support Edge loops go to select select Shop address alternatively you can select them by hand now press Ctrl B to Bevel them in the settings set the shape to 1 and the segments to 2. also change the miter outer to Arc which will create this corner for you with the knife tool you can now simply connect it like this which will get you the same result as tip number one another topology looks fine but you have this weird pinching in the corners obvious pinching is very common on curved surfaces if you don't have enough topology in most cases you can't eliminate it completely but you can reduce it by increasing the tessellation so let's add a new sphere but this time apply one level of subsurf modifier first now as before extrude some faces out select sharp edges and bevel them as you can see there still is pinching but it is much less obvious as before of course you could increase the topology even more but depending on what material this object gets and from what distance it is seen this might already be enough if you now compared with the creased version it looks a lot cleaner of course you could enable auto smooth which will get rid of the weird shading but this will also introduce some sort of pinching and make the edges perfectly sharp which looks very unrealistic tip number three let's say you have this very even tessellated mesh but for some reason you need a lot of topology in just one area to have these extra Edge Loops not go through your whole mesh there's a simple trick select the two neighboring vertices and move them back now connect the outer vertices together and remove the inner edges alternatively you can use the knife tool and do it like this that still isn't enough you can just do it again I use this tip in this example where I needed the topology for the buttons but didn't want it in the rest of the mesh tip number four the next tip is not really an easy solution to a problem but requires a bit more work so let's say you have a curved surface and you want to have a round cylindrical shape indented in there so you might add a cylinder set the vertices to a really high number and then just use the Boolean modifier set to difference to eat away from the surface for a lot of cases this is quite enough but when using a subdue workflow it isn't so let's instead use a cylinder with a much less vertices I mostly try to stick with numbers that are a power of two if you move the cylinder in place it should roughly have the same spacing between edges as the sphere now again use the Boolean modifier set to difference in this simple symmetrical example I can use a mirror modifier to save some time you might not be that lucky in your case let's now start by connecting the vertices of the cylinder to some close Edge Loops of the sphere on the left side I want them to go left on the top they should go up let's do the same for the bottom part foreign I can now delete some of the edges I don't need anymore in this area we could simply make a triangle out of this but since it's very easy I will just have it flow like this to keep it quartz same below there's no step-by-step guide that always works in these cases but after doing it a few times you start to see solutions to how your topology could flow when you are done you can bevel the edges with the shape set to 1. let's apply the mirror modifier and use grid fill for the hole we can now easily add a sub self modifier and the mesh stays in shape tip number five The Next Step again is a simple one if you've ever tried to use the subsurf modifier on a UV sphere you might have noticed that the top and bottom will get this ugly star shape if you add a displacement modifier with a simple Cloud texture this is even more obvious there are two simple workarounds for that instead of using a UV sphere you could use an icosphere when subdividing it the triangles turn into quads we can apply the modifier and then use the two sphere function to make it actually round if you use the same displays modifier you can see that it works quite nice and we don't have this ugly star alternatively you can subdivide the cube and again use the to sphere function to make it perfectly round this will get you an even tessellation without the weird problems on the ends tip number six this next tip is for a mesh that splits into two if we give it some supporting Edge Loops we have the three edges going into three directions to fix that we can make these two edges meet in the center by using the knife tool we can now delete these edges which already looks much cleaner to not have these two edges that close together we can add an edge Loop in the center and then draw it like this tip number seven let's say we want to have a cylindrical shape come out of a surface you might want to do it with a Boolean modifier set a union but this will not work in the subdue workflow at least you then have to fix the topology by hand luckily there's an easy trick for that you first have to activate the loop tools addon which comes with blender in the sidebar under edit we then have the loop tools panel we can now select some faces insert them with I and then press Circle in the sidebar then just extrude it and give it some supporting edges if the surface is curved you need to deselect the flatten option otherwise this will destroy the curvature we can also play with the other options if you run two weird problems I hope this tip will help you model with a subdue workflow while still keeping the mesh very clean

Channel: MLT Studios

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Id: zSLELihVi6I

Length: 9min 26sec (566 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 17 2023