How to 3D Model Anything // Understanding Topology

hello everyone i'm mario and welcome back so in this video we're going to talk about topology um we're just going to continue where we left off last time so just in case you missed it uh we talked about the key principles of how to model anything so we were talking about the understanding of tools understanding of topology and then understanding of form and function and why each of these on its own is very important but as a whole it's even more important because without understanding the tools we cannot actually utilize or use the operations uh to create the topology that we want to and without understanding the topology we cannot create the forms that we want and then without understanding the forms we cannot actually create the functional or working design to actually put everything that we want from let's say a concept or an imagination into a 3d so what you see here on the screen is just a like small bot project from cinema 4d master class there is a small breakdown here on youtube as well but i just wanted to show something that it's already shown on youtube so you can refer to that as well on the question that we had uh as a part of the series uh how can i begin let's say that i see something very complex uh where can i begin modeling on anything complex let's say on more complex objects so uh i just shared one tip that helped me in the beginning to let's say break down the objects into kind of like drawings of basic forms if that makes sense so what i would do is i would do simply something like this i would just follow either the forum follow the highlight and then from there i would just break down the basic primitive that would be my beginning or starting point uh if i maybe knew the primitive if i would not be sure where to do cuts or what to do let's say edge flow redirections and whatnot then i would do also this kind of meshes or just trying to visualize my future match before even starting to do anything and this helped me a lot and also i just wanted to share that as well i hope that also helps you as well so uh this would be an example let's say this is now the arm we are trying to redo the arm from the basic blockout usually the blockout is going to be just something to bring the idea out it doesn't matter how it looks uh the proportions also not matter much it's more about bringing the idea out and trying to figure out which shapes would determine um the language of the design that you want to do later so in our in our case here uh if you come back to the drawing and this was just again something uh like let's say uh using a simple cube uh subdividing the cube and then from the cube i'm going to stretch this out and then use booleans to break the cylinder on the inside so this right here which you see so i actually can extract faces this was actually started from a very simple cube uh pushed it out and then from that cube i created this form and then in the end once they intersect and then you're gonna i use boolean so let's say we're gonna have uh something like this and then once you use booleans and then use the difference you're gonna get this and then it's going to be the matter of organizing and cleaning it and cleaning actually uh topology so this again going to be the topic of this video how to clean up and how to know which directions the topology actually needs to go because how we actually know that topology needs to flow in this direction and why is let's say this direction bad or why is this actually not not working for us so and this is going to be more the how behind the how of topology uh i also have here a couple more examples so i can maybe remove this for now this is also part of another question and the question was i'm trying to get a sharp corner here but whatever i do i just keep getting distortions on my surface and i'm not getting the smoothness that i actually want to so this is something and that is the goal so this is something that we're trying to achieve and this is something that it's in our way of achieving the result uh now if we isolate this and if i show you the topology behind we can also see that actually the uh the flow of the topology is actually forming the highlights so this is something that we also talked in previous video by understanding the highlight we can break down the edge flow and if we know the edge flow the recreation of the object is going to be that much easier so what we can see here is that the highlight is very very strong so here we can see that the highlight is strong in this area and it's strong in this area uh here highlight is undefined so it's not the fine highlight but it's there and it's showing several clumpiness in this area if we can notice i don't know if you can see it as well but the highlight is going to be somewhere around this direction so it's going to be around this area so again something that we really do not want another thing here on the third example is that the highlight is very very strong around this area but here is very smooth and very soft so if we now check the mesh or if we now check the topology behind it we can also break down and see uh what is actually happening and why the results are the way they are so in the first example uh right here we can see that these edges are very very condensed and as a result on a curved surface they are giving us this highlight the moments we remove these edges so when they are no longer close to one another we are going to get much smoother results so we're gonna need to take this into account so using uh close edges only when we need let's say establish highlight or we're gonna need strong highlight so this is the only time we're going to need use two edges close to another so continuing on to the second one so the second example has condensed area right here so here we have this kind of like redirection which forms this flow and then as a result the flow is constant kind of concentrated around this area and again causing the slumpiness so again from this we can learn one thing and that is we're going to use let's say topology that it's focused around one area only let's say on the surfaces that are flat where we do not see any kind of deformation or if we want to specifically redirect something in in that area so let me just demonstrate that a bit more on two of them so let's say here and here and now we can see what kind of results we get so now it's much more prominent and the form is obviously visible simply because now we added the same what we have here so two edges close to one another will form a highlight depending on the flow of the edges we're going to get that highlight and then the third and the final option that is so we have a pinching here and very smooth uh highlight on the other side so if you break down that one we can also see let's say this situation so we have three edges there three edges here uh and when you compare the size of the edges you can see that this one is more condensed and this one is more spread apart coming back from the first example if we were to spread these more apart so we would maybe lose the sharpness but we would get the smoothness back so we can also think about that and how we can use all of this what we learned from all of these mistakes and how we can use all of that into our advantage and creates much more optimal topology that it's shown here so here we can see that the highlights are very stable and that the corners are still relatively sharp and that we do not have any any deformation so uh the important thing to take away from this are three things uh supportive loops even spread and then redirection so these three key elements are going to be something that we're going to constantly manipulate in our in our topology so supportive loop is going to be very very simple so supportive loop is basically just the general highlight of your object so right now everything is falling apart like this now if this is something that we want to then uh we achieved our goal but if we want to have more of a established curvature or establish highlights here and here because right now everything is very sharp for that reason we're going to add support loops so support loops will go here let's say all around so let's say like this i'm going to use bevel chamfer off and now it's more more defined we can go even further we can define even these edges if you want to build chamfer off and now we have more defined highlights in the air so this is going to be the first thing uh making sure that we have support loop the second thing what's going to be important to us is having the even uh organization of the edges because again this is going to be the most predictable way how we can deal with the edges and then the third thing uh what we're going to do is a redirection now redirection might not be obvious at the very beginning so we're going to now cover that now here also we can see that with the even organization of the edges what i meant is that it's predictable is that we can even now add more uh let's say more highlights to already existing curvature without actually impacting the curvature and we're still going to have uh let's say nice smoothness nice highlights while still maintaining the sharpness so here i have one example that i would like to share and now this is going to be the question as how do i know for example that this edge needs to go in that direction how do i know that this edge needs to be here or how do i know that any of the these edges needs to be exactly there where they are so we're going to cover this now so let me just quickly do one thing here non-linear band deformer so uh let's say okay this might sound a bit stupid but it helped me a lot to understand uh in which direction do i need to push the edges and why exactly in that direction so you'll notice that this edge right here and all of these edges are perpendicular to the main edge so this is our edge that is kind of like structural edge for it's forming the main outline and every single edge on the inside is perpendicular to that edge and the same thing here so you're gonna have here main outline and these inner edges are going to be more or less perpendicular to that outer eye line so imagine it's furthermore so let's say that we are so this is all something that i mentioned before but i think it's worth mentioning one more time so let's say this is us right here so this little guy so uh you're let's say walking around here and you're also walking around here and whenever you stand the gravity is kind of sticking to you so whenever you're standing you're just sticking on a surface regardless where you are up or down you're always sticking to the surface and there's kind of like central gravity point so this is the center of the gravity and everything is pushing into that direction so pushing to that center so just imagine it like that so this is again something that helped me a lot and if we go from this point so let me just now undo this and come here so regardless of where you are so now you can see that the edge will always follow that outer outer form and eventually let me just also do one more thing and let's merge these vertices so the question the next question is going to be these edges needs need to eventually meet somewhere so the further we go you can notice that there will probably meet in one point so this is the meeting point of all of these edges so just remember these two things so gravity effect and meeting point so how something like this would work on an object like this so again if we now compare these two and i'm going to just to remove some of the edges here that we do not need so we can now cover it one more time so let's say we are walking here come here and come here here and here so just imagine whenever you're walking around this is going to be your topology flow so by that rule topology will go that way topology will go that way and topology will go this way so now you notice the meeting point and the same thing is going to be on the other side so the meeting point needs to happen somewhere so if you just continue the meeting point the meeting point and then the meeting points is your topology so there's your meeting point so i can also use a different color so meeting points meeting point and once you have that then you have your flow set up and now the only thing is to recreate that on the other side so i hope that makes sense but like i mentioned this is something where i try to understand it for myself just try to see where the flow would be and how everything would uh connect to one another so if we try to apply that rule so i will just add let's say like we mentioned we need to have organized topology first to understand where everything goes and maybe i can then remove these two just for the sake of simplicity so i can know and reposition these edges a bit better so now that we know where everything goes i'm just going to reposition everything so this goes here and making sure in process that the distances between these are more or less the same so this is going to go there this is gonna go here down and this is gonna go here now and again the same thing on the other side just this is our meeting point this is one side this is another and sliding it all down and there we go so let's say we have something like this i already did that here so we don't have to waste that much time and now it's just a matter of bringing all of the uh all of the edges let's say back that we previously took so just making sure that we have enough spreads everywhere and then finally what it's going to be missing is that support loop so we can do it now or we can do it later once we do the extrusion but since we do it now it's going to already be there and we simply need to add two more extrusions there and now we already step closer to let's say sharpening um the one thing here uh that i did so let me actually undo all of it because that's the step that i missed and actually maybe i can show you also in this one all right so again a bit more organized so the difference now between these two is that here every single corner is still soft so this one this one this one so we can also tighten uh these corners a bit more so the way to do that again is going to be through the uh support loops so again if we offset this two more times we're gonna have more control on the top what to actually do with these corners and then we just remove so this is again depending on what you want so if this is something that we would need to sharpen then we would do it like that until we get uh this result which finally under the formation if we want to check it out it's going to deform and we actually now manage to clean up the geometry while maintaining the same shape and we don't have any more of these deformations on the surface but instead we get clean clean topologies so these were very basic examples on a flat surface and how everything should in theory go or which edge should go where on a flat surface but what would you do let's say if you would have a situation where you don't have a flat surface anymore so you have now more sites to work with and what would be now the situation here so basically it would be exactly exactly the same way if we would need to think about it we would need to go from the top side and exactly do the same thing we would just uh try to understand so in which direction the flow would go and for what reason so reason we now covered and this would then be the flow and this will be the direction and now it's going to be just a matter of those meeting points and where everything meets but the general outside flow is going to be solved like that uh same thing it's going to be on the side so if you need to think about what to do on the side even though the side is again very similar it's going to be super super flat so it's not going to be a lot of figuring out what to do but again the process would be exactly the same so now the thing is going to be either you want to redo everything so remove and draw on your own or simply try to sketch it on your own so like we mentioned this one would need to go there this one would need to go here it's just that i'm missing a mid loop first so you would have something like this and then just kind of removing the edges that you do not need until you get something like this or like if we draw before then something like that and then continue the rest so just continue until the meeting points this will be one way to do it uh this is just again that visualization what what to do let me bring this back the next thing is you could just any triangle can be closed with the loop and then you will get immediately the result that we have like this and then it's again going to be the matter of adjustments but this is now the basic rules that we covered and knowing the rules sometimes also means knowing which roles we can break and which rules we cannot so for example let's say that i'm making a shape here and i need let's say the shape and if i push this to the side it's not really working for me because i actually won this so is this still considered as a bad topology really not because everything is still in place the only thing is that it changes the flow changes so this is the original flow that we're going to get so this is going to be the flow and the only thing again the changes is simply the flow of the edges before we would have if i want to have this sharpened i would have very very sharp corner here so let me also quickly demonstrate that because we want to do let's say a sharp corner here so it's going to the highlight is going to be pushed more to the side so that's the only difference uh the thing what i would like to have here let's say i want to have a flat highlight there so that means that the highlight follows the surface like this so i'm not going to change that flow so i'm going to leave it as it is because i simply need the highlight right here and then i can do the same thing for every every other part and that it's going to be it i mean this is going to be at least the basic part of it all because let's say again i would like to now do some more adjustments here and maybe i want to push this even more down tighten this more with the support loops and get something like this so there we go so from very simple just by following the simple rule adding supports and making sure that we have a proper redirection we can get the basic shapes uh pretty pretty fast so again now we come back to that very very beginning that we talked before by knowing the highlights if we know the highlights we can understand better the edge flow behind it because the highlight is going to be formed by the two edges close to one another so again coming to our situation from the beginning this is the main highlight that it's our structural highlight so it's forming the structure and once you know the highlights you also know how to recreate the objects here we can see that the highlight is very very soft and for that reason we're probably gonna have more of a distance between the edges and here where we see that the highlight is very very sharp that again means that we're gonna have two edges close together and this is now again connecting everything to what we talked uh at the beginning how to model anything really and how to break down the objects so if you see a concept and if you see a complex object that you want to recreate first things what we're going to do is we're just going to try and break it down and following the highlight but knowing the highlight we're going to recreate the edges when we know the edges when we know the flow it's going to be easy to find where that beginner beginner shape is same thing as we've seen here at at the bot uh example so the block out beginning shapes are very very simple and everything what is happening after this shape is just refinement so after the block out becomes the refinements and then the details whatever details that are planned to do so for example here this is something that it's done very very last so whenever you're breaking down let's say your model so whatever you're breaking down whatever you're trying to model just imagine it without the details so details are always something that comes last the only thing that it's maybe worth keeping an eye on is the direction of the details the direction of the highlight because that is in the end going to be the uh kind of establishing uh the edge flow which you're going to need to do so it's always going to be the super super basic block out the uh the least number of polygons you can get so you can notice here it's a very very little polygon number just enough to get the idea out and then later all that is getting refined and then details and everything else that comes very very very last so in the end yeah this is just a small basic introduction into topology understanding and how to manipulate edges to your advantage and how to position them properly to get the highlights you want and then in the end later you can either progress that way even more add more details or simply use these techniques to break down uh the objects uh into more simple forms and then start there so the principles that we covered there here are going to be exactly the same for small objects or big complex objects which again are just the collection of smaller pieces so all of this is still built out of a lot of smaller pieces so this is going to be one piece so this is again one singular object and then again here we're gonna have another so this is now another object and again here is going to be the third one so no matter how something complex looks it's still going to be built out of multiple singular objects that in the end form this kind of complexity but in the end all has very very simple beginnings so in the end i hope that this cleared up some things and topology is a relatively vast topic so there's a lot to cover there's a lot of practice if you want to you can always do this kind of like smallest 2d examples practice there see what flows go goes where and how you you would deal with that before trying anything anything complex try to break down smaller forms first before trying to break down complex forms and yeah the rest is just experience time patience practice and then everything later will just come and play place naturally so in the end yeah thank you very much for watching and i'm gonna see you next time

Channel: Elementza

Views: 85,694

Keywords: 3d modeling in maya, 3d modeling tutorial, how to model anything

Id: Sj2EiQWbtIQ

Length: 26min 34sec (1594 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021