Modeling WITHOUT subdivision surfaces!

in this next tutorial we're going to take a look at way of remodeling that SSD object I have three objects that are very similar to each other and there's only a minor difference in the appearance in this first one but there's a significant polygon difference between the three let's look at this in wireframe this one right here and this one are both subdivision surface objects and this one is a direct polygon modeling and that's what we're going to do in the in this next tutorial is create a much more lightweight polygon model using a method called direct polygon modeling if we delete these two and we take a look at this let's turn off subdivision surfaces it's a 90 degree angle with two edges on either side and when we subdivide that we get a rounding let's also look at this from the front view and we can see that this rounding has a particular profile to it and what if we wanted to have an even more circular profile well this type of profile where we just put a simple bevel on a corner is really good for smaller corners but when you get to a larger corner it produces a slightly oblong rounding and we may want that to be a little bit more perfectly rounded what I'm going to do is duplicate this let's turn that off shift d y and I'll move that right there so in the second version which still uses subdivision surface we're going to take this Edge go into the bevel tool three segments in a shape of 0.5 and I'll just put that about like that and then when we look at this with subdivision turned on in the front view let's turn subdivision on here then we get a really much more perfect circular type of rounding but now we have a lot more polygons on this second one so I think we could lower this to a value of two but we still have a lot of polygons so let's do this one more time let's duplicate another version and we're going to remove subdivision all together on that one Tab Key we'll select this Edge come back to the bevel tool but I'm going to do a value of 10 and we'll come and look like that maybe we'll take it up to 12 I think 12 works pretty well and now we have the least amount of polygons in fact if we take a look at this I've got statistics turned on if we take a look at just this first one we're generating 256 quads on that one if we take a look at the second one it's got 112 polygons to make that object and then if we finally take a look at this final one it's only got 16 polygons so the modeling approach that we're going to do now is based on this methodology let's come into the top and we're basically going to start the object off in the same way that we had started the previous one shift a we're going to add a plane that we're going to initially set to 4 inches and then come down to its object X dimensions and set that to 7 inches let's Zoom to the extent command a scales enter control a on the PC tab brings us into edit mode we're dropped into vertex mode in fact I'm going to zoom down a little bit more close to this we can see more clearly bevel vertices pull out and we're going to set the width the same as we had done before 7 inches but in this particular case we're going to go to a much higher level let's do 32 for the segments so that we have a much more dense mesh but the thing that we need to consider is that we still need to think about a boundary Loop of polygons between a long flat area and the curving area even though it may not be apparent we need to have another boundary set of polygons just like we had for the subdivision surface to prevent surface normal smooth shading from progressing into the flat areas where you don't want it so let's I'm going to turn off that Target so it's not visually in our way close this down and we're going to use the knife tool k key come over here shift click I'm continuing to hold shift click return K shift click click and return let's Zoom down over to this area and we're going to again use the bevel function it's such a useful tool set the default to 2 with the shape of 1 which produces an inset type of function and we need to switch over to active tool double-click in between these two vertices we're in vertex mode I like this because I can see the vertices in order to know how close to place something because the curve is so shallow there click hold and drag and just pull off until you get pretty close to that let's do the same thing here click hold and drag and pull until we get that new Loop in place pretty close it doesn't need to be exact we need to give this some thickness now so let's come over to face mode a and then e and extrude this up by a value of 0.75 which is the same we had done before we have the top selected I'm going to hold the shift key select a bottom polygon then do select linked flat faces and then select loops select boundary Loop we're in the bevel tool and let's take this back to a value of 1 and 0.5 which is the default setting that'll give us a 45 degree bevel I'm in active tools so I can click hold and drag on an existing Edge and pull that out something about like that we need to divide this in half so let's come over at with the loop function click there to divide this in half and we only really want to concentrate on half of this switch to face mode a key we're going to take the median value which is the center of the selection take that down to 0 along the z-axis to center it option Z turns on x-ray mode so we can select through we switch back over to select box so that we can Marquee around the bottom X key to delete those let's rotate the view option D takes us out of outline this is the corner we're going to be doing more modeling work with but we need to produce rounding around the corner if we come over into Edge mode double clicking this stops the selection at an end gone and we've got the big end gone so I'll switch over select this top face again do a select link flat faces and then the select loops select boundary Loop there we go hold the shift key and select this down here the approach that we're taking is we're modeling the actual polygons that are going to be rendered with which is why they have much higher density and we need to consider that we are transitioning from flat areas to curved areas back to flat areas so we need that boundary Loop of polygons so we're going to come over to the bevel tool set segments of 2 and shape back to one which is what gives us the planar loops around an existing selection click hold and drag oh I'm in select box that's why that didn't work we need to go back to active tool click hold and drag and just pull until you see that appear now we'll get something something about like that it doesn't need to be exactly specific and we're going to close that let's switch over and take a look at this in the front drives me nuts when it makes you hunt for Where You Are and we're going to select again this center edge that we've just beveled around and we're going to come back and do another bevel this produces the actual curvature set this to a value of 8 but we're going to go back to the default of 0.5 which gives you circular roundness and then when I click hold and drag we can begin producing that rounding up to and approaching that boundary point so this Loop here is planar to this flat region here and that's why we put that there but when we take a look at this one thing that I'm noting is that it seems that the curvature is just slightly flat here we have a control called shape and that's what we adjusted we went from 0.5 to 1 but it turns out we can fractionally adjust this in order to give it a little bit more roundness and I'm going to pull this up to about 0.6 let's switch into the top view because now we're going to work on this corner in the same way that we had design that inset element that red inset element in the first one we're going to do the same thing now let's add with the loop cut tool one Loop cut there and let's switch over to vertex mode and we want to use the cursor to demarcate and figure out where the center of this Arc is so we need to turn on snapping and let's set it to vertex mode make sure in this case it's in closest mode if it's an active it'll behave differently so we need to just come over and snap that right to that point with the selection tool select a Vertex down here and then we get its value along the y-axis copy that switch over to view come down to its location and paste in that value for its y position and there we go so that's in place and now let's remove these four polygons by pressing the X key now you're going to note that what we did not do in this one was we didn't come in and triangulate the corners like we had done in the previous tutorial and this speaks to an advantage of doing a direct polygon modeling for hard body types of models is that you don't have to worry about n-gons that's going to become more apparent as we progress through this we're in edit mode shift a we're going to add a circle it's going to be enormous so let's set that down to 0.5 that's still a little bit large now in the first video we had to match up the segments of each quadrant of the circle to the radius of the corner and we don't need to do that now because an n-gon is going to sit between the two and we're not subdividing it we're not going to be bridging and so we have a little bit more freedom so what I'm going to do is I'll take this up to 64. that's going to be pretty decent resolution s key to scale this down just a little bit F key to fill that with the polygon switch over into vertex mode select the top and bottom vertices press the J key to divide that in half and then in face mode split this to become its own object I'm going to turn off snapping so that now we can move this over and then we just Bridge these two edges together and we're immediately going to come over and put 2 for the number of cuts and then I'll select those immediately let's Zoom down these are boundaries that we're going to have between the curving and the flat areas s key X and scale this until we get right to about there so I'm looking at sort of the shape and size of that to get an equivalent size for that select these I keyed inset we're now producing the boundary between a planar region and a curving region that's the first thing we're doing I key again and we're going to come down to about like that and then we move that down e key extrudes this down come over since it's a selection it will show up under item with median we want to set 0 in the z-axis X key deletes those faces now we're going to come in Edge to select there and we're going to select here and we're going to do the boundary loops around those Corners using the bevel tool we need that to be a value of 2 into shape of one we're an active tool so click hold and drag and pull that until we get looking about like that now double click to select those again and let's reset this to a value of 8 and 0.5 and we click hold and drag to produce the actual rounding that we see but let's also take a look at this do we want to consider the shape maybe being slightly more curvy and let's take the shape here from 0.5 to 0.6 to give us that slightly better rounding it's a perceptual thing but I'm I'm going to like that okay now let's come into the top view and we need to connect the outside to the inside I'm going to find one logical location here and here bring up the context menu Bridge those two Edge Loops now just select a single Loop and look at that we go all the way around press the F key to fill that with the single n-gon and that's constructed let's press the Tab Key we can see that nice and smooth let's turn on auto smoothing okay now we're going to turn our attention to this raised sort of bump feature when we look at this we spent a lot of time in the previous version based on subdivision surfaces and figuring out how to connect and Patch all that together and with this direct polygon modeling approach we don't have to worry about that n-gons can remain there the reason is because we have boundary we're putting in these boundary Loops between planar regions and curving regions and that allows us to maintain n-gons within flat areas at render time they get triangulated but we don't need to worry about that let's switch over into the loop cut tool I'll add a loop there and a loop there and let's switch to the top view and we need to produce the curvature right in here like we had done on the first one so we'll just repurpose these Loops as we have it I'm going to press actually let's do this I'm going to switch over into wireframe view and we'll switch over into vertex just because we can see I need to switch over into select box so I can select these and I'll move these over about like that and then we're just going to begin forming a curve that we think we kind of like something similar to what we had done before and then this area there's going to be it comes around and it kind of Curves around this way now this is going to be very different than the way we had done it with the subdivision surface approach and I'm just going to come in and look at that if you watched my tutorial on nurbs curves we're essentially going to take advantage of the process that I outlined in that tutorial first off I want to take this Loop and move it closer because this is going to essentially Define the end of the curvature for that bumped raised region I'm going to select all of the loops starting at that boundary point we want to get this one that's the terminal end there we go we're going to separate that to become a new object and I'm going to call this Contour source and then let's press the Tab Key to leave edit mode deselect everything and we're going to turn off in fact let's rename this SSD drive so that's very clear what that is Click hold and drag to turn that off press the Tab Key this clearly doesn't have enough geometry to establish a curve here bring up the context menu we're going to invoke subdivide we're going to use a really kind of a cool function let's take the number of cuts to 3 it's essentially linear at first but if we set the smoothness up to 4 look what it does is it takes that and it tries to match the general curvature of the shape that's already there which works to our advantage switch over into vertex mode let's take this and just sort of move that until we get a shape that we think works a little bit better but before we do that even too much further let's turn on a subdivision modifier so right now we have what I call naked edges they're polylines technically and if we apply a subdivision surface let's take this up to a value of three we are now essentially editing a nurbs curve so that's the benefit of this is we started with a polygon mesh now we're going to generate a very high resolution smooth flowing curve that is effectively a nurbs curve so I think that curve looks pretty good I'm going to leave polygon edit mode I actually tend to look at curves without being in polygon edit mode so you're not interrupted by the visuals of the cage I think that works pretty well I'm going to duplicate this shift in D Escape key and I'm going to call we'll leave that source and this one right here we're going to apply that specifically let's turn off the Contour so we gain access to all of the actual vertices since we're directly modeling the polygons that are going to be rendered we're needing to consider the resolution of our object but I actually think down here we're probably overshooting our Target just a little bit and I'm going to remove by dissolving a few of those on that sort of shallow region okay now let's let's look down here I think that looks pretty good but the critical part is the end points here and on the other side match up to the geometry that we already have so let's bring back in our SSD drive go into polygon edit mode and we need to further reduce the geometry of this area so let's we're in select box so I can Marquee around these all of these in fact I'm going to select let's switch over into shaded mode because that will make selecting that end gone a little bit easier taking note of the fact that we want to leave this one connection right there dissolve those faces and they became one big single end gone let's switch back into the top view and I don't need this Loop anymore so in Edge mode I'll select this and do a dissolve Edge function and then we can do the same thing down here shift r okay let's leave edit mode and I want to select this duplicate flattened curve g z because I want to move it up just a little bit above the object if we come back to our SSD drive object tab comes back into edit mode we want to switch to the top view because this is going to be the projecting axis hold the shift key select that curve that we just generated that's now not technically a curve it's a high resolution polyline come up to mesh and down to knife project and what it does is it cuts a new end gone into the existing big angle that we have okay so let's come up here turn off that curve and now we have an end gone here and one here but critically because we were careful in our planning the vertices match up to that original Source that's what's important to understand so we do the same thing we can look at that and in fact I can come over and test this G key and you see how it is attached to that location and that's what we want it's not attached to there it's only attached to that endpoint and this end gone here we get to leave that way let's switch over into face mode and top view and we're in select box so I'm going to hold the shift key down and Marquee across all of those this is going to be the planar region merge all of those by clicking dissolve into a single end gone press the I key we need to inset now this is going to be one of the areas that you have to watch for when you're doing this direct polygon modeling and the density of your polygon structure is greater we've now got an overlap up up here and we need to kind of deal with that so let's do this let's come over and uplift this since we have a selection handle right here we'll raise that up about like that and we need to also before we come up and deal with that let's produce the boundary at the bottom here that we need to have sitting between this planar region and the curving region we'll come back over to the loop cut function let's do this a little bit close click hold and drag and pull that down oh somewhere right about right about there switch over into vertex mode and we let's let's position the 3D cursor to the area that we want to flatten to let's turn on snapping so that we can just place the cursor somewhere like about right there switch over to the scale tool press the period key because we need to move the pivot point to the position of the 3D cursor let's switch to front view so this is really apparent and then we scale that down and set that value to zero and now we have our boundary between the planar region and the curving region now we need to concern ourselves with what's going on up here let's switch over into a wireframe view so this is something that you'll deal with when you've got these tight corners and you're dealing with a much denser polygon mesh so we could manually come in and grab all the polygons and try and untangle them or we could just rework this all together and I think that's what we should do it's easier to select polygons in a shaded mode so I'm going to come over let's see I've got 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13. so I think these right here the ones that I want to to rework all together delete those 13 faces and in fact I'm going to delete the main ngon that comprises the top of the structure in Edge mode select this Edge hold the shift key and select that edge bring up the context menu invoke Bridge Edge loops come down to number of cuts and we're going to do 12 we want one less than the number of polygons that we've deleted that will actually create 13 total polygons come down to where it says smoothness and you can play with this value the default is one but I think that that's a little bit sharp and so this is where you would come down and play with a slightly different variable I'm not interested in what's happening right there okay I'll select this Edge hold the control key down and then select that to do a loop select bring up the context menu separate that to its own selection and then we're going to remove these polygons that we just put in place X key delete the face because we've got these open edges Tab Key to leave we've got the separated object in the original objects both selected at the object level context menu join tab double click in Edge mode to select that edge which we can see hold the shift key then the control key to do a select between bring up the context menu and Bridge those loops and there we go now the vertices are not welded here and here so let's select an extra polygon on either side of that switch over to vertex mode bring up the context menu and then we're going to do merge vertices by distance and it will report as long as you've got a default value that's pretty small like that it reported that it merged two vertices and there we go we have reconstructed that area pretty easily let's double click on the edge of this open boundary press the F key to reconstruct a new n-gon there let's come into the top view we need to inset another boundary set of polygons so press the I key pull that in about that far okay there we go now let's look at this in the front view and we need to generate the topology roundness that comes down so we'll switch over into Loop cut function add one Loop cut and then we'll switch down to the shrink fatten function which moves elements along their own vertices I'm going to switch back to active tool so that I can click hold and drag and I can just move that up and we'll move it up fairly High about like that now we're going to switch back over to the bevel function we'll leave it seg eight segments and a shape of 0.5 click hold and drag and we're going to pull out only about that far at the bottom I want to leave a little bit of space for another blend to happen to the planar region so that's going to work pretty well and this is where you could determine if you need to have more segments so for instance if we needed to have a value of 10 we could adjust that and then this is where we could also come in and play with the shape if you want that shape to be a little bit more rounded or a little bit less rounded that's something that you can play with I think 0.55 is a good value okay now up top here there is a little bit of a bump which we can kind of see we're going to blend this a little bit better selecting that using the edge slide function click hold and drag I'll move that in just a little bit closer now remember our thought process is that this is part of a polygon structure this whole Loop is planar to the main polygon that we have on top okay so kind of keep that in the back of your mind because when we select this we're going to use the bevel function again with only two but we're going to leave the shape at 0.5 which will produce the rounding click hold and drag and we will blend between the major curving area and the slight bump at the top there we go into this planar region here and here so when we pull back and we look at that it's nice and rounded look at that so final operation is to produce a blend down here select this loop we're still in the bevel function let's take this to just a value of 3 and evaluate that click hold and drag and we'll pull that up till about there we still have plenty of boundary and in fact I think maybe going to 4 would give us just a little bit more resolution it's a small detail but I think that will work just fine deselect and now we need to just pull this raised region down it's a little bit too high so I'm going to select the end gone at the top come up to select and do more less more and then shift R and tell keep doing shift R until we come down all the way foreign right to there we've still got our 3D cursor at that location scale and we're still in 3D cursor as the Pivot Point location let's come into the front view so that we can see this operation switch back it switched on me okay and we'll pull this down until we get something that is a little bit a little bit nicer there we go and it's something I don't know maybe I could pull up just a bit more Tab Key leaves edit mode and we are done

Channel: Christopher 3D

Views: 4,427

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Id: 9Hmacrr78pw

Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 08 2023