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How does everybody make those nice smooth holes in polygon objects?

18 REPLIES 18
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Message 1 of 19
rimcrazy
7210 Views, 18 Replies

How does everybody make those nice smooth holes in polygon objects?

I've been googleing and digging but I've really not found a clear answer just how people successfully make nice clean holes in polygon objects. I'm doing, what I thought, was a simple model of a pocket knife. It is a military one so it has lots of holes in the side. I started with a polygon box with as sparse of a mesh that would smooth nicely. I used a boolean difference to punch holes in the side. I then placed 3 more edge loops inside the holes, and cleaned up by adding triangles. You can see the mesh screen shots pre/post smoothing as well as a final render. I've been playing around with different tricks with just a box and a cylinder to see if I can get better results but so far everything looks pretty crappy. Any tips or sage words of advice would certainly be welcome.

Win 10 Pro 64Bit
Lenovo P72
64Gb Ram
Nvidia P4000
18 REPLIES 18
Message 2 of 19
Anonymous
in reply to: rimcrazy

Yea just make your Booleans with a more concave shaped cylinder - like a apple core shape.... (I have a pic but cant figure out how to upload it - message me with your email address and il send it....)

But it should give you a few more edges around the hole to make the Smooth mesh a bit cleaner... Hopefully resulting in a smoother hole...
Message 3 of 19
lucho3d
in reply to: rimcrazy

Have you tried creating a sudbdivision surface object, then subdivide the object evenly with insert edge loop command, cutting the faces where you want the holes to be, crease the edge of the knife so that remains hard, convert the subd into poly and smooth the result? That could do the trick.
Message 4 of 19
valenRedBull
in reply to: rimcrazy

Making sure you have good 4 sided polygons is a sure way to be ready to smooth your model later without problems. Here are a couple links that are for 3ds Max but the concepts are the same. You want to aim for 4 sided, square shaped polygons. Not long rectangular or long triangular, if possible.

http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk-3ds-max/modeling/problem-with-mesh-after-boolean/page-3/

http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk-3ds-max/modeling/how-can-i-add-a-cercle-whole-in-a-shape-wit...
Message 5 of 19
rimcrazy
in reply to: rimcrazy

Thanks for all the great comments. I will try them. I knew booleans can be a problem, especially in the areas where the meshes do not line up. Interesting on building the holes with pipes and then combining and building the rest of the mesh around them. I was thinking about trying that last night but did not get to it. I'll try these ideas out and post the results.
Win 10 Pro 64Bit
Lenovo P72
64Gb Ram
Nvidia P4000
Message 6 of 19
Anonymous
in reply to: rimcrazy

you could just add the holes at the very very end. build your object, apply the smooth mesh then balloon your holes out. this way you would have already have a finished surface that you could put holes in. then just run the clean up object tool.

Cheers and good luck 😄
Message 7 of 19
Anonymous
in reply to: rimcrazy

clean up the polygon and then you the split polygon tool to create those nice 4-sided polygons and then use the edge loop tool around edges of the blade and each of holes making sure to get both the inside of the holes and the surrounding area with the edge loops. this will hold the firm edges when you smooth the polygon
Mark
Message 8 of 19
rimcrazy
in reply to: rimcrazy

I was able to make it work by essentially prebuilding holes that were perfectly symmetric and then using bridge, fill hole and cut polygon tools to build the mesh around the holes. Looks like a bit of a hack but it works. I'm finding that bridging and cut polygon tools can leave dangling vertices as well as create holes at vertex locations when I am not careful. I'm sure all of you well seasoned modelers have seen this. I have to work with it a little to figure out how to build piece meal meshes up and not shoot myself in the foot in the process of doing it. I'll try the other idea of using cut polygon to straighten out the mesh around the holes. That is probably simpler and cleaner in the long run. Here are a few shots of what the mesh looks like with prebuilt holes inserted.

Win 10 Pro 64Bit
Lenovo P72
64Gb Ram
Nvidia P4000
Message 9 of 19
Anonymous
in reply to: rimcrazy

I am a max user and don't know anything in Maya, but here is how to do it in Max, it could be similar to maya.

Draw the profile of the object you want to make with a spline, create circle splines(which will act as your holes), attach them together(make them one object) then extrude the mesh...In max, you add a modifier called "Extrude" then the spline will become extruded into 3D...

Hope this helps ^^
Message 10 of 19
Anonymous
in reply to: rimcrazy

I'm having the same problem expect I'm trying to make a tattoo gun piece can someone help me out ?

Message 11 of 19
valenRedBull
in reply to: rimcrazy

I didn't use any reference image for this so the curveature is all messed up in my images, but here is a process that will result in all quads:

Message 12 of 19
Avotas
in reply to: valenRedBull

That is the best method I seen in a long time. Nicely done!
Message 13 of 19
Avotas
in reply to: valenRedBull

Quick question, how did you smooth the object without loosing the hard edges along the sides and top.
Message 14 of 19
valenRedBull
in reply to: rimcrazy

It's hard to tell from the image, but if you look closely at the full size image, you can see that I have edge loops added in those areas.
Message 15 of 19
Anonymous
in reply to: rimcrazy

Most times I just delete a roughly square face on both the front and the back of the object, append the edges to polygons and then bevel the edges orthogonal to the surfaces. After cleaning up any nGons the hole looks pretty exact even though it isn't.

The methods presented so far are way more advanced and are definitely more suitable for a close up render of the object, but if the thing is just another background element or if you're modeling for games all this deleting and adding and merging is just to troublesome for me and why bother when you can't even see any difference in the end?
Message 16 of 19
Avotas
in reply to: rimcrazy

Yep it was edge loops. Nice catch.

Message 17 of 19
Avotas
in reply to: Anonymous

Sure the purpose of the model is always extremely important, but the original poster didn't define how he was using the knife. Had it been designed for a game, I would have gone a different route then something that would be suitable for movie close-up. The interesting part for me was modeling the holes in order to produce the knife, instead of modeling the knife to produce the holes. I never liked Booleans because of how the mesh is generated, and this is a good work around.
Message 18 of 19
matthewbailey
in reply to: rimcrazy

Just a question about this, but I know that in AutoCAD, creating this sort of thing is a piece of cake (in either Solid, Polygon Mesh, NURBS, or Surface).

As someone else mentioned, a simple "extrude" would work.

Or, in AutoCAD, there is the "PressPull" command, which would allow the creation of a smooth solid (which can then be converted to Surface, NURBS, or Mesh).

And there is also the "Loft" command, which works similar to the "extrude" but it gives you a path along which to loft, and a starting and ending state.

And, the really nice thing about AutoCAD is that the surface topology generally stays really clean.

Then, it's just a matter of exporting the object to Maya (this is how I've got most of the objects I have been practicing with in Maya, in Maya to begin with).

Making human faces/bodies is a little more complex in AutoCAD, but it isn't impossible either
Message 19 of 19
Avotas
in reply to: matthewbailey

Did you forget your question? 😃

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