topic Re: maintaining hard edges on a smooth surface in Maya Modeling Forum

maintaining hard edges on a smooth surface

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 04:47:58 GMT

...trying to model an F100 turboFan jet engine and while most of the surface edges are beveled while keeping the cylinder smooth i am struggling to create a rigid cross-grid on the core part of the engine that will maintain the hard edge of the cross pattern without losing the smooth substructure...even when modeling it in two separate parts the top section becomes square and rigid. Q: how would you model the reinforcement Xpattern on the surface of this cylinder where the surface edges follow the smoothness of the cylinder but maintain the sharp hard edge of the pattern.

I have tried the "set to face" command and hard edges including creating actual hard edges in softImage which works a lot better than what i can find in Maya2018 but no matter the effort, it still results in blocked out faces along the surface of the cylinder.

??? anyone???

Re: maintaining hard edges on a smooth surface

damaggio — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 04:59:00 GMT

If you want the cross pattern smooth then ad more polygons to the curvature or model in Subd and duplicate around+ merge, or make it flat then roll the shape with a deformer just as you would a tire, good idea to keep that part as a separate piece. the rest is easy.

Re: maintaining hard edges on a smooth surface

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 06:05:32 GMT

thanx! both seem obvious, now, but i never thought of that...prolly cause i suck at deformformers - i never get the offset right, will have to go back and do some tire tutorials...i will dive into both solutions... TY!!!

Re: maintaining hard edges on a smooth surface

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 06:09:04 GMT

...so when you say model in subD and duplicate - u have any refs to get me started on that path???

Re: maintaining hard edges on a smooth surface

damaggio — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 17:36:59 GMT

Here's one way of doing for Subd, you can also smooth the Polys at the end of modeling and delete all the unnecessary edge loops remaining to lighten up the model.Also you can do it with the right amount of polygons you need and not use Subd...you can then ad a round corner shader on it for the edges.

Re: maintaining hard edges on a smooth surface

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 23:12:17 GMT

many thanks! really appreciate the help!

Re: maintaining hard edges on a smooth surface

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 12:19:30 GMT

TY damaggio, your help made this an easy task - it has been a long time since i modeled - since softimage was XSI but creating the lattice and then using a bend deformer was about as simple as it could get! still cannot seem to get "hard edges" in smooth mode to wrk in maya2018 like it did in Softimage but that is another topic. thanks again!

Re: maintaining hard edges on a smooth surface

damaggio — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 14:52:40 GMT

If you have the supporting edge loops around the edges it should retain a sharper edge.

Regardless your model is looking very good, press on .