Patch & issues to make smooth transition

[hansvaneven]

Hello,

I'm trying to work on a carved surface (guitar top in this case) and have watched a lot of tutorials and tried a lot of options 'but finally went for the patch solution like used in many car tutorials. Now this works nice, but the issue I have is that I don't seem to be able to stitch the patches together into a nice and smooth surface, is there something I can do or maybe I'm not using the right tool ? I also tried the loft option, this worked better for small part but for the complete guitar surface gives other issues so I'd love to use the patch mode which works nice in the car tutorials I see but not on my model, why ? Thanks a bunch in advance for your help

[mango.freund]

hi @hansvaneven we need your work as f3d file here.          greetings mango

[hansvaneven]

Hello mango, thanks here you go 

thanks a lot, greetings Hans

[mango.freund]

hi @hansvaneven take a look. greetings mango

[g-andresen · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Simply create the 2nd and 3rd loft with the previous surface profile instead of the sketch profile and make it tangent or curved.

Sccreencast

günther

[hansvaneven]

Super, thanks a lot mango, so you rather use lofts instead of patch, the confusing part for me seems to be to use profiles and rails correctly., Analysis seems better but in render view I still can see the lines between each surface is this something we can avoid ? thanks again, greetings 

[hansvaneven]

Thanks guenther

Indeed this seems to be the solution I'm looking for, I'll try to continue and see if I can manage to finish the whole surface this way, thanks a bunch for your help! 👍 greetings

[hansvaneven]

This tangent/curvature option seems really to be what I was missing since, really thank you and also Mango for your help  👍

[hansvaneven]

Hello guenther, curvature seems to be the smoothest option but in some cases it doesn't seem to work or it comes with an error, do you know why curvature doesn't always work ? If I take tangent (g1) as option I can still see the stich in the final render if if analysis shows a smooth transition. thanks 

[g-andresen]

Hi,

---

@hansvaneven  schrieb:

 do you know why curvature doesn't always work ?

As I know it depends on your profiles and rails.

But I think @TrippyLighting  can explain it better.

günther

[hansvaneven]

Thanks, do you know if there are any tutorials on these spline/loft options ? thanks again, greetings

[TrippyLighting]

I had typed a longer response but the forum software effectively killed it.

You should not have used 3D sketches. Your model is symmetric across the center line but the centerline does not coincide with the respective origin plane. Your sketches have completely arbitrary dimensions and I doubt a real guitar would be that small 😉

The constraints you use between curves should be matched by similar setting in the loft dialogues. For the center line symmetry only tangency is needed to be curvature continuous.

Constraints in curves and sketches alone don't guarantee tangency or continuity across the entire lofted surface boundary and need to be matched with the respective settings in the loft dialogue. That only works when you loft between surface edges, not spline profiles.

The area circled in red could use some more TLC.

[g-andresen]

Hi,

---

@hansvaneven  schrieb:

Thanks, do you know if there are any tutorials on these spline/loft options ? thanks again, greetings

---

Here is a tutorial by @TrippyLighting and some others here

günther

[hansvaneven]

Thanks a lot  for your help and time and sorry to hear you lost a long message.

Yes of course the dimensions aren't real, I was just testing out a few techniques to see what works best for carved tops like this. The real guitar is more like this one (esp guitar) so once I have the right technique I will redo everything from scratch in the real size. 

I'm going to check out your model in depth to see how you did it, looks nice. The hardest part will probably be the two cutaways of the guitar but I'm not there yet.

thanks for your time and help, greetings

[hansvaneven]

I tried to analyse your model but for one reason I don't know where this Rail 2 comes from in the middle of the second surface ? It's impressive to see how smooth your model is but this will need some more study not sure if I understand completely. thanks 😊

[TrippyLighting]

Have you been able to decipher the design to see how it was created ?

[hansvaneven]

Hello, first of all my excuses for not coming back earlier I didn't saw your latest reply so thought my last question wasn't answered sorry again. Yes I was able to open your file but like I posted in my last post I'm not sure where the rail 2 comes from ? 

thanks again for your kind help and time, greetings,

[TrippyLighting]

So after I created another long and detailed post the awful forum software killed it again:

This time, however, I had the presence of mind to move the info to a google docs document.

Here is a link to the "post" 

The model is attached.

[hansvaneven]

Hey thanks you so much for your help on this, I'll investigate your doc file asap (am at work right now) and let you know how it works, thanks so much for your kind help on this,

all the best and greetings,

Hans 

[hansvaneven]

Wow I'm speechless what an amount of work you did , I can't thank you enough this is just fantastic 

 greetings, Hans