Topology Hard Surface With Floating Vertices - My First Spacecraft

[Volcanmystics]

Dear all,

I started my first big project after modelling alot for 3d printing, which i found is much more forgiving topology wise 🙂
Now i'm making a spacecraft, interior and exterior. So i need to be able to "walk" around in it. This created alot of challeges. I'm quiet proud of how far i got so far but now i'm starting to run into problems and doubts on how to go about it.

In the screenshots you see just a part of a hull to simply my question. This is all 1 object with open and closed parts. I removed some faces here and there since this part will be on the outside, and i have interior models to cover the inside of my faces. My questions are mind boggeling to me and the more i search for answers, the more confused i get. I need some critique that tells me what i'm doing wrong. I tried to keep quads, and it looks very simple to me.

My questions are as follows:
1: How is this topology? I kept quads, but it still seems screwed up but i don't know where.
In the bottom arch bit, there are not edges, only vertices. Is that a problem? Because it's working and i want to keep the inside hollow.

2: Is it ok to have open parts in my objects like this?

3: In the last shot there are 2 edges i DO want to bridge, but it doesn't allow me saying " polyBridgeEdge requires equal number of border edges to be selected for source and target selection". But why???
Clearly (and i triple checked this) there are no double vertices, only 4, and it's a quad. What is going on?

I know it's alot, but i did 2 weeks of work full time on this ship, and i'm at the point where i started to texture and everything seems to go down hill. Hope someone can point me in the right direction. Thank you so much in advance!

[Kahylan · Accepted solution]

Hi!

You are clearly a beginner and learning a new skill is hard. So I want to start with a positive here, I like the design, the balance between edges and curves is quite cool.

Now to the critique. Your topology has quite a few problems. The main problem as you already mentioned are the N-Gons (polys with 4+ edges) in your curves. In animation you want your models only contain polygons with 3 or 4 edges (preferably 4). You should use a cut tool to connect the vertices on those faces with each other. Something like this:

 

 Also, and this goes to your second question as well, if you have an open ship, it needs to have a thickness. You don't want the backsides of polygons to be visible. As you can see in the picture, iI gave my arch a thickness and a smaller arch inside it. The open hole on the right would be what connects to the rest of the ship. So you still neet to model the "inner walls" of your ship.

The last question you had, the problem isn't that you have a different amout of edges selected, but that you don't have border edges selected. Border edges are edges that only are connected to a polygon on one side, like the edges at the bottom of your ship.
Edges should never be connected to more that two polygons at the same time, this is why maya doesn't allow you to do that.

An interior wall should look like this:

 

I hope this helps!

[Volcanmystics]

Wauw! Thank you so much for that swift and extended reply!
Really helps alot!

Thanks for the compliment as well. Very motivating. I am learning way too much the past few weeks.

This was only a small part of the total ship. The rest of it also has a lot of roundness where the topology seems quite alright because they were made starting from spheres. But when i started with straight cubes and building out "hard surfaces" and then "bevelling" the end parts, it got all weird for me.

I totally failed to understand/see, that this was not a quad hahah.
But thanks to you it is very obvious.
I was thinking in edges, NOT in vertices.

So here's my attempt of fixing it.
At least it's in quads now 🙂
(except for working my way down which will be ok)

As far as hollowing it out for the interior, i did make the interior walls.
But i thought since they cover the inside open planes it doesnt matter they are open.
Then i started rendering and texturing and UV mapping (sorry, i couldn't wait).
Which gave me problems on the outside because of light bleeding.
The big open part at the end is going to be a window. So i separated that part. That was not too smart lol.
I'm going to take smaller steps now to make sure it all makes sense and it is solid.

I need to go back an go over everything all over again.
But it doesn't matter since i learned so many things making this thing already.

May i ask you 1 question?
Clearly, bevelling is not the way of putting a round edge on a square piece.
I'm experimenting with different shapes but nothing seems to have correct topology from the get go.
Which is creating a lot of extra work. A cylinder is pinching in the middle. I try to avoid that.
Any idea what is the best way to round a square edge with quad topology?

When i use a cylinder, i get something like this. Would that be considered "bad" topology?

Thank you so much, really really appreciate it.

Here is a render of the total piece that needs fixing 🙂

Cheers

[Kahylan · Accepted solution]

The way you did it is not too bad. But you'll still have the pinching problem.

There sadly isn't a primitive shape that gives you a good rounded edge for beveling while being all quads.
But there are quite a few simple ways to achieve that. I attached a video of the way I normally do it. Its a few steps, but it gives you god quad topology with a single edgeloop at the round edge for later beveling.

Many Modelers I know have an object like this just saved on their disk as an Obj or .mb so they can just import it whenever they need an all quad cylinder like this.

Your ship looks cool by the way!

[Volcanmystics]

Brilliant!! Absolutely awesome.

And not too hard either. Thank you so much.

You're a real lifesaver. I made it just like that and indeed saved it on the drive for later use. Anyway a great idea to create some uniform coherent look on a collection of ships/building etc.

Everything is a solid piece now and part of the inside AND outside.

On to substance painter. I can only hope it doesnt screw up when i export it to unreal and animate it.

Too much to do haha 

Once i got it all up and running, youre the first to know 🙂

I owe you one.