How to add supporting edges on a cog shape

[Anonymous]

Can anyone tell me how would I go about adding holding lines on this shape? smoothed

[damaggio · Accepted solution]

You can add edge loops all around but why would you need that , is already in the right shape with hard edges, not everything needs to be subdivision, just remember that. Alternatively you can just bevel or use a round corner shader. If that part is not gonna be right on camera you are pretty much done.

[Anonymous]

I see so you don't have to put everything in smooth shaded view? I thought that everything had to have supporting edges. That makes life a lot easier actually

Also Is it possible to have like a panel break in on the mesh where the small groove would be subdivided and the rest would be normal without smoothing? I'm just trying to figure out the best way to do it

The cog in a center cap for a wheel like this:

[Anonymous]

So far this is what I got. I detached the centre part and extracted the faces, but now I'm left with a gap that I don't know how to close

[damaggio]

Here's a SubD version of that piece, as you can see to maintain fidelity of the shape is necessary to add a lot of geometry, I'm sure I could simplify a bit more but the point here is why would you spend so much time in such a small piece of the car, unless you are doing high end Automobile commercials where the camera is passing by some close up shots of the wheel. In the end you should put just enough detail for the kind of output you need.

For production everything must be SubD , quads only, water tight and to scale.

For video games it should be a much simpler polygon model.

Also this piece is a little harder to do because it has an odd number 15 instead of 16 cogs.

[Anonymous]

Well it's just a small project i'm using to learn maya..I'm just trying to see how close to the ref I can make it and then get some nice render shots hopefully