A modelling question

[voon]

Something I asked on Blender Artists, but I'd also like to ask you people:

Imagine you model a hard surface object, say a spaceship/car/house/whatever. It consists of many very edgy parts, organically roundparts etc ... just like we for instance know spaceships from any star wars movie and other places.

Let's just imagine a sidepanel (simple plane) of which you have a slanted cylindrical structure coming out, on which you may have some weapons or antennae etc. The whole thing is immobile, just a simple fixed structure.

How do you model the "cylinder on plane"? Do you carefully create a single object/mesh, cylinder and plane connected properly etc doing the whole boolean bonanza and trying to figure out how to connect the 60 side cylinder to the very few vertices of the plane etc. Or do people just make a plane, then a second object, the cylinder, and then just stuff the cylinder into the plane, totally not caring much about exact position etc. I.e. are these complex models carefully created single meshes or just a wild ball of stuffed together objects ("Noone sees what's inside anyway, camera only renders outside")?

I'm having trouble understanding how the pros model the ships for games etc. That is, if they just "sloppily" stick together various objects to get an external shape looking pleasing, or if they carefully model a single mesh. I also only talk about rendering .. if the insides of the ship matter etc, you obviously can't just stick together whatever, as the things prodtrude to the inside.

I know game designers etc have to think about rigging or the limitations of the game engines etc to break up their whole ship into parts, which is different from just modelling a static object to render.

[acc24ex]

interesting question - I would say low poly modelling maniacs would carefully model the cylinder onto the plane -
I would say - who's got time for that and just stick a cylinder into it - and if I want to make it real smooth go inside zbrush, dynamesh it so it would stick together and do a quick retopology via zremesher, and stick it back..

- I am guessing it is up to anyone's choice - but when you play a game and stop and look at the geometry - my god it looks disgusting most of the time

[glimpse]

as Acc24ex, I believe that's up to every artist to decide. However if You want to get the best possible look it's worth to model as model is done in reality - if it's stamped it's one piece, if it's glued from to make to.. if it has a well, model it too.. if it has rounded corner do it..I mean it depends form situation, but it looks best when it mimics reality as close as possible =)

[Jaberwocky]

voon

not sure how other modeling apps do it, but in sketchup you just position a circle on the plane and extrude.

As Sketchup has direct distance entry within 3d space just like autocad, all this can be accurately sized and positioned and if necessary, dimension'd as well.
The dotted lines shown are just temporary construction lines.

please see screen grab

Jaba

[acc24ex]

- sketchup and every other CAD works with polygons under the clean looking outer lines - so you think it's pretty and optimized, until you try doing texturing or anything else advanced

anyway looks like a tutorial on the subject

http://cgcookie.com/blender/2014/08/26/ ... -surfaces/

[xxdanbrowne]

Whatever you feel like.
I'm not a pro but I did watch a bunch of tutorials on digital tutors and I remember one of the courses said noobs often try to model everything as a single piece and get all screwed up. I guess the implication from that is you make it from multiple pieces if you need to.

Thinking off the top of my head, the reason for making it a single piece might be down to game engines and rigging. If it's a single scene it doesn't really matter.

If you *did* want to make it as a single piece there's a whole bunch of ways you could do it:
1. Cut a circular hole into the mesh by some kind of difference tool, then cut the top end of the original cylinder and bridge the edges from the hole to the top of the cylinder
OR....
2. Use something like zbrush to insert a mesh and then zremesh it
OR....
3. Draw edge loops onto the surface and then extrude..

There's tons of ways to do it as a single piece but unless you really really give a damn I think it doesn't matter too much.

[itsallgoode9]

I used to work in the video games industry....when it comes to games, do whatever is the cheapest in terms of poly usage. In this case, it would be to just make the protruding cylinder a separate object that intersects. If you're looking for high end render, just do whatever looks better.

[FrankPooleFloating]

voon, don't bite off more than you can chew, while you are just getting started buddy. You have to keep it as simple possible and do some baby-steppin' until you hit that magic point where shit will really start to click and make sense... Just a couple minutes ago, I saw you asking about what the new render passes are and how to use them (they are not for you voon.. not yet).. And just a couple weeks ago, you seemed to be having a hell of a time grasping how to light with HDRIs... You are not doing yourself any favors by trying to do too much too quickly, while you are still very wet behind the ears. It is understandable and admirable that you want to blow peoples minds with the spaceships that are still in your head... It just takes time bro.. there are few shortcuts in 3D. But as for modeling, nothing will make you a better modeler than picking objects (simpler ones to start) that you have excellent reference images, from many different angles, and reproducing them, until they are indistinguishable from photos.. or better yet, household objects you have laying around - that is even better.

Speaking of spaceships, if you have not seen this, you need to (WebGL required - and be warned, you may poop your pants):

http://www.eveonline.com/universe/spaceships/

[suvakas]

The task is simpler than you think.
No need to use messy boolean operations or etc. I would just polymodel it.
I made you a quick example..

Suv