I'd start by cleaning up all those edges on the S curve. it has a shapemerge smell...
next, select one of the remaining edges. ring. connect with 3 segment subdivisions. play arround to shape the S curve like the front section.
and i'd finish by taking the wing corner edges and bevel them.
or, possibly, to maintain the very same shape, I'd delete everything except the top, and bevel-extrude it all again 4 times to have the original shape everywhere.
yeah, I think i'd do that.
caus the problem, if you bevel it right now, you'll have really ****ty things to your corner, due to the geometry not beeing quads.
gold rule with max (possibly the other softs as well) keep everything quad.
Personally I find that when I'm making something for SubD, I try to use the absolute bare minimum of polygons that will work for my purpose.
Less (or larger) polygons = Easy smooth curve, good for large smoothly curved parts (like the top surface of this part of your mesh). Produces less poly density in the output (faster viewport performance).
More (or smaller) polygons = More control over curve. Good for corners and details (like the edge of this part of your mesh). Can create immensely dense meshes in output (slower viewport performance).
Hence, if I were to try to create that part of this model I'd use waaay fewer polygons on the top surface as my base mesh to subdivide, and I'd probably use more of a radial pattern rather than the square grid you've used, as this will give the mesh a nice flow around the contours which will make it easier to see where to make adjustments. I find that it also helps when it comes to texturing.
But given your current base mesh, I'd clean up the edges and faces shown in the thumbnail (please forgive the rushed annotation, I'm at work and I have MSPaint... *sigh*). Any poly with more than four edges should be adjusted so that there are four edges (like merging two edge-end vertices to eliminate the edge). Any triangles might possibly be collapsed to a single point. Extra edges and vertices could be deleted. If this alters your shape, it'll normally be only a small adjustment to bring it back into shape, and fortunately SubD is by far the most forgiving modelling technique I know of (bar metaballs, but making a starship with metaballs is crazy).
Quads smooth nicer and more predictably than tris or n-gons. Triangles can pinch, and n-gons can be difficult to predict in advance. You can usually get away with using triangles and n-gons in a SubD mesh, but you will find your mesh neater, the outcome more predictable, and your life slightly easier if you try to stick to quads.
I had a bit of time on my hands, so I threw some polygons at the problem to show what I mean. It isn't perfect (it's just a demonstration, but tweaking this a lot closer is by no means impossible, or even particularly difficult).
This is in Maya, but I am pretty sure that the principles are the same in all applications.
Please refer to the unsmoothed image below:
The green faces are part of a low-poly polygon sphere, they were just scaled down in the Y-axis and moved into place. Most of the sphere was deleted, leaving only the green faces shown. Pay particular attention to the two arrowed faces. These used to be four triangles, until I deleted two of the edges making two "arrowhead" quads. This is because quads are preferable to triangles for smoothing in most cases. The "arrowhead" arrangement is very useful for turning triangles to quads. The use of a sphere makes the complex curve part of this mesh very easy to achieve. The vertices closest to the red faces were stretched very slightly along the ship's long axis to shape the S-curve of the wing.
The red faces are part of a capless cylinder, tweaked on a vertex-by-vertex basis to conform to the ship's "spine".
The purple faces are also part of a tweaked capless cylinder, to give shape to the front of the wing part of the hull. Vertices were moved and snapped to the vertices of the green faces to match the curvature.
The yellow faces are faces added to blend the green faces to the red and purple faces.
Note that care must be taken while building to try to make the numbers of faces of each part match up, so you don't end up with triangles or n-gons all over the place. Normally it just requires a touch of forethought and the occasional adjustment to keep things matched up.
The edge between the yellow faces and the red faces was bevelled for the smoothed image, to give the spine a little more definition.
Hope this helps to show what I meant in my last post!
Wow - There is some fantastic modeling tips in here for a total noob such as myself. Thanks for all the advise and time you guys have spent suggesting it. Outstanding thread. :thumb:
Posts
next, select one of the remaining edges. ring. connect with 3 segment subdivisions. play arround to shape the S curve like the front section.
and i'd finish by taking the wing corner edges and bevel them.
or, possibly, to maintain the very same shape, I'd delete everything except the top, and bevel-extrude it all again 4 times to have the original shape everywhere.
yeah, I think i'd do that.
caus the problem, if you bevel it right now, you'll have really ****ty things to your corner, due to the geometry not beeing quads.
gold rule with max (possibly the other softs as well) keep everything quad.
Less (or larger) polygons = Easy smooth curve, good for large smoothly curved parts (like the top surface of this part of your mesh). Produces less poly density in the output (faster viewport performance).
More (or smaller) polygons = More control over curve. Good for corners and details (like the edge of this part of your mesh). Can create immensely dense meshes in output (slower viewport performance).
Hence, if I were to try to create that part of this model I'd use waaay fewer polygons on the top surface as my base mesh to subdivide, and I'd probably use more of a radial pattern rather than the square grid you've used, as this will give the mesh a nice flow around the contours which will make it easier to see where to make adjustments. I find that it also helps when it comes to texturing.
But given your current base mesh, I'd clean up the edges and faces shown in the thumbnail (please forgive the rushed annotation, I'm at work and I have MSPaint... *sigh*). Any poly with more than four edges should be adjusted so that there are four edges (like merging two edge-end vertices to eliminate the edge). Any triangles might possibly be collapsed to a single point. Extra edges and vertices could be deleted. If this alters your shape, it'll normally be only a small adjustment to bring it back into shape, and fortunately SubD is by far the most forgiving modelling technique I know of (bar metaballs, but making a starship with metaballs is crazy).
Quads smooth nicer and more predictably than tris or n-gons. Triangles can pinch, and n-gons can be difficult to predict in advance. You can usually get away with using triangles and n-gons in a SubD mesh, but you will find your mesh neater, the outcome more predictable, and your life slightly easier if you try to stick to quads.
This is in Maya, but I am pretty sure that the principles are the same in all applications.
Please refer to the unsmoothed image below:
The green faces are part of a low-poly polygon sphere, they were just scaled down in the Y-axis and moved into place. Most of the sphere was deleted, leaving only the green faces shown. Pay particular attention to the two arrowed faces. These used to be four triangles, until I deleted two of the edges making two "arrowhead" quads. This is because quads are preferable to triangles for smoothing in most cases. The "arrowhead" arrangement is very useful for turning triangles to quads. The use of a sphere makes the complex curve part of this mesh very easy to achieve. The vertices closest to the red faces were stretched very slightly along the ship's long axis to shape the S-curve of the wing.
The red faces are part of a capless cylinder, tweaked on a vertex-by-vertex basis to conform to the ship's "spine".
The purple faces are also part of a tweaked capless cylinder, to give shape to the front of the wing part of the hull. Vertices were moved and snapped to the vertices of the green faces to match the curvature.
The yellow faces are faces added to blend the green faces to the red and purple faces.
Note that care must be taken while building to try to make the numbers of faces of each part match up, so you don't end up with triangles or n-gons all over the place. Normally it just requires a touch of forethought and the occasional adjustment to keep things matched up.
The edge between the yellow faces and the red faces was bevelled for the smoothed image, to give the spine a little more definition.
Hope this helps to show what I meant in my last post!