Hi everyone,
I'm having some trouble trying to figure out how to surface this last section for a model I'm working on. Feel like the solution is staring me in the face I just cannot figure it out.
I've tried a number of solutions using guide curves, different surface techniques but I can not get it to look good or the transition to look continuous/smooth.
Any help or tips will be much appreciated. Thanks.
Ok, on closer inspection, I see you did try a Fill surface. Use the Curvature edge setting for all edges.
In the upper left corner, you can see how the curvature combs flip to make a little dimple there. That's because your reference surfaces are forcing the Fill to go concave then convex in that area. You can't set up edge conditions like that and expect to get a good clean surface out of it. I would go ahead and build the rest of the model in that area, making sure you're not flipping convexities.
You might also be misinterpreting the zebra stripes as being wrong or bad in some way. The display settings can affect zebra stripes a lot. If you set your Fill3 surface edges to Curvature, everything looks good. One better way to examine it is to turn off edge display and just apply a shiny/reflective material. If it doesn't look dented, then you're ok. It takes some time to develop an eye for this.
I notice your workflow in general is kind of inefficient. If this is just a test piece, then that's understandable, but if this is an actual model for real work, you should develop some better techniques. Such as, don't start something as a solid that you really want to work on as a surface. It's just bad form to move back and forth between surfaces and solids a lot. It makes editing tough down the line, and I think it forces the model to retain a bunch of extra information that it really doesn't need.
Hi Ryan,
And what is it about your fill surface that you are not satisfied with? If you turn on equal curvature on all your boundaries it seems to fill the area pretty nicely?
What is the different of having this option?
Reason for having this option is, obviously it should be tangent to existing surface and does not know what is going to replace the helper surface. I mean if there are surfaces to come to replace the helper surface.
Consider doing this in two 4-sided patches.
also reconsider the order in which you are defining surfaces. Seems like the lower-right surface should be done last, and the patch you are trying to make should be more primary.
Roland Schwarz I've never found that the selection order has any bearing on the results of a Fill surface. Does it? I've tried CW and CCW and lug-nut type selection, and it doesn't seem to make a difference.
Nothing of the sort. Fill has nothing to do with it.
I'm saying the surfaces should be built in a different order entirely. What is currently being scabbed in as a fill surface should be a primary surface, or at least before the surface on the lower right.
The shape of the model also suggests another tube-like structural member should be present.
It's like everyone's trying to help this guy paint, and the drywall isn't even up yet.
Hi everyone, thank you all for the quick responses! My first time posting in this community and you guys rock! Tried some of the recommendations and it's looking great!
Thanks again, guys.
Not sure why I'm spending time on this, but the way you've set this up is not the way we tend to use Fill surface. Usually the Fill is the last surface you create after other surfaces leave a patch or hole that you can't make using other tools. The extrude and two boundary surfaces are essentially Ruled surfaces - surfaces with curvature in one direction. The boundary surfaces were made with 2 straight lines and a curved edge. Because 4 of the 5 faces that bound the Fill only have curvature in at most 1 direction, the Curvature edge condition actually does more harm than good on all but the gray surface in the lower right.
A real Fill surface would have been more appropriate between the original surfaces you created the boundaries (yellow) from (light blue and red).
A more realistic application of the Fill surface is like the one below, where the actual part surfaces already exist, and the Fill fills in an empty patch as below.
Those little reference surfaces are more appropriate where you're trying to make something smooth across a plane of symmetry, as below. The reference surface is used to represent the symmetrical face, and then discarded.
In your example, it looks like you're going to build around the Fill, which is really backwards from how it's intended to be used. I'd take another look at your workflow and see if making the rest of the shape first doesn't make more sense.
The Fill surface does non-4 sided patches brilliantly. Should work on that like a charm.