Stopping wrinkles in smoothed surface

Hi guys, I need a tip here. I’m trying to make a car, but when I cut in the holes for the lights I end up with a wrinkled mesh like this, because of the loop cuts that are close to each other


How do I cut holes without this happening?

Thanks :wink:

You can try to place the hole first, then go about using triangles and quads to fill the areas around the hole. You could also avoid creating whole loop cuts and just use the knife tool or even some careful Inset or bevel tool work to get the geo in the area you need it.

Ok, thanks for the tips I’ll give it a shot :slight_smile:

I’ve been trying what you said for a while now but my problem comes from trying to make the hole a square when I subdivide. I always need to put edge loops or knife cuts around the edge of the hole to stop it from getting circular (thus giving me the wrinkled look on the mesh because the edge loops are so close together).

So, what would be the best way to go about getting a square hole in a smooth, curved surface?

Please don’t mistake this for me asking you guys to help with everything… I’m constantly experimenting on my own :wink:

Select a quad, use I to inset, and then select the inside quad and extrude. You can set your crease level there to control the edge of the hole to some extent depending on your geo.

Rather than relying on extra loop cuts to define edges, this is a good case where edge creasing would be a better option to avoid that kind of pinching.

Ok, so this is what I’ve done. First I set the edge crease around the outside of the light hole:


Then I creased the inside edges to try to make it square:


Which resulted in this:


I just can’t seem to get the edges right with edge creasing.

I can upload my .blend file so you can have a look, if you feel like it.

Thanks a lot :slight_smile:

I would propose using an ngon there - after the extrusion inward, subdivide that into 4 quads and then use loop cuts only in the space of the hole cut, they will not go past the ngons around the hole.

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sorry, that last pic shows a good hole by 1. subdivide the quad 2. inset the selected 4 quads 3. extrude the new selected four quads 4. loop cut with ctrl-r and slide to get a solid edge, these edge loops won’t go past the border of the initial subdivide

If it helps, I’ll be glad

Ok, thanks that worked a little better but I now have wrinkles around the edge of the hole because I have a curved surface.


and


Thanks for telling me that though, because I will use this for sure on flat surfaces.

Maybe you should try more geo then - is difficult to get a very clean hole with only relying on modeling with simply subsurface modifier and some loops for a hard surface object. Maybe you should decide on an acceptable number of divisions and apply so that you can cut cleanly without using a subsurf modifier. Or maybe look into the Booltools addon, and see if there is a way to get what you want with booleans.

Hmm ok even when I do use more geometry it still gets some weird creases in it. Maybe my mesh was just stuffed from the beginning :confused:

Thanks :wink:

How about the boolean modifier? I added a subsurf and boolean, followed by a bevel modifier on the main mesh, with the boolean object set to draw as wire only in the object panel - this gets a very clean edge there…

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Wow that seems to work well, I haven’t actually learnt anything about that modifier yet. I’ll read up about it now :wink:

Thanks :wink:

Hmm, no it just does the same as if I had cut the hole in myself. Can I send my file to you so you can have a quick muck around with it?

Thanks for your help so far, really appreciate it :slight_smile:

Was following along and have some square dent… Problem is you can not use ngons near bent surfaces - subsurf will pinch that immediately.
If there is a flat surface row or two of quad faces around it’s almost invisible. Guess creasing is the best way to go here since close loops will make a visible deformation too. Creases alone might still give some distortions but some loops not so close to the corners dissolve that.

If this is something from this car - there are separate grill and lamp parts anyways and it should be separate model parts too.

Ok, thanks for that. I’ll have another go at it tomorrow :slight_smile: