how to round the edges of a extruded circle with out using subsurf

Greetings, I have been wrestling with this for a while and it seems like it would be easy, but I can’t figure it out. I would like to round just the permitter of an extruded circle. If I try subsurf it creates a hole in the middle of the circle. I’ve tried loop cuts to try and prevent it but It doesn’t work.

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Edit Mode
Select the edge you wish to strighten
hit N to display properties tab (if not already displayed)
Go to mean crease it under Transforms and set it to 1
You may also need to add some more loops to the model.

I played with what you said and I got the edges to round in only one plane with a hole in the center that is almost imperceptible. But I would like to round the corners themselves, not just make the perimeter smooth. Anyway to do that?

thanks,
TP

Where does that hole in the center even come from? If both ends of that “cylinder” are properly capped, there should be no hole at all with subsurf…? Show us that thing in Edit mode, please, so we can see the wireframe!

i suspect that you have just capped it by extruding the circle inwards and scaling it to the center, i could be wrong of course as you provided no wireframe or any other useful information, so going with my gut instinct i would say simply select all the verts in the center of the cap an then press altM then merge at center, if thats not the case then you’ve done something weird and need to provide a .blend for people to check

extruding and then sizing to zero is exactly what I did. I will try what the selecting vertices then merge and see if that gives me the desired result. Thanks.

That didn’t do anything except make the verts disappear. Here’s a blend file. It’s extremely easy. Make a circle. Extrude then resize to zero. Apply subsurf and watch the hole appear.

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Of course it does. Because the vertices you’ve scaled to zero didn’t go anywhere, and they’re not connected to each other. You should’ve paid a little more attention to what Small Troll said: select all the verts in the center and merge them. Alternatively, you can just merge them right after extruding, without scaling: extrude, right click (or escape), alt+m -> at center.

Resizing to 0 won’t merge the vertices in the middle unless you have automerge editing activated, it just moves bunch of vertices in the middle. But there’s also another problem


Top viewport: vertices in the middle selected, count says 32 vertices so they’re all in the same group. Other side has the same group
Bottom viewports: two of the vertices have an edge between them which makes the surfaces cave in with subdivision surface

Remove doubles and remove that edge in the middle: select all (A), W -> remove doubles which removes double vertices, then select none (A), ctrl+alt+shift+M to select non-manifold and X -> edges which deletes the edge in the middle. Both objects have the same flaws.

If you want to use subdivision surface on a shape like that, the high angle edges needs support edges to hold the shape:


Top viewport:

  1. Face select mode (ctrl+tab), select face loop around the rim (ctrl+alt+right mouse)
  2. ctrl+i to invert selection to select surfaces from both sides
  3. i to inset. The closer the supporting edges are the sharper the smoothing with subdivision surface. I left them further away for the screenshot
  4. select face loop around the rim again
  5. inset that too. That way you don’t have to loop cut (ctrl+R) and scale to get edge loops on both sides
    Then use the subdivision level of 2 or 3. 5 is usually way too much. Also enable smooth shading from the tool shelf in object mode.

Bottom viewport:
Or if you’re not using subdivision surface, have enough resolution on the outside rim to have a good silhouette and use smooth shading to smooth out the surfaces. Then with edge split modifier you can get the sharp edges again.

I believe I have it.
Thanks,
TP