In this essentials video, I want to go over a couple of techniques I'd like to use for handling things like flatten metal surfaces and curvature areas on cylinders. Hi there, Andrew here. In this essentials video, I want to take you through some of the basics of creating a couple of different kind of shapes, show you some of the tools and techniques that I'm going to use throughout these videos to make my block ends, my high polis and my low polis. One of the things I see a lot when people are starting out modelling is they tend to make things more complicated by not understanding the process. Whenever I'm trying to model say, a panel or a shape that has a uniform thickness to it, like a metal plate, it doesn't matter to me how much bending I have. I almost, always started as some kind of flat shape first. So for instance, if I had a metal plate that had a bend in it, it would be much easier for me to take my shape, pull my divisions into it and lift it into a single surface and then extrude it all together to make my final shape as opposed to trying to extrude this whole thing as I go. By creating a uniform extrusion, I'll get to create uniform shapes. So this way, I can think about the shape as a flat object if I need to make something really complicated like say, I need a big round hole in the center of this object. Well, in that case, I can create a center to this whole hole. I can extrude this whole thing right like this, and then I can shape this up. Maybe using circularize with a twist. It's nice some line up. Let's add a couple of divisions to it as do no circularize. If I pop top view here, it can just make sure everything lines up. So after I make a hole like this, it's pretty easy to take all these faces. Again, using my thickness, the very small level, I can extrude them all together to make the shape that I'm looking for. A lot easier than if I was trying to model the whole thing with thickness. So usually with something like this, especially like I said it's pieces stamped metal. I model everything with the flap and it'll come back and later. Now, if I have rounded edges though, I will wait until afterwards because I find personally that although I can use a tool, for instance let's go back to this all being flap. I can use something like the champ or vertex here which does let me add twice the edges to the division. Like so and actually if I select these vertz and let's go to Cham for vertex and I'm going to say remove face. This lets me create a rounded corner and I could do it a couple times to repeat that roundness. I can also get a similar effect. Afterwards, by just coming in and using the bevel and then giving it a couple of segments. Which I find generally produces more the results I'm looking for and I find a little easier to control, but some people prefer to do it this way. Another thing to think about is when you're modeling things with cylinders. So cylinders, I almost, always liked to go and powers of two. So at the very smallest, I'm going to go eight. I use 16's a lot as well as 32s. Especially like really big shapes. I'll need to really crank it up to maybe even like a 64. If the feature is very large because the real question is how many divisions, how many edges can I get away with. When I'm looking at two different cylinders, one of these being eight edges and another cylinder having 16. We can see from this distance it makes a huge difference to the sides. But if I smooth out the edges, from our side view it doesn't make a big difference. So if I can see the top of something, I'll make sure I add enough divisions so that it reads nicely. If I only see it from the side view, say if this is sandwiched in between two other shapes. So something like this. Then I don't really need much higher on that. It's a question to me of how many sides do I add. A lot of people ask on a low poly, how many sides do I need for something and I think it's a matter of how close you get to it. If this is the largest I ever see it, this is plenty of sides. 16 is plenty here, but if I'm going to get this close to the object, it's going to be this close to my viewport and I can start counting the number of sides that's usually where I say you might need some more. So let's go back pull another cylinder and let's start thinking a little bit about modeling with cylinders. Let's say I want some a cut or a square shape out of this cylinder. Well, someone might say, Okay I want to square shape and it needs to be in between these two. The problem that comes in when we drop lines in this direction, is especially when we get to if we want to make a high Polly. It's going to create a flatness here that I don't want, because of course every extra edge we add helps create definition and creates a point to be controlled in. So to create this as cleanly as possible. On my low poly I like to say, I mean, I can go take as many divisions in this direction as I want. It's not going to change the curvature along this axis. In fact, I'm going to get rid of the top and bottom Verts just right now because it's a little distracting for what I'm trying to show. So take all this. So I have just these pieces. I can see that if I create a cut in here, it'll actually change the shape, the curvature, of this object. Take look at it from the top view to see if I can make that a little clearer. So let's make a couple of these in here and see if we can make it little obvious. So we can see it's kind of bending and it's really affecting the curvature there. However, I can make as many cuts in this direction as I really want. It doesn't change the curvature in this direction. So let's say I want a hole that comes extrudes in it, comes in a little tighter. Well, in this case, what I'm going to try to do. Let's go to this, let's offset this in a little bit. Pull this in and instead of having this corner which is going to start to create this pinch here. I'm going to use my connect tool here. This will help me control this corner without having to add a bunch of division a long here. Now, that said the best way to do something like this if I want to cut in that distance especially in my high poly, is I likely will want just a lot more divisions to work with. So even if it's a small feature, if I know I want some square piece in like that. I'm going to have a much easier time controlling it. If I have just more edges to work with in here, because I'll have more of these evenly spaced edges that are going to control what's happening with the rest of my shape. So you can see again, there it controls it better because I just have more edges to play and work with. So when in doubt, when you're working with cylinders, just run more cuts along the cylinder perpendicular to the direction of the cylinder. Is running along the curvature as opposed to along its straight sides. Because that can really affect the way that it looks.
