Blender Chess Queen - #17 Subdivision Surface Modelling in Blender

Learn more about Sub-D modelling www.hardvertex...
Weight of geometry is something you should always keep in mind when modelling.
If the vertex count can be reduced then you make your modelling life much easier and many other benefits come with any process which requires heavy computation.
Making the Queen in blender is a fairly simple job. We can use this opportunity to look at Radial Connection Reduction.
It takes ages to make these!! Please consider supporting me!
ko-fi.com/ianm...

[@loopcuthero]

Knowledge is never outdated!

[@Chronolich]

Brilliant Video as always. Exceptionally good and clear explanations. To think that I learned more about modeling from your short videos than I did with a 35 hour course on Udemy is mind boggling to say the least. Thank you for making these videos. I look forward to your next one.

[@ianmcglasham]

That is really kind of you Chronolich22. Hope I can keep the standard up!

[@andyedwardson9710]

It’s Sunday morning and I’m in heaven with a coffee and a perfect Queen. However you could have put the Hat on the Queen at the end. Brilliant as usual! 👸

[@ianmcglasham]

Thank you so much Andy. First the missed opportunity naming the softbodies tutorial and now I can't believe I didn't put the hat on the queen. I'm going to start coming to you before I put a video out! Cheers!

[@andyedwardson9710]

@@ianmcglasham Hah! Don’t worry I’m the last person you need advice from!

[@mattspawn1975]

Man, I just found you and I have to tip my hat to you. Your tutorials are outstanding. You are a hidden gem in the Blender community. I don't know how you don't have more subscribers.

[@tutorials6315]

Oh my god! I've learned a lot from this video! You explained kindly with detail information! Thank you as always!

[@ianmcglasham]

Nice! Thanks tutorials. I was worried there might be too much for one video so i removed around 15 minutes from this one! maybe I should have left it in!

[@sudipto30]

Just into the first 5 minutes .. so amazed to see your work, could wait without commenting, We were very eager to wait for your next tutorial .. always so many things to learn in a very different prespectives.

[@ianmcglasham]

Thank you sudipto gourami. I am so glad you enjoy them!

[@Robinbobin]

With your content I feel like I learn how to model in blender for the first time! Thank you so much for putting in the effort to share your skills!

[@Markoz87]

Thank you for another amazing video :) Your skill in explaining modeling are awesome. You're use so simple and easy to uderstand language to explain so complicated things. I'm so glad I find your chanel. Like always, thank for your time and will to teach us good modeling habits! 👍

[@ianmcglasham]

Thanks Markoz87. That is really generous of you. I am really glad you like them.

[@jean-marcfraisse7191]

Thank you very much Sir! I came across your channel thanks to KZbin suggestions, and I have to say it was one of its best suggestions ever. Great and thorough explanations throughout all of your videos, awesome! As I was finding the alternating "select/join" sequence a bit tedious (even if easy and not that long to do), I tried something, and I think that I found a way to achieve Radial Connection Reduction with even less steps. With the inner loop selected, instead of doing a Checker Deselect with {Deselected: 1, Selected: 1, Offset: 0} parameters then dissolving the vertices, I do the following: - Checker Deselect with {Deselected: 1, Selected: 3, Offset: 0}, which leaves 3 selected vertices separated with one unselected vertex, repeatedly - "m" then "collapse", wich merges every group of 3 selected vertices into one at the central vertex, giving exactly what we aim for Can repeat this exact same process down to 4 vertices, as you like. Then "alt + j" (Tri to quads) with Max Shape Angle to the max (180°) just as you explained. I tried it several times, and it does seem to work very well. Please let me know your thoughts about this, as there might be cases where this is not suitable?... Many thanks!

[@tjc7815]

Wow! It`s just so mesmerizing to watch you model Ian. Pretty much a Blender noob but have learned so much from just this one video. Many thanks for taking the time to do these videos/tuts. Off to watch more now and have subscribed. 👍

[@ianmcglasham]

Thank you so much tjc!

[@dazecm]

Hats off (pun shamelessly intended) to you for another excellent video.

[@ianmcglasham]

Ha. Thank you!

[@jeanw6637]

Clever and highly enjoyable serie, Ian. Accessing this knowledge of yours for free is fabulous. Thank you for taking the time to explain even the simpliest of your moves. It reveals many valuable tricks and tips! 💡

[@ianmcglasham]

Thank you Jean W. I just wish I could get the keys on screen to work!

[@KristoferPettersson]

You are a great teacher! Thank you!

[@ianmcglasham]

Thank you so much!

[@manart6506]

I was interested in a good technique to reduce polygons when you are going to the top of a shape and more and more polygons add up in a small area. This is very useful. Also good tip for the proportional sphere deformation with single vertices.

[@ianmcglasham]

Thanks MAN art!

[@mediaman1346]

This is the second queen that I've modeled thanks to you.( wish I could afford to support 😔 ) That way maybe I wouldn't have to repeat your videos so much but its better than watching less skilled modelers... I'm so hooked on your level of expertise!!

[@jujuandjesus]

Just keep commenting, subscribe and do all the free stuff! If we can nudge the algorithm, it's something.

[@2bit8bytes]

15:45 - alt to slide vertex passed the edge! 16:40 - transform along normal, individual origins, scale vertices with proportional editing 28:10 - curve protrusions/tips with proportional editing rotation

[@aliensoup2420]

Nice work. Lots of important techniques.

[@ianmcglasham]

Thanks Alien Soup. I hope there wasn't too much in this one. I had to take out about 10 things as I was worried it would be too much at once!

[@manart6506]

Amazing good tip for a great hat model.

[@ianmcglasham]

Thanks MAN art! I like the hat!

[@sc2fool]

I love the hat! 😄 Wonderful to see enthusiasm and joy like that!

[@ianmcglasham]

Ha! Thanks. I love the Hat. I wish I had put it on the queen.

[@npdiario2970]

¡¡Holy cr4p!! I just saw the beginning of the video and the hat left me stunned. It's amazing. Where will we go now?

[@ColinTCS]

Some extremely useful little bits of modelling info there! Cheers.

[@ianmcglasham]

Thanks for watching Colin. Really glad you find some of it useful!

[@ColinTCS]

@@ianmcglasham The bit about the -1 offset on checker deselect explains a lot of why I could never get it to behave.

[@HMalem]

Came here to learn about topology ... went home with a cool cowboy hat . Now how cool is that !

[@yoana2636]

Thx Ian, great video, I learned a lot from your tutorials!

[@ianmcglasham]

Thank you yoana.

[@fullyleaded]

Just noticed this new video and before I've even seen I know it's gonna be a brilliant video. Thank you in advance...

[@ianmcglasham]

Thanks so much as usual Fully Leaded. Hope you liked it!

[@fullyleaded]

Yes just as I had suspected. Absolutley superb! I love the hat sidetrack. Excellent detour. 😊

[@Flux_One]

Absolutely brilliant tutorial. Are you going to do one for the Knight piece?

[@Slickstaff_Stainpants]

amazing

[@pvdl11]

Another great tutorial. What would really interest me topology wise is a smooth transition between two connected objects that have different shapes (for example torus to cylinder). I was told that the blender included add on LoopTools does the trick. Do you like that add on? For an example about what object transitions I am talking about, you could check out my blender stackexchange question I posted today, where I asked how I can connect a torus to a cylinder and also posted reference images of the object I was trying to model. Thanks a lot for your work! Best in class, as far as my beginner eyes can judge.

[@ianmcglasham]

Hi Paul. I will check out you stack exchange comment but in the meantime, perhaps my connecting cylinders video might help! Otherwise I think the technique you are looking for would be disk connection - which I have not done yet! sorry. It will be out soon! It looks something liek this: drive.google.com/file/d/1axWUOciHiaQbGWK3mX0A-38aSKoZ_Gey/view?usp=sharing

[@pvdl11]

@@ianmcglasham Thanks for your reply. I already watched your great cylinder video. However i think in my case its not quite what I am looking for (as far as I can tell at least). Your disk connection looks more like it. It would be great if you could check out my stack exchange question . The title of the question is: "How can I smoothly connect this cylinder shape with a torus ? Including half pipes and a curve from back of cylinder to torus (see side view)" It in my opinion is a simple object but it poses this for beginner tough modeling question: A smooth transition between two objects of different shapes. The cylinder also has a slant in it and it positioned in a way that makes different curves necessary. What do you make of the answers given (LoopTool). Your work is fantastic imo and far exceeds other content creators understanding as far as I can judge it.

[@ianmcglasham]

@@pvdl11 Ive had a quick go at what I think you are after. drive.google.com/file/d/1HnEKwwwHcisLhfCexXD_njtm-NEZESjJ/view?usp=sharing Yes Looptools will be essential for this used in conjunction with shrinkwrap and making sure you are either moving things along their averaged normals or you are creating custom transformation orientations from existing faces.

[@pvdl11]

@@ianmcglasham Thanks for taking a look. Yes that looks close to what I am after. How did you achieve that effect? Same as what the posters on stackexchange did? The one thing is that the cylinder actually juts out farther than the torus if you look at it from side view or from the bottom view (as radius is larger than the width of the part of the torus its sitting on). I have just added a bottom view photo to my stackexchange question so you know what I mean. Also from side view you can see it as well. In what sense is shrinkwrap necessary? Also for what part is averaged normals and custom transformation important? Thanks for your tips.

[@ianmcglasham]

@@pvdl11 You would create the basic topology by deleting a square of faces on your torus (maybe 4x4) extruding and scaling the remaining loop in slightly and moving it up in z. extrude another one or two loops up using the circle tool from looptools ( perhaps setting the influence to around 20% for the first loop, 50% for the second and increase that gradually until it is your cylindrical shape. This would just be your basic topology. Create a vertex group out of all of the "new geometry you have made and place your target cylinder shape inside it. add a shrinkwrap to the torus (project mode, tick the negative checkbox too.) Select the cylinder as the target and the vertex group as the..er.. vertex group! that makes it sound easy but you will constantly be damaging your topology so you will need to be going back and forwards using the circle tool and scaling loops to zero along their z axis. fiddly but fun! Hope that helps - I'll make a video about it at some point! edit: Moving the loops and faces along their normals or custom transform pivots will save you lots of continuity errors as loops move out of their natural planes.

[@eitantal726]

29:29 You changed the location from zero to zero. What really matters here is application of the scaling. You already set the origin at 28:58

[@neilmarshall5087]

SMH... How had I never discovered that tris to quads trick. So many hours lost.... lol. When lowering the count around a loop I do prefer to use scale to 0 to merge groups of 3 vertices. So Checker Deselect >> Deselect 1, Select 3, Offset = 0. Then Merge by Distance after scaling. Saves having to add in those extra edges to remove the Ngons. Naturally (viewers) you need the Transform Pivot Point set = Individual.

[@ianmcglasham]

Hi Neil. The scaling method is good. Nice and fast, but it does move the central point of each set of 3 in towards the center slightly which can be a problem on curved surfaces and when I expand this method into loops with mismatching vertex counts, that method stops working but it is certainly a good method for loops that are multiples of 8 (which these are!)

[@BMX-Bandit]

Ian, thank you for making these amazing videos! I struggle to understand when we should make watertight models and when not. Is there any good rule of thumb?

[@ianmcglasham]

Hi BMXBandit and thanks for watching them! final models would always be watertight. Control objects can sometimes be non watertight to save on calculation time in simulations but the only real case use for Non-watertight meshes is in games graphics where the developers can guarantee that a part of a mesh will never be seen. If the back of a building can never be seen by the player then the extra vertices do not need to be there and are just an extra computational overhead for the game engine. That said. The model would still be created as a watertight mesh during it's design and the unwanted vertices would simply be deleted later. There is really never a good scenario to create a non watertight mesh. Some control objects for particle, fluid, cloth or softbody simulation can be non-manifold (not watertight) to save on processing times but any final delivered model would be expexcted to be 2-manifold (that is: every edge on a model is shared by exactly two faces - that is the only rule!). I do sometimes make a floor plane which extends off camera in all directions but other than that I make sure ALL of my models are completely watertight.

[@BMX-Bandit]

@@ianmcglasham Thank you so much Ian! You're a legend!

[@channelname8623]

does anyone know how to convert ngons to tris then tris to quads? I've gottan the ngons turned into tris with ctrl + T, but then when i use the tris to quads command nothing happens. Is there an addon for it, or do you have to do this manually? I imagine this would be a pain on an actual model with a lot of detail.

[@s3ntry948]

Nice hat hahah

[@ianmcglasham]

yes. I liked the hat!

[@MoreLikeCappuccino]

Criminally low views/subs

[@ianmcglasham]

Thank you David. That is really kind.

[@JoeRussell-oj7xm]

@@ianmcglasham I've watched nearly all your tutorials and am revisiting some now. You're an excellent instructor, better than many much bigger Blender channels. Sadly the youtube algorithm seems worse at promoting quality and depth these days. But I really hope there's more to come from you!

[@takeshikosugi4150]

The hat is as cool as you what you do for us sharing your invaluable knowledge ;) I've found some tricky moment at kzbin.info/www/bejne/hoK3mX13lLF2hq8m19s Checker deselect may give you two different results by random: 1) if you dissolve vertices exactly as it was in the video; 2) inverted selection. I've made a screenshot to show what I'm talking about - drive.google.com/file/d/1EslG_aXUe9OlkReY8BW9xq49yuXY25ix/view?usp=drive_link The first case (on the right side) will produce sort of "irregular" pattern that has less symmetry and has no straight edge lines between outer and inner sides of the mesh. The second one (on the left) looks more symmetrical. Both the patterns have equal count of vertices. My question is what is the difference between these two patterns and are there any consequences for using one or another of them?

[@ianmcglasham]

Hin takeshiko. Thanks. Checker deselect and grid fill can both give unusual results to be honest! If things are done in a very exact order then they will be predictable but they both cause all sorts of problems! I will talk about them both in more depth I the future. As for the two topologies - they both look pretty good. Which one you choose will depend on the kind of animation or deformation the object might expect to endure.