Creating perfect trim on complex objects in Blender

Creating trim on simple objects in Blender is easy yet on more complex shapes it can appear quite tricky. But if you know the right tools and ordering you an get great (and easily edited) results without difficulty.
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[@bruuldor]

You are an absolute chad for sharing this with us. Such invaluable tips!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Cheers man. Glad it's appreciated and I hope people find it helpful 😁

[@euansmith3699]

These tutorials are so clear and concise. Thank you.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

No problem at all. Really happy to know they are useful and easy to understand/follow.

[@kurogiza]

Mind. Blown. First of all, adding all of the cutters together makes a ton of sense, since the comparison between the complex mesh and the "simple" shape cutters is only done once by blender. That's why you get clean geometry, plus it will be fast. Then the idea of using the solidified shell is great. It's an upside down way of doing it. But it solves the end union Boolean by completely sidestepping it. Amazing. Thanks for sharing this. I'm learning so much...

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@kurogiza 😁😁😁 Always very happy to be able help and thankyou SO much for all the really positive comments 😁

[@imonseii]

Very clean and excellent way of doing trim. A little work upfront and you save so many headaches down the line.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Totally agree. Its all about the prep and understanding the process.

[@herculeholmes504]

I have SO many of these AoV tutorials to catch up with! I'm going to download them all and keep them safe, in the meantime I'm still trying to learn the early tutorials like "Designing a base in Blender".

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Haha. Well I hope you're finding them helpful. As always, if you need a hand with any of them drop me a comment/message 😁

[@darrennew8211]

I'm sitting here binging the entire channel as well. So much good information about booleans, geo-nodes, and all that sort of stuff too.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@darrennew8211 😁 And what's even more impressive is you're taking the time to comment on the videos your watching 👌 It's massively appreciated Darren, it's always great to hear people's thoughts and you've been giving some great ideas and feedback so thanks so much for taking the time 😁😁😁

[@darrennew8211]

@@ArtisansofVaul No problem. Getting answers is great too. I've added you to my list of channels to recommend when people ask about 3d printing or geonodes. There are darn few blender-for-3D channels out there, and it's great to find someone I didn't know of before showcasing the artistic side of blender for printing. (The other great channel is Maker Tales, but he tends to focus on functional FDM printing rather than artistic resin.)

[@herculeholmes504]

@@ArtisansofVaul Thankyou very much AoV, your tutorials are brilliantly helpful, and if you don't mind I will certainly be asking for guidance soon; I'm still at the shallow-end of Blender but I'm starting to want to use the more complimicated tools, and I've now got Hard-Ops/Boxcutter.

[@NerdzNZ]

Love this, looking forward to trying this for some custom AT bits

[@ArtisansofVaul]

👍🏻 Nice. As you can see from the images (and my Cults page) I use this a lot for AT.

[@JonasMostert]

amazing fast track to creating brilliant results! thank you!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

😁👍🏻

[@benschnitter4057]

Dude are you a mastermind or what???? You just saved like 1/3 of my lifetime trying to fix Booleans ❤

[@ArtisansofVaul]

😁 That's awesome to hear. Glad I could help 👍🏻😁

[@benschnitter4057]

@@ArtisansofVaul please do a hardsurface course, i will give you everything i have 🙏 i just want to learn so Bad to create organic shapes

[@guilhermeoliveira1673]

That's a pretty interesting technique! Great video! Thanks for sharing

[@ArtisansofVaul]

No problem at all 😁

[@Thiccron]

Can’t actually watch this til I get home and in front of my computer but here are likes and comments for the algorithm gods, always a great video!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Hugely appreciated and I hope you find the likes and comments well earned when you get a chance to watch it 😁😁😁

[@gsr34gh_74]

Looks like a great method will apply this to my creations soon. thanks!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

😁 Great to hear

[@kylemclaughlin229]

This is going to be sooo helpful. Thank you.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

😁 Glad it's going to help out

[@fulcaris]

Thanks a lot! I spend literal dozens of hours struggling on trims

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Same here. Its a bit of a menace but this does make it much easier. 😁

[@liteningstrike12]

This is such a great tip! But I'm also laughing at how you've got a cutter, a cutter cutter, and a cutter cutter cutter. What's the biggest chain of subtractive booleans you've ever done?

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Haha. Not that large I'd say, maybe 3 or 4. Oh maybe more in the linked video below but it was a pretty complex commission for a church window. Thanks to Hardops I actually haven't had much of an issue with it though as everscroll makes it a really smooth/nice process and the cutters of cutters are easy to find. kzbin.info/www/bejne/aKCZdouvrJp5o5Y

[@christianlennertz5780]

THIS is a very great and useful tutorial!👍

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Thanks so much 😁👍🏻

[@kurzedbrush244]

Thank you for this tutorial! Learning quite a few tricks from your videos! :D

[@ArtisansofVaul]

😁 That's great to hear.

[@Gnal00]

Thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge with us!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

My pleasure. I've learnt so much from others as well it's the least I can do 😁👍🏻

[@Victimxofxprogress]

That is some big brain modelling!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Haha. It took a while to work out a system that is effective but this certainly does the job 👍🏻

[@AnthonyHortin]

Goddamn! What kind of sorcery is this! Thanks for the clear explanations in going through this method.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

🤣The best kind of sorcery 😉 No problem at all and hopefully it will help people out.

[@nicondottiere]

this is beyond amazing

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Cheers 😁Happy to share.

[@CosplayZine]

Great trick. Ive been using emacro while holding ctrl shift on faces after making loop cuts. Not sure that will still work on more complex objects such as this though so i will give this a try.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

That works but it can cause some results that aren't going to be smooth on the sides of the objects if they are a more complex shape because of the normal direction. This can be solved by using a cutter/boolean on the sides or merging some geometry but I find that takes longer.

[@Perchpole]

Genius. Well done. 😊

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Thanks Antar. 👍🏻

[@Perchpole]

@@ArtisansofVaul You have a new computer?! 🤣🤣

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@Perchpole I wish. I used a friend's rather more impressive machine and kept the mesh a little less dense than I would typically use to stop any recording issues. 😁

[@richardokeeffe8375]

Dude you’re a genius!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Thanks so much man 😁 Hope you (and others) find it helpful and use it to make some awesome stuff!

[@Robert-ln1cx]

Great as always! This technique is working on a complex curve in the x-axis direction, with you having a straight edge on the back section and a preformed cutter on the front section to produce nice clean edges for you when you add these as cutters to your overall trim cutter. Can this technique work if you have a complex shape across all 3 axis? say, in you example, you didn't have the cutter for the front of the jet bike to incorporate into your trim cutter - how would you solve that to get nice even trim? - thanks!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

I've used it in pretty complex situations with curves on most plains. The biggest issue is if you have something like a "wave" shape but you can still do it. In that instance it's just the point you scale the shape needs to be considered a bit more and I instead went into the object and moved the faces in relation to the normals using alt+e. But it's complex shapes like this that it really shines as a technique.

[@Robert-ln1cx]

@@ArtisansofVaul thanks - maybe an "Advanced" trim video on day 😅?

[@Robert-ln1cx]

rewatching your panel line video using the gundam head I wonder if that approach could be used for trim also 🤔

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@Robert-ln1cx You could use it in combination to make some cool trim I think.

[@karinlofgren6359]

Thank you so much!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

You're welcome!

[@elliotschka]

Awesome Video! Just like 3weeks earlier would've been nice xD now I'm finished with my trim already... I ended up doing inset and extrude along normals then manual cleanup of the mesh....

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Sorry the timing wasn't better. Hope it will be helpful for the future!

[@Rohnon]

Incredible! I want to add some trim to some files I found online. Guess I can't use this way of going about it. Atleast not without messing with the files alot more. Still great for future projects tho!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@Rohnon 😁👍🏻 Reallu glad to be able to help

[@ampmodclips]

EPIC! thanks!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

No problem. Glad you enjoyed it.

[@JaredSvB]

Ex-Maya user here with a question about the cutters in Blender. If i'm looking to export them as assets for game dev/moving to other pipelines for rendering, do I need to apply these booleans and then touch up the polys? Or is there a way to export everything with a super high sub div so as to keep all the cutter deformation, etc? Love the vids btw~

[@ArtisansofVaul]

So this can cause issues for hame assets as it produces Ngons so it isn't ideal for that purpose. I'm not sure but quad remesher might have a good go at cleaning it up but I haven't tried it.

[@mikeundo2310]

You always have my like! 😉

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Thanks man 😁👍🏻

[@Angelus1981]

First of all thank you for your great work. One questions remains currently for me. How do you get the grid of the inset shown in solid mode? Is this related to hardops or can this be achieved without any paid addons?

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Could you point me to a time in the video where what you're talking about is shown. I think you're talking about something that's part of hardops but I'm not totally sure

[@Angelus1981]

@@ArtisansofVaul thanks for answering that fast. It is e.g @10:28 where the mesh is shown greenish when selected or black when not selected

[@Playingmusic2]

super nice thank u

[@ArtisansofVaul]

😁👍🏻 Cheers. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment.

[@bt_martin]

Fantastic tutorial!! Thank you for sharing this technique!! Hail the Omnissiah…

[@ArtisansofVaul]

No worries at all!

[@jaymassey7931]

wow... never thought of booleaning the boolean.... meta boolean!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

😁 It opens up so many possibilities for things like this. Lots of fun!

[@herculeholmes504]

I just figured out why the Boolean Difference wasn't working for me: I was trying to solidify the plane using the "Solidify Face" tool in the "Faces" menu. It has to done with "Solidify" in the "Add Modifer" menu. That took me a while..

[@ArtisansofVaul]

👍🏻 Well done on working that out. It's things like that which can be tricky to spot.

[@RandomPickles]

How get the rivets or bolts to follow the mesh? I don't wanna use geo nodes and the curve way by using a plane to stop warping is so frustrating.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@RandomPickles I think you're going to be stuck if you don't want to use the Geonodes way I'm afraid. Unless you get everything to be perfect quads and that's more of a pain than the other methods by far....

[@mathieu499]

it looks like it's a demanding workflow concerning the amount of geometry >_< is it still looking that clean if u happen to apply everything ? my booleans often look good until i decide to apply them XD

[@ArtisansofVaul]

It's honestly the least demanding I have found for achieving really decent/complicated trim. By clean mesh it depends what you mean. It won't be quads bit it will be perfectly 3d printable in my experience (and I've used it a lot)

[@mathieu499]

@@ArtisansofVaul I don't mind not having a perfect quad based mesh, I'll try it and see for myself, it's indeed looking super clean, thnx!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@lusaks4226 I don't. Its on my purchase list but Im waiting for the next Blender Market sale as its one of the more pricey add ons 😅

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@mathieu499 I find quickly running it through 3d builder will solve almost any issues I've had with this technique (typically non-flat faces) though it can also be solved in Blender with a triangular modifier (it's just so rarely needed now I usually don't bother)

[@mathieu499]

@@ArtisansofVaul I don't use any software out of blender but good to know that the tri gular stuff will help! Thnx again AoV 🙏

[@johnaquino7619]

What do you mean I can only like this once? XD

[@ArtisansofVaul]

😅 Thanks man 😁 Glad you like it so much.

[@AlFredo-sx2yy]

uploaded 9 seconds ago.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

That was speeeeedy! 😁👍🏻

[@Quarther]

cool :)

[@ArtisansofVaul]

😁 Cheers

[@FrederikDahl95]

How much do you charge an hour sir?

[@ArtisansofVaul]

For commission work or for lessons?

[@FrederikDahl95]

@@ArtisansofVaul Well i'm somewhat in a pickle I'd like to be able to do models myself But i find it a bit overwhelming and tend to forget things I'm a graphic designer and normally I tend to be pretty good a shortcuts etc. But for some reason I just keep forgetting - tho i try to do stuff over and over again.. If you could DM or openly say what your prices are - I could think about it? Kind regards o/

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@FrederikDahl95 Happy to discuss openly but you're welcome to message me on Instagram of you have it. For design work I charge £30/£40 an hour depending on if the model can be also put online and on the Patreon or if its for exclusive use. For a one to one teaching session it's £25 for half and hour and £40 for a whole hour.

[@FrederikDahl95]

@@ArtisansofVaul I'll try to find you on instagram - I'd prefer discord as It would be easier for me to explain and share my wish/goal for the lessons - if possible - else i'll do my best on instagram c:

[@GG-James-E]

ha intresting!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Cheers man 👍🏻😁

[@pieralessi7426]

Good but fast video with normal audio is a headache

[@ArtisansofVaul]

The audio is an issue because its too fast? Or is there another issue? Sorry if its a bit fast, I was worried it was a bit slow actually at points 😅 But its a quite complex method, maybe I should have slowed down more.

[@pieralessi7426]

@@ArtisansofVaul Sorry by the critic, your videos are fantastic but is difficult to see what tool or modifier your selected.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@pieralessi7426 No problem at all man. Any positive criticism is helpful for future videos. Its generally the solidify modifier to make the thickness and then the other objects cutting through is using boxcutter/boolean modifiers.

[@pieralessi7426]

@@ArtisansofVaul Thank you so much!

[@DanieleT.820]

Amazing work. Excellent. But as a tutorial, you go too fast. It's difficult to follow you and understand many of the steps you've taken

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Hi Daniele. Interestingly I just had a comment from someone the other day saying a tutorial was too slow.... I think the message here is that no tutorial will ever be "right" for everyone. This is a relatively advanced tutorial and covering every aspect slowly would not have been appropriate for the majority of people wanting to watch this. Perhaps I should state the "level"/"audience" each video is aimed for but that seems quite arbitrary as what someone thinks of "intermediate" could be wildly different. Where there any particular aspects you got stuck on?