Hard Surface Modeling Tips - The Perfect Grid Fill in Blender

Check out my course 3D Cars: Inside and Out on Gumroad, Blender Market and Flipped Normals.
Gumroad - cgmasters.gumroad.com/l/3d-cars
Blender Market - www.blendermarket.com/products/3d-cars-inside-and-out-in-blender
Flipped Normals - flippednormals.com/product/3d-cars-inside-and-out-in-blender-32469?dst=b8XbGnH5
In this tutorial I'll give you a couple tips on how to use the Grid Fill tool properly in Blender. When used right, the Grid Fill tool is king when it comes to instantly and perfectly filling in big gaps on your model.
Check out cgmasters.com for more courses and tutorials.
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[@pinklady7184]

*Select edges, press Ctrl + F and choose Grid Fill.* Thanks, I will remember that. You're God-sent.

[@alexvith]

I had no idea about the corner vertex selection. Will try it out asap!

[@blengine]

I think it's always possible to get the same results no matter what vertex is active, but it takes some parameter adjusting so a corner vertex being active saves a little work.

[@michaelbendavid777]

me neither lol, but also selecting one of either side parallel edge loops seems to work for me everything time as well...

[@XavierX212]

Omg that corner vert trick is amazing. When you make tutorials always make sure to mention that, people will appreciate. Thank you very much!

[@freddykrueger4991]

i learned blender from your tutorials. you are amazing teacher.

[@blengine]

Thank you, very happy to help!

[@udwarde]

I didn't know i needed to select the corner vertex for grid fill to work perfectly. thanks Man you're amazing!!

[@MattproThe]

What the hell i didnt know that thing about the corner-vertex selection for curved surfaces grid fill. That's crazy, thanks you Chris, looking fordward to this amazing course!

[@blengine]

Yeah that definitely saves some time instead of messing with parameters to get things right afterward. Hope you like the course too!

[@toquita3d]

I'm a Maya artist but this is GREAT stuff! I love this tool in Blender.

[@blengine]

Using this tool never stops surprising me!

[@CG_Motions]

It is awesome to have you back master! I'm definitely purchasing this course. I feel bad for not completing the previous course even though I new it had important information in it, and for some reasons I lost the tutorials and files. I have gone so far in car modelling with Blender with the little I learnt from your previous course.

[@blengine]

Hmm the files should still be in your account on whatever platform you purchased on. Even though I unpublished the older car course the files are still accessible by anyone that bought it. And if you do get the new course I hope you like it! Thanks for the support too, and it's great to hear how much that last course helped you. I think you'll really like the new and improved techniques in the new one.

[@multiengineer9199]

The active vertex selection was something new... Thanks

[@Rafi_3D]

Great course, I love how you improved these techniques since the last one with Corvette. Looking forward for part 2 and modeling interiors

[@blengine]

It was so satisfying finally perfecting the guide mesh technique, it felt so incomplete before. Glad you're appreciating the improvements. And recording for the full interior shell starts tomorrow. It'll probably be the biggest interior section of the course and then work will go faster after that so it's a big step and I'm looking forward to completing it.

[@blengine]

Also part of the interior(inside the door) was uploaded recently in case you aren't following my updates on Twitter. There's also a changelog in the download files you can check periodically for updates.

[@Rafi_3D]

@@blengine cool, I'm gonna check it out today 😲

[@waltbayless7709]

Great stuff, Chris! And your course is fantastic!

[@sepehr-9210]

the legend himself,wow you have no idea how much car designing community loves you,you're like a jesus to them

[@blengine]

Haha thank you, and you are correct I have no idea but very awesome to hear =)

[@sahilsen]

Fantastic! Concisely covers the essential considerations!!

[@kwonda]

Good luck man, you're doing a great work 😇

[@3DBlendMix]

Thanks for these great tutorials; we need new tutorials especially about topology improvement ; thanks

[@blengine]

I'm planning out the next one now on just that. A lot of people ask me how I know when to move a vertex instead of slide it, or rotate instead of shear it or scale to an axis. So I thought I'd make a video on what actions are best in different situations to improve surface quality. I've actually got a dozen or so videos planned on surface improvement that I'll try to get out every week or two.

[@pile333]

Cool tip.

[@vexqty]

Pretty smart, what I usually do is connect the top and bottom vertices, (im gonna use your car example), and so I have 5 faces next to eachother that are straight, then I add 3 loops, and take the 1st vertice of that loop and connect it to the left side, and then use active element of that vertice to scale it to the right, and then repeat it for the other ones.

[@blengine]

I use a similar method too, but if I'm careful with topology then larger areas like on fenders are prime spots for grid fill to do its magic. Sometimes I'll take an area I manually faced up and give it a second pass with grid fill too and often end up with better results. Very cool tool.

[@vexqty]

@@blengine Yeah definitely sounds like a nice tool, will give it a shot if I ever come one of these areas across in my next car. Btw, do you have a discord community? If not, you really should make one!!

[@blengine]

​@@vexqty Not yet, but I've gotten a lot of requests, so after this course is totally finished it might be time to get one going!

[@vexqty]

@@blengine Awesome :D

[@3runjosh]

thanks for that. I am returning to subd after giving myself a huge headache using Rhino to try and do organic surfacing.

[@blengine]

Ah I've only dabbled with Rhino a *very* long time ago so I'm not sure what it's like these days, but I wasn't the biggest fan back then. Then again, I also uninstalled Blender early on too but eventually came back to it haha. Well welcome back to Blender =)

[@patriotaRBC]

Great !!

[@Cbss12]

Thats fantastic, as a Max user, I am jealous and have tried everything I could to replicate this function.

[@blengine]

Yeah this is an incredible tool and I don't know why I didn't use it more in the past. I'm also a little surprised it's not in max.

[@Arktal]

I didn't know about that corner selection! Really useful. I was also wondering, how well would this work with a cylinder, or even a sphere?

[@blengine]

I actually didn't know for sure, but after testing it out on a sphere, I'm happy to report it gives totally perfect results.

[@Arktal]

@@blengine Sounds good, thanks for looking into it 😁

[@paulbirkpowlly]

Of course the money gods don't have my back when ever there is some thing that is actually worth my hard earned money. But rest assured I will get this awesome course asap.

[@blengine]

Thanks I hope you get to check it out soon, and hope you like it =)

[@jujuboohoo]

Holdup! what? lol This whole time I only use it to quad cap cylinders. Yup, it works. Just tried it.

[@randomsimpson]

Great, but WHY select the corner vertex? What's the difference?

[@blengine]

I'm not entirely sure what goes on behind the scenes, but I think it has something to do with what vertex Blender starts from when it calculates how to face things up. So making the corner vertex the active selection affects this calculation and just tends to result in a cleaner topology.

[@soundsfromtheneighborhood]

Is this course done in vanilla, or do you use some paid add-ons? Thanks!

[@blengine]

Hey, the course uses only default Blender tools and only built-in add-ons. All you need is Blender and you're good to go for this course.

[@gamewavelondon]

how can i fill a u shape, i'm trying to cover the chin of mask, connect the left and right side of jaw, very complex shape but in essence a U shape

[@blengine]

Depending on the complexity of the area, you'll run into some limitations with Grid Fill. Like it can't predict any unique curvatures you might want in the middle of the area being filled, and is instead entirely based on the surrounding topology. It will simply create a smooth transition between all the edges surrounding the gap. So as long as what you're looking for is just a transition from one side to the other, then Grid Fill will work great. For something like facial features this might not be the best tool though, but you could still use it to get some topology filled in and then edit the new topology to your liking. If Grid Fill doesn't work out, then I guess manually filling in the area would be the way to go.

[@gamewavelondon]

thank you@@blengine

[@solidusseal]

Hey CG Masters : WHy cant I pay with paypal (or better iDeal) on your gumroad ?

[@blengine]

Hey, I replied on Twitter as well but I'll paste that here too: this is something that I need to enable on my end and then I'll get direct payments to my paypal from each sale. But this comes with extra responsibilities(refunds, disputes, tax details) that I'm not interested in dealing with at this point in time, sorry about that. I believe Blender Market has PayPal as an option for payments though.

[@solidusseal]

@@blengine i see. I purchased it in blendermarket. No problem. I have the bought the jeep and corvette back then also in gumroad so i was wondering why there was no paypal

[@blengine]

​@@solidusseal I think they might've changed their payment system at some point, and now the PayPal option is personal payment. I'm not a fan of how Gumroad does certain things. Also I messaged you on Twitter.