Blender Boolean Cleanup: Topology Study #1

[@DanielKrafft]

great workflow dude👌

[@JoshGambrell]

Thanks Daniel!

[@LordoftheFleas]

for those hops-less peasants like me: you can replicate the dice tool by adding a plane in edit mode, duplicate, move perpendicular to the plane, shift-R until you have enough of them, select all of the planes, scale the bunch until they intersect the original mesh the way you want to, and use knife intersect to create the geometry on the original mesh.

[@BlackFlameBoss]

Also, make sure the meshes are joined together! CTRL + J, otherwise it won't find any intersections!

[@Baiswith]

Good plan, but for something on any great scale I'd recommend using an array modifier to multiply your planes, which, iirc, will also save you needing to join everything after it's applied.

[@cuppajoesugar]

@@Baiswith array is the way, what hops does with the dice tool is essentially running a script that generates an array of wireframed planes that does a knife project cut. Hops boils 5 steps down to 1 but what it does isnt unachievable on your own

[@yokinyokin]

@@cuppajoesugar thanks for explanation.

[@xXSoulDitzXx]

u guys are all mad lad for all these awesome tips

[@vinay_dias]

This channel needs more viewer's

[@JoshGambrell]

Cheers mate :) Patience and providing value leads to these things.

[@jeffspinner6579]

It not just Josh. I've seen many people who are extremely good at what they do and nothing. Let's remove the obvious possibility of metrics being manipulated because there is no independent third party reporting the metrics nor any auditing (think of elections in the US, they are "verified" by a corp that is owned by the media companies that report the elections...derp) and the confirmation that all online metrics are manipulated by a former female CEO of Reddit. An interesting observation by one of the guys of Corridor Crew, said, nowadays, it's almost impossible to have a "successful" channel on ytube, but he didn't go into specifics. Idr his name, but he screams like a girl, when they review VFX and stuff, which interests me. I looked up the videos, his name is Wren. Also consider, male ytubers get between 3-6x less remuneration that women doing the identical things per 1,000 views. So there's a lot of things working against people on ytube. Given I think most of the value Josh gets back from his channel isn't from google ads, or whatever, I think he should have multiple back up platforms from DTube, to something wacky but useful brighteon. com There are many channels nowadays, and given what I've seen from actual controversial ytube channels, them having a dozen backup platforms makes google back off deleted them on their platform. Interesting outcome, if you think about it, but it does make corporate sense. The harder google squeezes the faster content providers stop using their platform, and the exodus from ytube has been epic. Ytube cannot exist without content providers. They profit on free content to them, as they share pennies back. What a country!

[@core4048]

Yes

[@psycho8079]

@@JoshGambrell I have arrived

[@Stefan_Kotuziak]

It has amazed me for years how much people absolutely freak out about how a few ngons here and there are bad, bad, bad! As you say Josh, on a flat surface they are absolutely harmless. And you are quite correct about looking after the shading, rather than getting overly obsessed about the topology. Clean meshes are always a laudable goal, but keeping the end result of a good looking render in mind outweighs obsessing over every single vertex in the model. Nicely done. Cheers.

[@JoshGambrell]

I agree! Take Moi3D as an example. Do the same operations in Blender, and you'll have ngons absolutely everywhere. For rendering, they are harmless assuming you manage them appropriately.

[@Stefan_Kotuziak]

@@JoshGambrell Yes, managing them properly is the key and something a lot of people don't seem to understand.

[@FranzGu]

Well, most of the time, this comes from people who work in the film industry. When you make models for movies you want them to be completely made out of Quads because your model has to work with a subdevision surface modifier as well as without one for detailed shots and for shots that are more far away. If you have a bunch of ngons and triangles on your mesh (even in flat areas), it will mess up your model and shading and stretch your textures if you subdivide it. So yea, if you are doing this as a hobby and just do some personal projects, no one gives a shit but if you want to go professional, you have to learn how to model wirh only quads. Also, it makes models way easier to edit.

[@mulanmiller5000]

Super helpful seeing you redirecting this loopcut around the bevel and how you used the matcap reflection to search for any shading issues. Great stuff.

[@omma911]

Oh wow, that dicing tool is fantastic. I'm not good enough at blender yet, so purchasing hardOPS wouldn't make much sense.

[@JoshGambrell]

Yeah learning vanilla tools is always a good idea.

[@huggingpuppy2613]

I don't understand how it's diffrent than loop cuts, do you?

[@omma911]

@@huggingpuppy2613 I used to work with Maya, and adding new edgeloops that go through the entire mesh require good topology otherwise the loop will just not finish when it encounters an nGon.

[@JoshGambrell]

@@omma911 Exactly this, it's basically a finesse for loop cuts.

[@LordoftheFleas]

@@huggingpuppy2613 loop cuts only work for polygons with 4 edges, but if you use booleans you get all sorts of unpredictable topology.

[@studiojohnny]

Great tutorial. Thank you, Josh. I was stumped by some of those problems and impressed by how you solved them: particularly getting the flow correct around the corner. Appreciate you.

[@Fasteroid]

Videos like this are satisfying in the same way power-washing videos are, except I also learn something while I watch. Cool.

[@davidbischi]

I love the Zebra matcap as it can show you loop / flow distortions really quite easly. It used for tangent transitions visualisation in CAD so i was quite happy seeing it in the matcaps

[@TheDevian]

Wow, you are just casually tossing out amazing things I never knew, like viewing only one object in wireframe and auto merging vertices... I am going to have to go back and watch this in slow motion and see if I can figure that out. lol

[@massimodambrogio]

The offset advice is pretty cool! Thank, very nice workflow tutorial.

[@holdmypen9308]

It’s really nice to see the advantages of the Add-ons and why they are a great time saver. Please, continue this series. it is awesome

[@JoshGambrell]

Thanks Kevin! I definitely will!

[@han_pritcher]

You could remove those remaining triangles by routing the edges all the way to the dead space at the front, then spacing the vertices evenly around the curves. I'm not sure what the command is in Blender but i'm sure it exists. Plenty of good tips here for beginning modellers. One important one is planning. For example, if you're making a muzzle-brake, and you know it'll have four holes going around the cylinder, equidistant, then it would make sense to use a number of sides for the cylinder that is divisible by the number of holes, eg 16, 32, etc. It's not as spontaneous, but would avoid a lot of the tidying up needed later on.

[@edmungbean]

you could auto-retopo the whole thing to get correct flow around the crease lines and then shrinkwrap mod to the original boolean result... getting flow correct early on is going to save you hours

[@alandunnett]

good solid sensible advice regarding topology and shading

[@JoshGambrell]

Thanks Alan!

[@masterxeon1001]

at 11:06 I feel it might have been less keystrokes to use j to conneect then merge or just m to jump but i might be following the topo differently. However this is a nice study too!

[@iksanfianka]

just learn blender about a month ago and your tutorial really help..thanks a bunch

[@Hell_Inc]

dude, your lessons are absolutely great. so well explained. thank you so much for this content.

[@JoshGambrell]

Thanks a ton man! Really glad I can help :)

[@BlenderDaily]

useful as always, thanks

[@XoioDe]

Thanks, Josh, very good tutorial. Personally I like to keep things more lowpoly and subdiv after cleaning. It just is less work to clean up, easier to unwrap etc.

[@barrymccarthy3047]

This is really such superb information. Cleanly and clearly delivered.

[@JoshGambrell]

Thank you Barry!

[@bjmgraphics617]

I was taught to always start with low poly for boolean, fix it and then subdivide or add loops to add detail.

[@BeheadedKamikaze]

Even though you might not do it that way when you're working on your own, I think it would be valuable for your audience to see how to perform these techniques in your tutorials without using paid addons. It makes your content (and you) come across as a whole lot less relatable, when most people don't have access to these paid tools. Having said that, I do enjoy watching your tutorials and I learn a whole lot. Just my 2c.

[@JoshGambrell]

Thanks for the feedback. Most of vids are vanilla, but when it comes to manually topology cleanup like this it will literally take me 5x the amount of time to do a simple cleanup. If people want to get serious about 3D, addons are a necessity. I agree learning vanilla tools is beneficial, but some of these operations are near impossible to do cleanly in vanilla, like Offset in MeshMachine.

[@emmanuelacquah3374]

People don't care about your modelling skills but care about your efficiency, complete a model in 30 mins instead of 2 hours and you will be considered talented and amazing and properly a Blender Guru; Work smart not hard. Go for addons. that is why add ons are important. Vanilla is for beginners but if you want to improve and make more money, think about add ons. I love your tutorials sir. It helping me understand hard surface on a different level.

[@147-m6l]

@@emmanuelacquah3374 ah yes complete a model in 30 mins and get paid less so that people can call u a blender guru big brain moment right there

[@imaginativedesign9423]

This is true. Also, Blender is very powerful and complex without add-ons. So when I see people using add-ons and they can't do it with just Blender's tools alone - then I have to move on at least for now.

[@bezoro7577]

@@147-m6l 4 models in 30 mins each = $$$ 1 model in 2 hours = $ It's pretty simple. You gain nothing by wasting time needlessly.

[@elizabethhamilton1166]

Your detailed explanations are really helping me take my hard surface modelling to a whole new level. Thank you, Josh!

[@4n2earth22]

Bravo. Perfectionism is its own punishment. If your not careful, you may end up like the centipede laying in the ditch wondering "Left foot? right foot? first? last?? Which??!!

[@ringthane69]

Dude you just saved me from going crazy. First time in Blender doing doing Booleans, terrible edges/results, etc. Thanks so much for this!

[@JoshGambrell]

No problem man, glad to help!

[@markferrick10]

Excellent Josh. Thanks

[@kylejennings819]

I didnt know how much i needed this tutorial. Thank you!

[@Mr_Steve3D]

TY Josh!

[@NoelAKABigNolo]

Clean the shading, not the triangles. Dude, this is so valuable to realize early, thank you! I am just starting to learn 3D, and I already saw triangles as the spawns of the devil! Half way through the video, I was disgusted 😂😂 But by the end, I have a completely different way of seeing triangles. Thank you so much for this

[@JoshGambrell]

Haha thanks Noel, welcome to the dark side! And enjoy your newfound workflow ;)

[@TheZahnputz]

i actually almost never work in hard surface and if i do the shading doesnt really matter, but your videos are pretty interesting and i always try to remember/save what may concern me in the future. thanks!

[@user-bz1fy6ci7w]

Thanks!

[@Villio.]

Man...you are god of edge loops I didn't knew loops also flow🙏

[@JoshGambrell]

Thanks Jayant!

[@Costlee_14m]

I watch a ton of his topology videos bc I think they are therapeutic

[@IndustrialPlasticsNanaimo]

Super helpful. Thanks as always.

[@militech-media]

This was really helpful! Thank u so much 👍🏻

[@BarcelonaMove]

That was like an ASMR for me

[@nilsweijmer154]

as always a great tutorial. keep it up josh!

[@ЕвгенийГлибко]

How to enable symmetry like yours. I saw that you pressed ALT + X but nothing turns on for me

[@JoshGambrell]

I'm using addons.

[@ЕвгенийГлибко]

@@JoshGambrell What is it called?)

[@JoshGambrell]

@@ЕвгенийГлибко Hard Ops (I have everything listed in description just in case)

[@ЕвгенийГлибко]

@@JoshGambrell thank you)

[@paolozirpoli5271]

I found that red matcap while I was working on a simple model with booleans. I thought I did a good job and then BAM, all my dreams crushed by a red matcap.

[@JoshGambrell]

Ahh, the red matcap, aka "Dream Crusher", here to destroy your confidence and beauty. That's why you gotta take over and dominate that matcap and show it who's boss!

[@core36]

3d printing showed me that 64 vertices is anything but nice and smooth

[@BorisBrodski]

Very well explained! Thank you!

[@JoshGambrell]

Cheers, Boris!

[@mikynetwork]

Really helpfull u are always good for understand workaround, i find very helpfull modifier for bad shading that is DATA TRANSFER, it help me a lot with a border shading issue, but is more complex to use for beginner

[@alirezaghaemi5944]

hi josh...the alt x that you said is not working for me...how we can symmetrize our changes in blender?do we have to install a new addon for that?

[@pleochroic]

Edit mode -> select -> Mesh -> Symmetrize (pick the right axis and direction).

[@deewhite1979]

Great video! Thank you.

[@andreapanozzo2493]

Pure gold man!

[@kcr58game]

Thank you for the detail explanations. I am very new to Blender and I have tried to made something for learning. Now I think I need to redo everything after seeing your tutorials 🤣 Plus, I can't find the Symmetry function, nothing appears too when pressing "Alt + X".

[@peble_8807]

the symmetry function hes using is from an add-on called HardOps (hops for short), that may be why alt + x isnt doing anything for you

[@polymakegames]

"Think about what you're doing here... It's also mindless work."

[@blendermaster8934]

love it!! great tutorial

[@JoshGambrell]

Cheers!

[@kyzer_wilhelm8280]

I've been waiting for a video like this, thanks

[@JoshGambrell]

Well here ya go!

[@kyzer_wilhelm8280]

@@JoshGambrell how would you make those extra loops without HOps?

[@JoshGambrell]

@@kyzer_wilhelm8280 Subdivided plane with knife project

[@garybrashier3796]

Brilliant!

[@yapanwolf]

is alowed to have triangles and n-gons somewhere on shape for animation?

[@8-bitowyzakatek623]

6:22 It's not laziness, it's a big brain workflow :D

[@supernova8252]

Great tutorial, thanks for the help on insta!

[@JoshGambrell]

No problem!

[@abiyyupanggalih854]

wow thank you for sharing

[@torjusaanderaa3749]

You are amazing! ^^ very helpful, thanks! :D

[@mustafaalazawi7788]

I love your tutorials, so informative and right to the point! can you please make an in-depth tutorial about your favorite features in Hops? it is going to be so helpful..Thanks in advance.

[@JoshGambrell]

Sure! Will definitely keep that in mind.

[@AnatomyAcademy]

This was really helpful thank you

[@JoshGambrell]

Cheers man!

[@AnatomyAcademy]

@@JoshGambrell I know topology matters but struggle to know how much to care, and when! So honestly this was perfectly pitched.

[@MikeHalk100]

Hi, Josh. A small request: Would you collect these individual tutorial videos into a single playlist?

[@gayusschwulius8490]

You can do that yourself by just creating a new playlist.

[@RunTheTape]

Good, no doubt, but I find a lot less time consuming and with quite a good result just remeshing booleans with quadremesher and then fix the geometry a bit.

[@Rize-TheArtOfPlay]

7:10 I have a problem similar to this, where the edges or verts are not visible due to some weird shading overlapping and I can't seem to fix it. The problem is definitely a result of the bevel. Can someone explain how I get rid of that problem? Changing the auto smooth does nothing and the shading error does not disappear unless I turn off the bevel. Merging faces also did nothing and using edges to push the problem closer to the bevel does help a bit but does not get rid of it completely.

[@sivaramireddynb5415]

Man I learned lot of tricks from u

[@artuan.3d483]

Great video, my only problem with it is that you work in a pretty high resolution since the start, making the progress slower, i think it would actually benefit the advise if you work in a lower res, the add subdivision surface with supportive loops to preserve the edges!

[@sherlockhomes9919]

It saddens me how blender is producing terrible 3d modelers. This mesh is so dense for a shape that is so simple. Imagine the cleanup time and uvmapping this 😂

[@artuan.3d483]

@@sherlockhomes9919 i made this comment a year ago, a lot has changed but my mentatility hasnt changed yet. But it is true that this is a good advise for anyone who just want to make a quick concept or something like that you know? There are times that design comes before topology!

[@adamplechaty]

@@sherlockhomes9919 hows that blenders fault...

[@rbettsx]

But.... in this particular case, it might all have been quicker without the Boolean at all? (Some variation on: cut a tapered section out of the cylindroid, flip it, weld it back in) Good clean-up toot, but maybe should add.. *always* look for the modelling option first, before reaching for the Boolean. Just 2c from an ol' timer. No Booleans when I started, so maybe I have an unreasonable allergy to them 😜

[@starchamber7700]

This is so true. I have been using Booleans casually, hoping to clean up the mess they make later, when it's all too late. Now I avoid them and make the cuts manually. It teaches you so much more about topology.

[@mqelbajri9828]

1 Question: why on the Mesh tools I not found "Dice" Can yo help me. Thank you

[@josephvanwyk2088]

Thanks for this!! Makes sense! I gather that this is the general way in order to make sure your UV mapping is not f-up? Because, man the uvs around bevels are the MOST of my headache.

[@JoshGambrell]

Check my newer video on unwrapping - I make it super easy!

[@Shadrax2904]

Great! Tutorial: how do I fix this horrible grid, I'll use an expensive plugin! Just a great tutorial! 😍

[@IgorMaliskaFilms]

Thanks for the video man :D

[@ComplexTagret]

On such difficult surfaces why don't you use Transfer Data or Srinkwrap modifier to those vertices? Is there any trouble with those methods?

[@IlyaArlenka]

I was using 3ds max for some time and it looks like the same topology from the video would cause a lot of artifacts in 3ds max, am I correct? I mean Blender looks way more forgiving mistakes according to a bunch of videos I saw :) Want to try it in nearest future

[@calebbrazeau4597]

what's it being used for medical, industrial. hobby 3d printing. thanks for sharing.

[@3dart161]

the topology savior

[@Othman66357]

Nice explaining bro 😍😍😍😍 Can you tell me how to Train in modeling (like duties or missions) for training?

[@VicSoh8649]

What I like to do, instead of vertex sliding to merge vertices, I grab a vertex and press and hold CTRL to make it snap to the vertex I want to merge it with, that way there's no issue of sliding the vertex through the wrong edge. But that's just the way I work.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

CTRL only does snapping, not merging.

[@JoshGambrell]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 Well if you turn on auto merge it will merge automatically.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

In which case the CTRL snapping is unnecessary.

[@VicSoh8649]

​@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 ​ I still need to use CTRL to snap the vertices since I set my merging distance to a very small number. But if there's a lot of vertices, I don't even activate automerge, I just snap the ones I need and I apply a merge>by distance command at the end, since I tend to forget to turn off automerge and that ends up making a bigger mess.

[@Meteotrance]

I wish we could avoid boolean but the fault came from CAD software that work a lot with that process, retopology was realy made for that but it's better to started with simple subdivided polygon it make the unwrapping and animation process more bearable...

[@user-lz6ss5by4k]

Awesome 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

[@shimmentakezo1196]

I feel so frustrated...I have a similar shape, made with a bool (I was not able to get it right with regular method and subdivision + bevel modifier), I have cleaned as you show here, but the bevel is completely invisible like it was deactivated (I've tried all range of distance, all kind of width type and angle method), and trying to move vertices, connect them etc never correct the shading. I feel like a windmill 😅 just moving air around me all day long. And I've watched almost all your nice videos on the subject!

[@iamstickfigure]

You were saying that the triangles don't matter much because the shading issues are not noticeable, and that the n-gons don't matter because they're planar. But don't these sorts of things fuck things up when using a subsurface modifier? And I think it fucks up loop cuts too right? (I don't have any experience with blender, this is just my understanding from research)

[@JoshGambrell]

I rarely touch subsurf in hard surface workflow. If I do, it's at the top of the stack not affecting the booleans/ngons, or I'm using creases around bad areas. Yes, they are an issue in certain situations, but it is not a huge modifier in my toolset. You don't buy a Tesla to transport heavy equipment, you buy a truck (meaning I use the toolset which works best for my workflow - that being the boolean-bevel workflow).

[@mr_vky]

When I loop cut like 2:50 , it's not creating edges inside the removed part.

[@snyyx]

Alternative title : How to make a finger with no nail in Blender

[@corvette724]

Nice, but i have no Dice in HOPS??

[@JoshGambrell]

you checked under mesh settings?? or are you maybe using a super older version?

[@corvette724]

@@JoshGambrell i'm using 2.9? it's not in the checkbox

[@corvette724]

@@JoshGambrell je, i followed mesh -> next checkbox. ok, there are different versions? releases? is uödate for free, or do i have to pay again? thx for quick repy. 😊

[@09ucef]

nice video, but I have a question plz : can you explain to me how can u do to make (sharpen), I try to found this option on modifiers but no result :(

[@JoshGambrell]

Hard Ops addon!

[@alonglee2344]

Hi josh... I wanted to ask how to join a clay in sculpt mode... I started with a sphere and deleted some parts, I kinda messed up and need some clay to continue my work but it’s all paper thin and I can’t add more mass to my clay corners. Please help

[@TauranusRex]

What I do not get is, I started modeling with 3DS Max 30 years ago and bolean did not change since then in 3D modelling tools, except CAD like PTE Pro-E or solidworks. There you live from bolean literally. And there you do not have to care of anything and it is looking awesome. Why is this still different here?

[@NameJeff21]

This video makes me a lot less scared of booleans

[@SianaGearz]

And if you're making a car or whatever, and it too will have that high gloss finish... you might as well embrace just the tiniest bit of residual unevenness just as long as it doesn't look repeated and thus artificial because metal doesn't actually come out perfect out of the factory as designed, there is always just the tiniest bit of warping and waviness coming back around where the metal was stretched more during forming.

[@JoshGambrell]

Great point!

[@basj1970]

Is there a plain vanilla alternative to the offset trick done with Mesh machine? I don't have that. I do have hops.

[@JoshGambrell]

I don’t believe so.

[@masqueradechannel1263]

how can I make vertex points bigger like him?

[@JoshGambrell]

Edit-preferences-3d viewport-themes-vertex size

[@AkimboFennec]

A simple solution for this tedious after Boolean clean up is to use a quad remesher

[@shimmentakezo1196]

How do you get this edge white-ish effect? The first cylinder you add seems to have worn edges, well not really worn but marked like on a curvature map. I thought it was due to a mat cap but I have tried every single one and cna't get it...

[@JoshGambrell]

Viewport orbs -> dropdown -> Cavity

[@shimmentakezo1196]

@@JoshGambrell Ah that's super handy, thanks a lot !!

[@castletransport]

it seems that if you don't have an expensive add-on for blender, you can't do proper boolean cuts

[@sagar1526]

I'm not getting the dice option. Where can I find it

[@kanecobe]

whenever I do a boolean cut and try to apply a bevel modifier it doesn't seem to be able to do it, the edge just stays sharp.

[@JoshGambrell]

Turn off the “clamp overlap” setting

[@kanecobe]

@@JoshGambrell Of course, I've watched enough of your videos I should know that. Thanks lol.

[@jayy9887]

how do I get hops please is it in add ons?

[@JoshGambrell]

You buy it.

[@randypower9317]

Stop stressing?!! No way!!

[@yagosantiago10]

your the best

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Noun and verb missing? “Your [something] [something] the best”?

[@IndustrialPlasticsNanaimo]

Alt X....Nice!!!

[@glenn_r_frank_author]

So... seems without hardOps this technique is not possible since we can't put the geometry in like the Dice Tool does?

[@arvetis]

Whenever I have a convex area created by boolean, it seems like my normals are just random.

[@fari7s]

I think that fixing shading issues taking 90% time ,and modeling 10% :)

[@JoshGambrell]

Agree!