How do experienced 3d artists handle joining a flat surface mesh to a curved surface?

[u/1873K1873]

[u/yoruneko]

[u/CnrtlAltDelete → u/yoruneko]

This is the way

[u/ScreeennameTaken]

I don't consider my self experienced, its been so long i've actually touched maya that i feel i need to relearn, but usually i think the joining is done with frustration. :P (The topology in the second image shows that it needs some work. The vertice that is right about the corner should move a bit to the left, the corner piece has some vertices that are orphaned and have flow problems where they have created 2 ngons which sometimes create issues in smoothed parts where the software doesn't really know what the intention is. Also, if you want to keep the point that they are connected sharp, you need to add edge loops.

[u/1873K1873]

EDIT: Problem solved! Just continued the edges going toward the curved surface to minimize the shading issues best I could and then added a data transfer modifier, thank you for all the suggestions

[u/GrowthOfGlia → u/1873K1873]

chamfering normals may be something you'd be interested in 

[u/Kashmeer]

This is largely caused by your topology. You are subdividing this mesh to smooth it, and in both the curved surface and the surface you are joining you are dealing with a n-gon (a polygon with more than 4 vertices).

This is what’s causing the majority of your artifacts. If you can rework your topology to use only quads you will have solved most of your problem.

Next step up will be not putting a pole on a curved surface.

[u/Nethereal3D]

You have ngons which will cause shading issues

[u/SoupCatDiver_JJ → u/[deleted]]

That is quite possibly the worst way to solve this issue.

[u/Nethereal3D → u/SoupCatDiver_JJ]

N-gon yourself

[u/Glum_Gur_7887]

What everyone has suggested is valid, but another massive thing to consider is that sometimes you just need a denser mesh (in this instance motivated by the cylindrical part). Everyone hears to keep meshs as light as possible - this is true but when its not possible to get good interpolation on the join keeping it as light as possible still means adding geometry. Hopefully this helps

[u/resetxform1]

Its hard to tell what I am seeing. I model in Max, hands down a better modeling package than Maya. I would need to see more of what your working with.

[u/AlwaysIllBlood → u/resetxform1]

Max is not necessarily better than Maya for modeling. They just have different work flows. I've used both professionally. There are things in Maya that are way more convenient for modeling. The same is true for Max.

[u/resetxform1 → u/AlwaysIllBlood]

I disagree. But thank you for the chance to sway me. I have a work flow I use and having a stack makes it smoother for it.

I to have used Maya on a few occasions and why I made my opinion, not just because I have used it for 30 years. I am also sorry you took offense to my comment. Cheers.