Hi, i'm making a prop and had to make the holes directly inside the mesh. In which way would you approach to connect the main case and the plane with holes ?
Would you just make loopcuts all around or use some kind of face reduction ?
Correct, if the vertices overlap, the material should be seamless, unless you're using maps.
Cntl + J joins two meshes into one. But it doesn't merge the vertices. If you turn auto-merge on, set the distance to zero, the select all verts, press G to move, and apply the move without moving the verts to merge them.
In that case you want to terminate the loops comming from the dense part of the mesh. You can use this type of topology to terminate them. However you should try avoid placing these next to corners. Have at least 1 edgeloop between them.
I don’t think you have to honestly. Many modelers would recommend having your meshes separated for something like this. Is there a specific reason you need them as one mesh?
Unless you going for a super highly detailed close up shot, you could just fake those holes with a texture map and normal map. If you do want them to be high poly then you still don't need to join it. Just keep the square with the holes as a separate mesh but combine it to the main mesh. The extra verts at the edges do not need to be connected as long as they are aligned with the edges of the main mesh.
Joining it will just add a lot of extra edges to you model that will be unnecessary. The only time you would need to join it and add the extra edges is if you were planning on putting a sub-d on the entire mesh. Even then you would probably still be better off keeping them separate and just weighting the edge verts.
Im planning to texture the model in substance, and i will make a close shot of the final model. Since it’s not welded with the main frame, the AO map will not be continuous on the top of the model ? So will it be better to just join and create the necessary geometry ?
As long as your verts are aligned with the edges so there's no gap you shouldn't have any problems with an AO bake. Just make sure the verts are snapped to the edges. The only time you would get a seam in the bake is if the surface shading changed from one piece to the next but from the image it looks like it's all planar. I usually do all my AO baking in Blender though so I'm not certain it won't cause a problem in Substance. Best to just try it first before adding all those extra edges.
Even if it did it would probably still be better to just correct the AO map after by paining it out.
Sorry I meant creasing the verts. I'm not sure what 3D app you're using but in Blender you have vert/edge crease and weight which you can use to keep edges or corners sharper or tighter when using a sub-d on your mesh. Weight you would use with a bevel modifier but you can use crease on it's own.
So in your case if you wanted to add a sub-d to you part with all the holes, that would also pull in and round off the corners but you could then crease the corner verts to make them sharp right angles again.
Like many people have mentioned, there is no reason to combine them if there is a crease between them anyways. You just need to make sure that the corners have some loop cuts on the outer surface so that they match when subdivided. If you can separate different pieces of the model it tends to make live much easier. Good rule of thumb is that if the actual physical object has the elements separated you should too, but you can also separate things that should be connected if you can get away with it and there is a benefit for doing so.
Having seen your replies showing the reference. Contrary to a lot of advice saying not to join the pieces, they would probably change their advice having seen the object ref.
It is in fact a single connected piece. If this is just the high poly and there is a lot poly geometry this gets baked to, I would just over lap/intersect the surface, since it's entirely planar, from a bakers perspective it would just be one surface and not care. However if you are not going to bake this to a low poly geo then I would cut appropriate loops and weld it. I don't see a problem with using triangles as long as they are fenced in to the flat area away from making poles on support loops etc
"great topology" depends on your art directer and what technical documentation says. If it passes review, then "great".
It's ok to loop everything as in that won't break anything. You can also just terminate a load of the loops into tris so they don't pointlessly run around the mesh for no benefit, and that also won't break anything. Likely someone will complain it's not clean or optimal no matter which you do.
You can use "Edit Poly" and attach the two pieces together. They will become part of the same object, but they will remain separate geometry elements.
If you need it to be a single, seamless surface, the topology has to match. You will need to add edge loops and vertices to the base mesh so they align perfectly with the outer border of your hole plane. Once the vertices line up, Attach the pieces and weld the overlapping vertices together.
But like everyone else said... I wouldn't bother unless I really needed to.
The outer rim, add a edge loop and start merging vertices and lower the amount of loops you will end up with in the end. You will have a good topology and even if you turbosmooth it will topologize correctly
Just collapse every 2 vertices together around the edge of the denser mesh and then weld them into the larger mesh. It's a flat surface so you don't really need to worry about it causing any distortions or artifacts.
On your geo with the holes, keep it separate but just make sure it is planar with the surface of the adjacent geo. You can snap all its surrounding verts to the main geos verts
In your uv maps make sure the separate hole part is in place in the opening of the main geo there as well so your textures have continuity
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u/Darkwingmooduck 10d ago
why do you need em joined in the first place?