Headlight problems - boolean difference questions

[henrysrodshop]

Hi guys,

I'm having trouble doing a boolean difference to create my headlight sockets. More precisely, the boolean difference is working fine, but the resulting edge is VERY jagged. I've been trying to knife cut the cylinder and basically manually... "bevel" (for lack of a better word) the edge, but it hasn't been working well.

How have you dealt with this? Any suggestions, pointers, etc. would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

-Ben

[Johnas]

Hmm could you show solid screenshot from your wires too, without xray?

[henrysrodshop]

Is this what you're looking for? I'm sorry I'm not better with Blender to know how to do exactly what you're looking for!

-Ben

[Johnas]

You got way too much vertices, I made simple example how you should place your polies and vertices. Also remember to keep your mesh in quads, tris makes weird issues to the mesh

[scw]

try not to use triangles.
remember to chamfer the edges, try edge loop cut to the edge of inner lights hole.

[henrysrodshop]

Wow, I'm embarrassed! And very thankful! It just hasn't been drilled into my head to stay away from triangles enough yet. Thanks guys, I'll work on simplifying my mesh, and it appears that will solve my problems!

Thanks much!

-Ben

[henrysrodshop]

Haha! I think I've got it! Now to figure out where that weird reflection of a "mountain" or something came from in front of the wheel well, below the headlight. I must have moved something strange, so I'm going to do a quick clay render... maybe that will help.

Thanks for the pointers guys! I'd be nowhere without you!

-Ben

[Johnas]

Already much better now

As for the "mountain" reflection, try adding a polyrow below the headlight.

[tom120934]

Indeed Blender booleans suck, like I think just every single 3D software on Earth.

The most convenient way to do this is to use the "retopology" feature : it allows you to projects a mesh (e.g. a circle, the outer shape of your headlights) on another (e.g. your uncut body mesh) It still requires manual tweaking once the projection is done, but it's more easier than doing it fully by hand.

The retopology feature is documented here : Manual/Retopo - BlenderWiki. Please take a look, pictures are really useful to understand how it works.

PS : Nice to see useful Blender-related feedback not coming from me

[Johnas]

Booleans in Max arent much better, I try to avoid using it as much as possible.

[tom120934]

A retopo tutorial : Tutorial: Retopology tools with Blender at BlenderNation

[henrysrodshop]

That's some great info, thanks guys! I didn't explain what I did to get it to look decent; here goes:

I spent some time working on deleting edges that were causing undesired triangles to form, once I had simplified the front end somewhat, I deleted six faces, which would become the headlight opening. I ended up adding a few edges here and there, and tweaking things around to get rid of my "mountain", but it all seems to have worked out well, and most of it was due to thinking differently about how to create an opening (you don't _HAVE_ to use a boolean difference!), and doing some reading, and thinking about it.

Thanks again guys, you have been extremely helpful, and inspirational on this project!

-Ben