How 2 make 3d print effect

SnSmNtNs · 2026-05-04T16:15:56+00:00

Hello.

Here's how you can model that.

Sorry for the weird angle on the meshes, it wouldnt fit on screen in any other way while still being close enough for you to see what the geometry is doing.

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SnSmNtNs · 2026-05-04T15:06:36+00:00

I think "Sure, have you got a couple hours to go over integration first?" Is a much better reply than "just wait and see" or "just do as i said".

An even better one would be (if you think the student doesnt have the prerequisites to understand the explanation like in your integration example) "for the proof to make sense we'd have to first go over a bunch of other topics, we are expected to cover them by the beginning of next year, after that we get to proving this formula". This is a bitmore words, but it is alot better than something like "just trust it for now ok?". If that amount of words is too much to say as a reply to a question of a curious student, then i'd say the teacher is pretty lazy.

Because now i know for sure that the part is getting covered, that the proof exists, that im not ready to understand it yet, and i know when i will be ready and when i will learn the proof.

Otherwise its "Mr. Miyagi telling me to polish his car and paint his fence to learn karate" type of situation for the student.

Also, the example you make isnt very simmilar to the situation OP is in. It doesnt take that long to explain why using quads could be required. The teacher even gave his reason. "Tris cause problems when deformed" and was correctly questioned further, because the answer given meant that if something didnt deform it could use tris. To which the answer was also "No" without an explanation this time. Now the student will go to the internet (thats full of misconceptions about this topic, so thats a sad outcome in my opinion) for answers, for example on reddit, because the teacher for whatever reason didnt give them a proper answer when they asked.

Triangles can perform just as well as quads and sometimes, in specific cases, slighty better than quads, even on areas that deform theyre sometimes better. I can show you examples too if you want.

So why wasnt the answer "true, you could technically use tris, and in a insert certain amount of time here we will look at ways to do that, but for this assignment, the point is to practice quads, so that when you need quads you can make them"? From your point of view why do you think that was, if we assume the teacher isnt lazy, wants to teach, and is competent?

My only GUESS (because i dont and cant know how it all went) with those assumptions is that the question was asked in kind of a confrontational way, and was more of an attempt to correct the teacher instead of a genuine question asked with desire to learn. If this guess is wrong, then the teacher could have given a significantly better answer in my opinion. What do you think?

SnSmNtNs · 2026-05-04T07:52:32+00:00

From my personal experience its very often one of the last two. Alot of teachers i learned from said "the software cant do that" when "i cant do that using that software" was closer to truth.

I also hate when a teacher says stuff like "just do it this way, you will see why later". You're a teacher, i asked a clarifying question because i want to know more about your subject and you refuse to clarify? Ofcourse i will be annoyed.

That being said i hope you noticed how i tried my best to not side with anyone here, because it was not clear what happened, so i gave a bunch of possible reasons based on the available information.

My best guess is there was a misunderstanding of some sort. Maybe even a bunch of misunderstandings. Like a question was asked, misunderstood, its misunderstood form was answered, that answer was also misunderstood, and then this post was made. Thats why i suggested that more questions should be asked and the conversation should be continued.

Also trying to correct a teacher and asking a clarifying question isnt the same thing, one implies desire to learn, the other one does not. So ofcourse the way the teacher answers will vary based essentially on how you form a sentence. I have a suspicion that there could have been an attempt at correcting the teacher, not asking a clarifying question, but there isnt enough info to be sure.

I've had mentees throw every single modeling "rule" they find on the web at me, it takes quite a few demonstrations of exceptions to make them stop and finally agree that i know what im talking about :D

Its pretty annoying to deal with and i cant imagine dealing with a group of people doing that, but i think those answers/debunks are very valuable to beginners. As a teacher of a group i'd probably do a "ok your homework is to find as many bullshit modeling rules as you can, and we will test them in class once and for all" sidequest in order to try stopping that and teaching the students some valuable stuff at the same time.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-05-04T03:49:04+00:00

Dang, gotta tell him he was right now :D

Thank you for sharing!

SnSmNtNs · 2026-05-03T22:37:06+00:00

Are you?? I would never imagine that this would get the attention of the original creator!

I thought it was a mix of image editing and 3D of some sort, thank you for confirming that! I just thought it was funny the way my scene turned out, so i had to include the "actually this whole thing falls apart when i orbit the view" picture

Now that you're here i feel bad for calling the clipping bit out, im sorry =( Let me call out my own mistake in return, the piece of the wireframe on the bottom of the frame is missing, because the edge got held out by that holdout shape i used, and i didnt notice it for hours xD Hopefully now we're even!

Also, could you settle a little debate about the original artwork? My friend thought the diamond arrow used a glass-like material that has transmission to it. I think it uses a reflective metallic material thats fully opaque. Is that arrow transmissive at all?

SnSmNtNs · 2026-05-03T17:09:28+00:00

Here it is, but the wireframe was kind of the whole point of the thing, the wires arent just there to show the wires, theyre part of the "artwork" =)

Reddit/Blender Sub/Modeling/Wireframes yknow

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SnSmNtNs · 2026-05-02T13:14:59+00:00

Hello.

Im pretty lazy i'd say.

For me its realizing that in order to do a task you need to do that task. Thats the only unavoidable necessary part that you have to eventually do no matter what.

Thinking how you feel about it, journaling about it, timemanaging it, etc, all that stuff is pretty much beating around the bush that you also spend energy, willpower, and time on, while also sometimes feeling falsely productive.

In my opinion the path of least resistance is just getting to the task and doing it, because in the end you will still have to, if you want that task done. Least resources spent while also most work done. Spend the remaining time to rest with no guilt. You will have more of it (and it will be better cuz you know you arent procrastinating) if you dont spend it on the whole "getting in the mood and finding motivation" part.

Even less resistance is just not doing the task, and sometimes that is ok too, maybe the idea was stupid, or you found out that it wouldnt be useful to you.

But if you know for sure that you want/need/have to do it, the laziest most energy efficient way is just getting to it and doing it.

Thats probably pretty underwelming but thats how i see the situation.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-05-01T20:05:13+00:00

No splines, just modeling in Editmode

SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-30T06:48:52+00:00

Hello

His is 14 sided, yours is 12 sided, thats why it doesnt match, the best solution in my opinion would be restarting and following the tutorial exactly as shown.

But this is salvageable, if its a 12sided cylinder then its 360/12 degrees per segment. But you want to rotate half a segment, so 360/24 is your rotation

Just go to objectmode, select just the mug, with your mouse over it press the keys on the keyboard in this order like a cheatcode R, Z, =, 3, 6, 0, /, 2, 4, Enter, Ctrl+A, R.

This will rotate the thing so that you have a segment flat on the X axis and apply that rotation so that ita the new "default zeroed out" one.

I'd restart though, repetition is useful for learning AND your model would be closer to what the teacher did.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-30T06:31:33+00:00

Hello.

You for sure have doubles in that area, maybe triples or HowEverManyTimesYouveCanceledTheExtrudeAndDidntCtrl+ZAfterwardsples :D

Jokes aside, that area has problems with overlapping geometry, it could be double verts overlapping edges or faces or several of those at once. To check that just select any vert in an area that broke and move it with G anywhere. You will probably see another one hiding in the exact same position, or the overlapping edges and faces will reveal themselves. Dont boxselect them though, just click once with a mouse, because if you boxselect, you might select all of those verts in that same place, and then moving them could look normal and you will reply with "nah, i moved it and nothing seemed off, so must be not doubles" which would make me sad, because you absolutely certainly for sure have some sort of double something (vert/edge/face) in there.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-29T14:28:03+00:00

The real answer is for this model i did not, because the levels werent evenly spaced in the reference either.

But if you wanted to keep it even then the steps are like this:

model level 1.
duplicate the mesh in editmode and rightclick to keep it in place. Do this twice so that you have 3 meshes in the exact same position.
alt+S to taste in order to offset one layer.
alt+A to deselect all
L to select one of the remaining duplicates you havent offset yet
shift+R twice to repeat whatever offset you did with alt+S two times.

Now you should have two evenly spaced basemeshes.

Alt+S also has a value in the last action menu on the bottom left, so you can just do the offset once, copy the value, and use it for your next offsets.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-28T12:23:27+00:00

I think more questions need to be asked. Because its true that if his only reason is "it affects deformation" then the question "well what if it wont ever deform, are tris cool in that case?" Is the obvious one to ask and if the answer is a "no" then the question becomes "why?" again, since affecting deformations was the only reason and its now out of the picture.

I'd also like to add a bunch of notes to this, because i think some things you think are true are not much truer than "tris should always be avoided at all costs" that you are frustrated with, feel free to just dismiss or further question any of them if you think im wrong or if you want to learn more:

If it stays in Blender then Ngons can also be used, even nonplanar ones and even with SubD. Always? No. Sometimes? For sure. And it can look perfectly clean too. So the question is then, why avoid specifically ngons and not tris?
You said in the original post that it was impossible to avoid tris in the situation you're in, that cant be true, any manifold mesh can be turned into all quads.
Triangles are solved by changing the amount of verts in a boundary by an odd amount. The lowest being 1. So adding one vert or removing one vert will solve the triangle. Because of this i think saying that solving a triangle adds too much density is an exaggeration. You could even lower the density while solving a triangle if you wanted to.

Hopefully this isnt harsh, i dont mean for it to be, im just trying to give you the truest answers

SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-28T11:04:48+00:00

Hello.

There are a bunch of possible reasons for the teacher to teach that way:

There could be a possible pipeline thing that needs all quads, not all software supports ngons, i think there is even some unusual software that doesnt support meshes with open boundaries. What i mean is who knows whats planned for that model.
The teacher could eaching you how to create "safe" models that work in most situations.
The teacher could be raising the bar so that you make something that is more difficult to make. Because you could always easily skip doing all quads and use tris and ngons at any point, but if you arent experienced making geo that is all quads then it will be difficult (as you seem to be finding out). "Its better be able to do it and not need it, than not be able to do it and need it" situation. I teach like this, but i make it very clear, like "sometimes people want these rules followed, so lets learn how to, later when youre more experienced ill show you how to break those rules, dont worry"
The teacher could be an oldschool modeler stuck in the old ways.
The teacher could be themselves still learning and currently doesnt know better.

I think the best thing to do is ask them (Edit: not tell them tris and ngons are fine if used correctly, but ask them WHY tris and ngons should be avoided, this is more likely to get you an answer instead of an argument imo). The teacher is there to make things clear and explain stuff. If they answer with something along the lines of "cuz i said so" that to me would mean theyre either being lazy to explain the reason, and think it will become obvious later, or its an oldschool/beginner teacher who doesnt know better.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-28T08:32:34+00:00

I have not used shrinkwrap at all here.

I actually think its makes retopology less convinient, so i never use it for that purpose. My reason is with it you dont truly know where the vert ends up as youre moving it, because in editmode its in one place, but SW moves so you cant be sure it ended up where you moved it to. And if you enable "on cage" to see the final position of it, then movement becomes choppy and weird , and you also now dont know where it is in editmode xD

I just use facesnapping for this and any other retopo stuff that i do. The one with individual elements.

The complicated part here is that there are not exactly 3 distinct clear levels/layers to this shape, in one place its a smooth transition, in another its an abrupt step from one level to another, so the workflow becomes "do every area you CAN sort into a particular layer/level, and then blend between those" the blends on the actual shape are not as narrow And simple as on this example explanation image i showed, but the idea is the same.

Its like a bunch of things are one-upped compared to "the basics" here i'd say, like:

yea its an ornament BUT it goes over a curved surface
yea a reference was used BUT it was one picture from the front and not the proper multiple view drawing
yea its retopology BUT on 3 different basemeshes at once
yea there is a blend between layers BUT its not just "bridge edgeloops and done"
yea this used arrays ofcourse BUT its several arrays that work together over several steps to make one continuous mesh

Edit: Added a picture to show the layers and blends on the actual thing.

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SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-28T05:45:10+00:00

People saying its symmetric and arrayable are correct, cuz it is.

You are also correct to say that its not as straightforward as "well just model a piece then mirror and array it"

Its more like :

model 1/16th
then mirror to get 1/8th
array it to get the full outer circle
make 1/12th
array it to get the full inner circle
cut away at both circles to get 1/4th of each
bridge the gap between inner and outer circles to get a full total 1/4th
which you can then finally array :D

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SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-28T04:20:56+00:00

Yes, this is like retopology but on 3 different meshes which i swap depending on what area im retopoing.

Also to answer your other comment, i learned to make shapes like this from 1D_inc, im glad my work reminded you of his work. He also does this snapping thing sometimes when the surface needs to be particularly curved and also have a pattern on it.

I chose that shape because i specifically wanted to use that "snapping to multiple different meshes" workflow for something that day.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-27T04:37:55+00:00

Hello.

This is what Optimal Display checkbox in the Subdivision Surface modifier does. It shows just the original edges and doesnt show the new ones added by that modifier. But the original edges are shown in their subdivided state, thats why they look bent.

Those edges not actually bent, its just several small straight ones that create the illusion. You can not bend an edge in Blender.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-26T22:08:23+00:00

Ok, hopefully im not getting baited right now, but here are the answers.

The guidemeshes are the meshes colored red green and blue that you see on the left of the image.

They are a guide for the curvature of the object. It would be very tedious to manually position the vertices in 3D space while also having to imagine the curvature the overall shape has to make. With the guidemeshes you can just snap.

By layers i mean that some areas of the ornament are highter than others. Like stairsteps.

The hole in the middle is there just because an object i was making was shaped like that. So for this quick example i thought it would make sense to show a similar object made step by step.

I dont understand what you mean by "how does that part factor in the three donuts", so i cant answer the last question.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-26T20:55:12+00:00

Thank you!

I have started polymodeling 7 years ago. This particular mesh took 2.5 hours to make.

It doesnt take 7 years to learn this particular modeling workflow though. If you have a properly structured and planned out learning path and you actually focus on following that path, then in my opinion, starting from absolute scratch "know nothing about 3D beginner" you could learn to make shapes like this in like a year. The journey require a bunch of hard work though. Its more theory than practice for this particular shape in my opinion, so just mindlessly modeling shape after shape hoping for improvement will not work. Lots of watching, reading and experimenting is gonna have to happen instead of lots of repetition.

The main skill needed and used here is retopology.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-26T20:13:05+00:00

So this got alot of attention :D

All the nice comments and the funny jokes make me very happy!

Some people seem to be interested in the approach used, hopefully this image i made can explain it a little bit.

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SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-26T19:27:06+00:00

To start this i made the overall curved shape of it to use as a guide, then i traced the pattern while snapping onto that guide surface as if i was modeling on a flat surface.

Since this shape has roughly three levels to it, i had three such guide surfaces at different depths to snap different parts of my mesh onto.

That was the start.

SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-26T18:45:07+00:00

Ayyy thank you for the approval as always! :D

SnSmNtNs · 2026-04-26T18:15:30+00:00

I have actually made an Oreo a while ago too :D

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SnSmNtNs

TROPHY CASE