Reply To: Collab 2020: Modeling Heavy Equipment (Backhoe)

@spikeyxxx and @dostovel and @adrian2301 and everyone thanks for the tips. I think most of the solutions work that have been posted. I am going to go with @spikeyxxx elegant final solution. I also found a spare duplicate edge while repairing this one and blasted it away manually because it wasn’t caught by the remove doubles this whole time……..arghhhh.

Here’s putting it into practice. It was elegant but still required a lot of work. I think adding more topology to the circle to make it a 16 sided circle gave me more room to work with in this case. I’ll have to remember when things are going to take harsher turns and change from one shape to another perhaps maximise the topology without adding too much and also make it elegant.

The final solution looked like as if the entire circumference was “inset” in a sense and then a couple of holding edges added to the top of the shoulder in a way that moved the 5 sided pole inwards.

I’m interested to see what all y’all think now that I have tried my hand at it again for the umpteenth time and lessons learned. I’ll do a short recap below

Problem Before: 

Not enough geometry to work with (I think).  8 sided circles not working when rectangle sections needed more holding edges that the circles could provide

Using Bevel and Weights (not industry standard way of doing things for this project). 

And 5 sided pole seemed to be interfering with the subdiv modifier producing a crisp look and feel.

1 stray long edge duplicating an area that was already covered by 2 edges along the cylinder cross section.

I hid the Bevel Weighted Edges but they are still active. Notice how the light pinches at the top shoulder on the right of the image