Backhoe Contribution – duerer – Wheels / Rear Axle

[Ingmar Franz]

The retopologized attachment ring in place:

[spikeyxxx]

Those axles and housings and hubs are the most beautifully designed pieces, but  a pita to model and they are so hidden, why is that?

Or this gorgeous piece:

It’s even hard to get the shape right, but then the retopology…

I haven’t touched those rings yet, but your topology looks solid @duerer !

[Shawn Blanch]

Well crap I just recorded an amazing video of myself stumbling all over that model haha. It is still uploading. You get 16 minutes of bliss listening to my calming voice.

Another thing is you’ve got 160 vertices that are duplicated on this model. I hit M + B and poof you’re mesh data stayed the same but your vertex count went down by like 160 or so.

I’ll let you know when it is uploaded to youtube. If you are content after watching it and want me to delete it, just let me know.
My advice may not be the best advice but this is my thought process working through assumed constraints on pieces I felt you didn’t want altered while solving the poles issues.

[Shawn Blanch]

Ok @duerer here my wonderful video ha!

[spikeyxxx]

@blanchsb a wonderful video indeed! Thank you Shawn!

We should all do more videos like this…

I will try to make one when I get to this part… But, I think you are creating a lot of unnecessary geometry: when you’ve got this:

I mean this part:

simply Edge Slide:

and Join:

I know I will end up with a completely different topology and now I am extra stimulated to get to this part, because I would like to see how I am going to solve this;)

[Shawn Blanch]

Oh yeah look at that. haha. Yup that does it great. Thanks @spikeyxxx

I know the tricks but I don’t always see them when I am in the trenches. That is great to point out. 

[Shawn Blanch]

I finally got my motion capture studio set up with my new Kinect (Fathers day gift I got myself haha) So now you can see my pretty face. I still struggle not sounding monotone but a few 1000 more hours of videoing myself should solve that.

[Ingmar Franz]

Thanks, @blanchsb for all your efforts and the video 😀👍 !!! A calming voice is definitively what I need now the most.👂😀!

[Ingmar Franz]

I’ve decided to model the backside of the attachment ring as the negative form of the front. Furthermore, I’ve found some 6-poles and some overlapping vertices where there should be connections. Finally, I used “Bridge Edge Loop” to close the gap between front and back at the ring’s inner rim:

File is here.

[Ingmar Franz]

@spikeyxxx, you’re absolutely right about the beauty of these pieces! They’re for me not only technical pieces, they’re artworks🏆!

[Ingmar Franz]

From this image, the attachment ring looks completely solid:

But on this drawing, one could thinks that there’re holes where you can see through:

Or are these just cavities that are hidden from the other side?

Spikeys first video snapshot from above suggests (especially the deepening at the image bottom) that there could be holes but I’m not completely sure:

Maybe, the design has changed since in Spikeys screenshot the front ring seems to be one piece with the disc below. Or is this just an illusion caused by the paint layer?

But from this section of the front axle, it seems again a continuous structure (red circle):

And the same on the rear axle:

So, I’ll keep my model as it is with some artistic freedom.

[Shawn Blanch]

Not sure about all of the 5 sides poles. When you have that many circles close together you can work the number of circle sides to your advantage. Using a 16 sided circle versus an 8. I would say keep them to divisions of 4 in most cases. But I have seen 6 and 12 sided circles work sometimes too. You may just need 16 or more sides to get better edge flow with fewer poles possible or at least get those poles not next to each other (creating more geometry in between them).

Also here is another easy fix. You can remove this one:

[Ingmar Franz]

Thanks @blanchsb , this really helps 😀 !

[Ingmar Franz]

And here the newest cookie from the retopology kitchen:

File is here.

And the part in its context:

[Ingmar Franz]

The rear axle end housing is more complicated than I thought. Here a quick update on this work in progress:

[Author]

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