Bad Geometry after Boolean difference. Help.
 

Hello, I've been modeling Anakin's lightsaber from Star Wars. I used a Boolean Difference to cutout a circular area on the model. After doing so it messed up alot of the surrounding geometry. Now after trying to fixing and searching all over for and answer, ive read that Boolean's arent that great to use and have alot of problems.

Luckily i save to multiple files alot so its not that big a deal to go back to a save before i did this. But is there anyway to salvage and fix this model? I would like the result if the surrounding geometry didnt get messed up.

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/4811/problemgyx.jpg

Booleans are great...but they have limits too. It depends on the geo of both objects...they should have similar subdivisions....so trying to boolean a simple cube to a complex surface will not work. The geo will appear messed up because thats how Maya will interpolate divisions that are needed...these can be simply deleted or moved to better present the geo. I have found smoothing first and boolean..then no more smoothing will be needed or even try it...wont work. You really have to experiment....nothing better than experience will help you with booleans mate. I will post something similar in a short time

cheers bullet

have a look at this file...I can still smooth preview it...personally I wouldnt make it possible to smooth but you can. The wires are a bit iffy but it was a 5 min job...see if you can get any learning from it...history was left on too mate.

cheers bullet

In order to desribe how to fix the problem I need to see the wire frame of the model in that region.

The general idea is that you have to count the number of edges in the model surrounding the area you wish to place the hole (unsmoothed) and then split a circular ring of edges with a matching number of sides, connect the edges, and then extrude the inset and support edges.

In order for this to work and look correct you have to have sufficient mesh density around the circular inset. To little and you will get distortions, to much and your geo gets hard to manage.

Here is a guide...

This method demonstrates using a nurbs circle as a guide and using split polygon to draw in the edges.

Often I will simply boolean a cylinder into the side and then snap verts to the edges and cut in the diagonal edges with split polygon. In maya there usually several ways to approach every task.

The .ma file is at the bottom. Just remove the .txt at the end.

Wow thanks alot ctbram, great tutorial on how to do this right. The results look perfect.