MODELLING CONCEPTS
Radial Connection Reduction
There can be many times when adding a detail to a mesh that it would be preferable to use a very light geometry for the new part of the mesh but have that light geometry connected to a more densley packed object.
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A better solution to reducing the amount of geometry in an area is Radial Connection Reduction.
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Because we like to think in terms of loops in subdivision surface modelling, this method has more practical applications than the linear techniques. Details on your models which would benefit from having a very light geometry, can be attached to parts of your main mesh which have a much higher vertex count using this method.
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As with linear connection reduction, a relatively flat part of the model works best as poles are created in the transition area which can affect shading.
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The procedure is always the same no matter the vertex count. 32, 16 and 8 vertices work best and are good numbers to use all across subdivision surface modelling. Any vertex count will work but there is the possibility of triangles with less standard vertex counts.
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I have a fairly comprehensive explanation of the technique in the section where we create The Queen for the chess set but I will leave this diagram here to demonstrate its usage.
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Radial Connection Reduction
There are several ways to achieve this technique. This is a fairly efficient method:
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Select the full loop which you want to use to transition to a lower count.
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press "e" to extrude and "s" to scale it down a little.
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use "checker deselect" from the "select" menu with the default settings.
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press "X" and choose "dissolve vertices" from the pop up menu.
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Find a vertice on the outer loop which does not have an edge running to the new second row.
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"shift"-select the vertex at the bottom of the edge next to it and then shift-select the vertex at the other side of this edge (on the outer loop again)
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press "J" to connect these vertices together.
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Going around the outer loop miss out the next vertex and repeat this process around the loop until they are all connected like this.
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Alt and click the inner loop and press "ctrl"-"+" once to select all of the new faces.
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From the "face" menu Select "tris to quads" and change the "maximum shape angle" in the dialogue box to 180 degrees.
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You now have a much lighter geometry to work with and everything is still all quads.
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