Forums Technical Discussion Cutting an indentation into a chess piece

Cutting an indentation into a chess piece

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wneessen
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Hi,

I am currently getting started with Houdini and I set myself "building a chess set" as first project. While getting used to modelling, I am not at a point at which I am not sure how to proceed correctly.

If you think of a bishop chess piece, those always have this indentation in their head. I'd like to add that to mine as well, to have it look authentic, but I am unsure what's the correct approach. I've tried a boolean operation with a box, but this cuts out the geometry and leaves me with a hole, that I tried to fix with polybridges, but the result was very broken geo.



There's probably some smarter why to do this, but as I don't know all nodes yet, I am a bit lost on what way to use. Maybe somebody can point me into the right direction (maybe even a documentation or tutorial video URL).

Any help is highly appreciated!
Winni

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Island
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The softboolean plugin would be your best bet.
Edited by Island - Jan. 24, 2022 15:51:59

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wneessen
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Thanks Island, I'll give it a try.
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Island
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Soft Boolean plugin:

https://alexeyvanzhula.gumroad.com/l/iWQyT [alexeyvanzhula.gumroad.com]

Generally, other than the soft boolean plugin, I would avoid booleans in subD modeling and use bridging and bevels instead. Booleans are great for CAD nurbs modeling, but have lots of issues with anything complicated. Unfortunately, Houdini will not be the best bet for what you are trying to do if you want to make the knight or have a face on the king or queen. For those, would do better with a dedicated sculpting program or at least one that does sculpting better than Houdini. Remember that the mirror node and fuse are your friends and will greatly simplify making chess pieces.

Another way to handle this that also requires a plugin is to use clip nodes set to keep above and below to make edge cuts according to the cutout. Then with a little creative polyextrude, clipping, and mirroring, you can get a reasonable model, but it will not be all quads. Add the plugin for QuadRemesher to this and you have an all quad chess piece. Add a bevel if you want to the cutout out area to soften the edges.
Edited by Island - Jan. 24, 2022 19:22:16

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Konstantin Magnus
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wneessen
leaves me with a hole

Just for the record, if you use a boolean subtract on two closed meshes it should not create a hole.

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https://procegen.konstantinmagnus.de/ [procegen.konstantinmagnus.de]
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Island
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A boolean subtract on two closed meshes works if you created your curve so that all the points on the curve increase steadily with respect to the rotation axis. If two points are level or out of order in ascending y direction (assuming y axis rotation), it doesn't seem to work in my experience. But more importantly, it creates bad geometry and you will never be able to subdivide it or probably bevel the edges. The soft boolean plugin does often create some ngons but solves the edge bevel well. Note ngons and non aligned points in attachment from a simple subtractive boolean. The cleanup will take more time that just doing poly modeling. So it is possible, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Edited by Island - Jan. 25, 2022 00:04:12

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