As I might have stated, when I created the pencil end of the logo I chose to use a cylinder as the starting primitive. I left the smooth option selected but I chose to only create 6 sides since that is what my Dixon Ticonderoga has. I thought this would be the most efficient.
I was wrong.
I had to place the edge loops at the end that will meet the pen. I also had to add edge loops length wise to keep the angles crisp so the barrel stayed hexagonal looking. These edge loops for the sides where the issue. They didn’t behave as expected in the first place. And they didn’t make for a very nice looking object. For one, the very tip did not end up looking very symmetrical and while that might be fine for some things, my concern is what will happen with the UVs. So here is what the pointy tip looks like with the 6 sided cylinder when I got it done.
This is what would work better.
I decided I needed to try one of my other options for making this look the way I want. But, I didn’t want to lose the work I had done in case the next option was as bad or worse. I also didn’t want to move the actual object I had been working on because it was placed precisely where it needed to be. So I created a new layer and moved it to that layer and then froze the layer so I couldn’t change anything and turned of its visibility so it wasn’t in the way visually.
Next I created a new cylinder with the same 18 sides as the pen but for the cap, I gave it more segments. I wanted to try basically the same thing I had with the 6 sided cylinder but see if there was a difference if I used an 18 sided cylinder to start with since the original 6 sided cylinder ended up with 18 sides once I added the edgeloops. Since I was starting with a fresh new cylinder and knew I needed more cap segments I decided it was better to start with them. Once I got it created and converted to an editable poly I added the edge loops.I put one at each end and then another on the end cap near the pen so it didn’t round off too much. I used soft selection to select the center point on one end and then used the transform tool to move it along the one axis away from the body of the rest of the cylinder. By using the soft selection option I could pull the center point away and bring all the rest of the cap segments along but not the full distance, just the amount that they needed to, to make a smooth transition.
At that point I needed to make the sides of the pencil barrel. So I selected the edges between the last edge loops on each end and then moved those edges. I rotated the object for each edge that acted as the angle edge because it made it a little easier using the transform tool that way and moving on one axis at a time instead of free form move. Free form move can be good but for this I figured I would have a very difficult time getting it in the right place every time. By moving along one axis and then the other I could get more consistent results.
That worked nicely. I ended up with two artifacts from this. One on each end. They were like a lip. On the pointy end I ended up selecting the edges of the pointy part and using the transform tool to do a little scaling and move it a little away from the barrel. When I did this the lip went away and I got a really nice some transition from the point to the barrel. And when I look at the wireframe, it should work nicely with the UVs. For the other end, I haven’t addressed it yet. I am hoping it will make a nice transition for connecting it to the Pen.
This is the solid view of it without turbosmooth.
And with the turbosmooth applied it looks pretty good too.