Alternatives to Beveling on Blender?

So I’m new to Blender and haven’t learned the entire program yet, but what I have learned is the bevel function (ctrl-b) really messes up the faces of a mesh when I use it, so much so that I’ve had to scrap a project and start all over again. I don’t want the mesh to just be flat and I know that it needs some beveling to make it look decent, but is there a different, less glitchy method to beveling than the ctrl-b function?

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I’m not quite sure what kind of model you’re doing, but the bevel tool is the quickest way to get a good bevel on a non-complex object, or if you want to select each edge separately, it usually the easiest on a complex object.

If you’re doing something more complex, then you have a few options:

  • Subdivide Surface modifier


    This mod doesn’t so much “bevel” as rounds your entire object. It doesn’t let you pick which edges to apply it to like Bevel

  • Extrude and shrink


    You can make a custom bevel by extruding the face (E) and sizing it down (S).


If you show us your model, we might be able to help more :slight_smile:

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This is the last one that I done, image
It was just too complex in some areas for the bevel tool to do it cleanly.

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There are several ways to bevel an edge in Blender, if you’re rendering in Blender, but most of them–when used correctly–are just different means to the same end if you’re exporting to FBX or OBJ for import into Roblox. If things look “messed up”, I recommend playing around with the smoothing options with vertex normals and per-face vertex normals turned on. Bad shading is usually an issue with normals, not the vertex geometry.

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I find that using the Subdivision Subsurface modifier on different levels you can get different types of curvature and a lot of it is handled for you. All you have to do is be mindful of the polygons and be considerate when thinking of your topology. With all of this in mind you get pretty good control over the level of detail and accuracy of your model.

If you do find yourself going over the limit however, I usually split my mesh up into different objects, usually this isn’t a problem for me since most of the meshes I usually work on should be a separate object. Then you can usually use the decimate modifier in Blender to remove extra polygons tweaking it so that you can maintain the amount of detail you want. There’s also a function similar to decimate not sure what it is, but you can do exactly what decimate does but with a specific selection.

If all else fails, you can combine edge loops with mean creases that you can find when selecting an edge in edit mode in the [n] panel near the top where you’d find median or transform. Moving this value between 0 and 1 gives you different curvature as well.

I use Blender 2.80 by the way.

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SubD + Decimate is a workflow that is generally best avoided whenever possible for game assets. For low-poly, hard-surface modelling like the OP’s M4, beveling is definitely the way to go. Except in very special cases, none of the forms of decimation are likely to get you nice final topology, and if your model is already UV mapped it’s very likely to add weird UV skewing and visual glitches. The way a lot of people do SubD + decimate is basically “make something really nice, but way too high poly, then turn the crappiness dial up to 11”. Or, spend hours manually removing edges and verts. Either way, you either get something that’s not as clean and nice as if you modeled it with good low-poly techniques from the start, or you spend way too long getting something equivalent.

You mean using Subdivision Subsurface to make a high poly model, and then baking the high poly model onto a low poly model using a normal map?

In my case Decimate was an option to reduce the number of vertices in order to achieve a better topology as seen here.

Since this is a hard surface model, and doesn’t require any animations or deformation some of the vertices that would have been there didn’t need to be there.

I take pride in my topology, Obviously you wouldn’t use decimate with the settings cranked up.

There’s multiple work flows in Blender. Generally you’d avoid using Subdivision Subsurface with Decimate or Subdivision Subsurface with Sculpting in the situation that your mesh would be animated or deformed as a game asset.

As you’d need to retopologize which is why people bake high poly models onto low poly models using normal maps.

I guess it all depends on the designer and the project requirements really. Appreciate the insight however.

Should also mention that decimate is a pretty destructive workflow.

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I meant modelling the cage, and then stacking a Subdivision Surface modifier followed by a Decimate as the means to getting a low-poly final mesh. This technically works, but the topology is generally awful and it’s a not really a viable workflow for a texture-mapped asset, which is most quality game assets (albeit not necessarily most Roblox game assets).

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Haha true, I definitely didn’t have Roblox in mind when I gave my advice… :eyes: