3D art advice: a pro's time-saving tip for easier subdivision surface modelling

Cornelius Dämmrich is an award-winning 3D artist who has been creating amazing digital art for over a decade. Below in his own words he explains a secret shortcut to easier subdivision surface modelling (you may want to upgrade to one of the best CAD modelling laptops).

"Because subdivision surface modelling takes a ton of time when done right, it’s hard to master and requires some extra brainpower, I use a shortcut that comes disguised as the oldest trick in the book: CAD modelling.

"This can be done in any CAD software, but most people will use either MoI3D, Fusion 360 or Plasticity. The pros are that it’s fast and easy to use, but the resulting meshes can be challenging to unwrap. This technique gives you a trick to overcome it."

01. Export your CAD model

Export your finished CAD model as an STP file. This preserves the NURBS of the CAD structure and means it can be interpreted by the majority of the modern 3D softwares such as Cinema 4D, Maya, 3ds Max, and so on.

02. Open in CAD software

Open your new STP file in MoI3D, which is another CAD software that has a special exporter that works quite well when we want to preserve any CAD-based UVs.

03. Export as FBX

Export it as an FBX file and then open it in RizomUV. There you’ll see that the CAD Model has some NURBS-based sets of UVs that were translated into polygons, and that are now stacked on each other. Very messy.

04. Cleaning up the mess

Relax the whole thing a couple of times and then repack everything. You can also group certain elements of it and add additional cuts to clean it up. It’s not pretty and it won’t win any awards, but it works way better than using the auto unwrapping algorithms on CAD meshes, CAD meshes that you put into a volume mesher, or anything of that ilk.

05. You have working UVs

Congratulations, you now have working UVs. It’s probably not great to hand-paint them, but you can throw them into Substance 3D Painter, and when you use triplanar mapping in the generators, it works very well, in my opinion.

This content originally appeared in 3D World magazine, the world's leading CG art magazine. Subscribe to 3D World at Magazines Direct.

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Ian Dean is Editor, Digital Arts & 3D at Creativebloq, and the former editor of many leading magazines. These titles included ImagineFX, 3D World and leading video game title Official PlayStation Magazine. In his early career he wrote for music and film magazines including Uncut and SFX. Ian launched Xbox magazine X360 and edited PlayStation World. For Creative Bloq, Ian combines his experiences to bring the latest news on AI, digital art and video game art and tech, and more to Creative Bloq, and in his spare time he doodles in Procreate, ArtRage, and Rebelle while finding time to play Xbox and PS5. He's also a keen Cricut user and laser cutter fan, and is currently crafting on Glowforge and xTools M1.