Subdivision Surface & Bevel Modifiers Together ...

Jonathan mentions very off-handedly that the bevel & subdivision surface modifiers don't play well together. His solution is to delete the bevel modifier & add supporting edge loops. I would love to be able to use the bevel & subsurf modifiers together. In fact, my therapist says I really need to reduce my dependency on supporting edge loops in my hard surface modeling; she says it's just not healthy... :P

So, my questions are...

1. What's the point of the bevel modifier if, when it comes time to texture, you're just going to delete the modifier and add supporting edge loops anyway?

2. I noticed Jonathan is using v2.9; I'm using v4.1. Has anything changed?

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  • Adrian Bellworthy replied

    Hey vap!
    Not just the bevel modifier, but all modifiers are used for a non destructive work flow.
    Meaning modifiers can be used instead of adding lots of extra geometry and changing something doesn't mean lots of extra work, and a headache.

    Moving the bevel modifier above the subdivision modifier gives a better result.
    In this example Jonathan is using the angle setting on the bevel modifier, which will bevel every edge with a surface angle over the set amount.

    Using bevel weights can give a better result, adding a weight to selected edges ensures only those edges have any bevel and all others have no bevel.

    The stretching of the texture is caused by the subdivision modifier and the non uniform geometry. If the size of all the faces was the same, and square works best, this would eliminate the stretching issue. But this means lots more geometry.

    An update of this course (and all the fundamentals) is due for release end of next month (July) to coincide with the release of v4.2

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  • Omar Domenech replied

    I agree, the bevel and subD can be a pain sometimes, you have to pick and choose each situation for one not to step over the other. But there are all sorts of situations, it's not a global rule, the bevel modifier is super useful in other situations. As you keep watching more and more courses, you'll see other ways of making the best out of the bevel modifier, the SubD and both of them together.

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  • vap042 replied

    Thank you both very much. I'm very much looking forward to the course update next month!!! I'll be hopping on all those fundamentals again as soon as they're released!!!

    Also, I'll do much more experimenting with bevel & crease, and adjusting my stack order. I may not be able to break the supporting edge loop addiction completely, but hopefully I'll be able to bring it down to something more responsible...

    • 🤘🏻
    • 👍🍪
  • Jonathan Lampel replied

    I'm a bit late to the party here, but I will say that I do still use the bevel and subdiv combo sometimes. If the number of bevel segments is even, the bevel profile is 1, one of the UV Smooth options in the subdiv modifier usually works, but it's not consistent which one it is, and sometimes none of them work so I give up and just do things manually 🤷‍♂️ 

  • vap042 replied

    Thank you for your response Jonathan. Btw, love your courses! ^^

    • Thanks!