Backhoe Contribution - duerer - Wheels / Rear Axle

You're absolutely right, spikeyxxx  , and excellent work by you 👍! We  certainly learned a lot from this challenge. I had to fix some alignment  and shading issues on my rear axle and my axle end housing  is almost completed but it's not yet all quads:

The new assignment file is here.

This is now my rear axle with a complete all-quad axle end housing:

File is here.

I learned yet another gold nugget. Thank you!

Is this how the axle end housings are rotated?

I had to move the yoke (?) closer to the backhoe's center line and widen the yellow part on the right image half a little bit. I unfortunately don't know any image showing the real life yoke sizing on positioning.

Animation is here.

I've done some "Shrinkwrap Modifier" and "Shrink/Fatten" smoothing on the rear axle end housing:

Not 100% perfect but the original isn't 100% smooth, too 😉😁. 

[...]the original isn't 100% smooth, too

Exactly! The main thing is to avoid pinching, which the Shrinkwrap seems to have taken care of.

spikeyxxx all these parts coming together in such a small space is sometimes driving me crazy. I'm wondering how Kent would solve this. And once again spikeyxxx, you did an excellent job with your housing and front axle 😀!

We'll just have to ask @theluthier in the upcoming stream how he would handle a situation like this...

The blue pads are now connected to the green gearbox main body:

And the yellow tubes are now also connected to the gearbox:

Once again, the "Shrinkwrap Modifier" did the job. Otherwise I would have been lost.

File is here.

The magenta top and bottom parts are now welded to the gearbox:

Two new shrinkwrap target objects had to be added: One for the blue pad in the front and one for the two yellow tubes.

File is here.

Thanks to spikeyxxx 's video posting here, I could extract some screenshots which show the rear axle very detailed:

The two magenta parts at both sides of the orange tube of the gearbox are now woven into the gearbox mesh:

File is here.

There're some problems with the shading at the bottom of the gearbox:

I am not sure what shading problems you are talking aboutFor instance, there is this:

In context, it's this area:

Which is actually just this edge that shouldn't be there giving problems:

remove it and you get:

And then there is:

which causes this:

Which is a lot harder to solve, because you have a 5-sided pole (actually two of them), where you are trying to reduce your geometry...

So, maybe something like this:

Which gives:

Right side 'fixed'.

Also, you have a lot of 5-sided poles near each other on a curved surface, which creates a lot of shading problems:

Personally I'd first connect everything and then solve the topology/shading. When you do one and then fix the shading and then do the next part, you might end up with new shading artefacts and end up re-doing the topology every time you connect a new piece, if that makes sense...

Maybe sooner use a triangle that is not too stretched, when you can't avoid it an not use so many 5-sided poles.

These shapes are just really hard, just kep going and you'll get there.

And even as it is now, it already looks really good!

Thanks a lot, spikeyxxx , for this detailed review and the encouragement 😀! For me, it's learning by doing since I haven't modeled such a complex piece with many intersecting parts before. And your approach of connecting things first and then caring about the topology makes! Sometimes, I'm overcomplicating things, in this case certainly also as a consequence of insufficient experience. One challenge among many for me is to find a clever way to handle the holding edges that are flowing from one part into the next. I avoid 6-poles and keep 5-poles away from edges with the help of the holding edges. Exceptions from the last rule are corners where 5-poles not only can't be avoided but are even necessary for smooth transitions.
Furthermore, I try to keep newly created mesh as local as possible instead of loop cuts running completely around the mesh. I also taking care, that the mesh is as evenly dense as possible (which is of course not 100 % achievable), since in some parts edges are coming very close causing unintentional bulges under the influence of the "Subsurf Modifier". I know that I can smoothen this with shrinkwrapping but I don't want to run into a bad subsurf modeling habit by relying too much on the "Shrinkwrap Modifier" which should only come into use if nothing else helps. The big question is only: When is thy point reached? I hope to finish the gearbox until tomorrow. Wish me luck! And once again thank you so much for your help😀!

Break a leg duerer , you've got this!

Thanks, spikeyxxx 😀!

I agree it is looking nice even with the feedback. Those are some great review points though. spikeyxxx has an incredible eagle-eye for details and discrepancies, and a brain like an elephant to share knowledge and wisdom passed down from generations of modelers.

If you post a file for someone to look at, be grateful it was spikeyxxx that looked at it. He has the Midas touch.