Hats off to you modelers
droidy001
Posts: 282
I've been trying to teach myself modeling. I've played about with a few free programs and decided hexagon was probably the easiest for a beginer.
I came up with a passable sofa (sofa1), the geometry is not perfect but I can work on that. I took it into daz and did a quick render (sofa2), still not too bad for a total novice. Then when I sent it to Hexagon from daz, total mess (sofa3).
Now hoping i have the patience to carry on.
Post edited by droidy001 on
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2026 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Have you refered to tutorials for modeling in Hexagon? If not I recommend looking some up and cheking them out. There is a lot to modeling and your app of choice. Sofa 3 is more correct to be honest. Models only have polygons with 3 (triangles) or 4 (quads) sides. 5 sides or more are known as Ngons.
Yep think your right. I'll have to go right back to basics with some walk through projects. Even a simple sofa can go off the rails in novice hands.
I was amazed to see how asymmetrical it was when i sent it from daz to hex, considering it was done using symmetry and that I coppied the cusions.
LOL. I taught myself in Wings3D. I can't tell you how many times I screwed stuff up, especially early on, but doing it over and over again helped me learn ;). It seems like a real drag at the time tho. LOL
The only thing I see with your model that I would change if it were me are the long thin triangles. I know that Poser doesn't handle them well. I think DS doesn't mind them as much :P.
Laurie
nice liooking couch
My first attempt was with a sofa, too, but it was in SketchUp quite a few years back, long before I discovered Daz Studio. I'm not sure what the sofa appeal is to the beginner - I didn't even have anyone to sit on mine! As for putting legs on it, you're a lot braver than I was :)
Welcome to the wonderful world of 3D modeling, droidy001. You are off to a good start.
It is a learning process, just like any other undertaking of, well, anything.
Extending on what Laurie mentioned about the skinny triangles - I believe the triangulation was due to auto-triangulation by DAZ Studio of your n-gons (more than 4 vertices per polygon/face) that were created by using the Chamfer technique. Hexagon does not care about n-gons natively while you are creating your models, but other software, such as DS will.
Here is a quick example of how you could avoid this in the future while still trying to remain as low-poly as possible (if this was your goal) by hand-adding the quad topology resulting in a couple extra quad loops which meet up with coresponding (opposite) sides - no more n-gons - all quads - no more auto-skinny tris:
* EDIT: Just realized that the bottom cushion is probably a separate mesh, so disregard the quad loop continuing on that mesh - it would not be needed...
I think it seems like a logical beggining. you can get the basic shape easily enough, then work on the details whilst learning.
Yes the cushions are separate. I was looking at it in a couple of ways.
First was to look at how a real sofa is constructed. Seperate pieces bolted together. Second, because the structural integraty for cgi is not needed keep it to as few pieces as poss to make it more economical.
Thanks for the advice.
After watching a few videos I got back to my sofa. Started from scratch and I've got rid of the ngons. It can now be sent between Daz and Hexagon without breaking. It looks a bit different from the first attempt but the idea is to learn not to make a specific design.
Now for the UV mapping. Wish me luck.
And Thanks for the help guys.
One thing you might want to keep in mind is morphs or using deformers. With the low resolution of the mesh in the images, it will be hard to deform any part a figure is sitting on unless you subdivide the mesh if possible.
Your sofa looks good. One suggestion: if you UV map it likes nice even geometry. Those slides you added get rid of the n-gons but will make editing the UVs really really hard as slight changes in one spot might create much warping in another.
Here are some good tutorials on hex, by the way:
Former Daz forum user EZ posted a ton of good ones on how each tool works on his youtube and then moved them to a for pay site but a few are still on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheEZhexagon/videos
EZs personal site may have some old ones still free, it's here: http://ezbrush.mediabakers.com
Gary Miller had a bunch of great ones on geekatplay.com and some are still there: http://www.geekatplay.com/hp2.php
Some of those survived on Youtube, here's what I found: https://www.youtube.com/user/GeekatplayStudio/search?query=hexagon
A word of caution about Gary Miller. He has an easy going style and does a nice job but he's pretty sloppy about n-gons. The software he renders in doesn't have a problem with them I guess but you will be watching him make something and be like "dude, that poly has 23 sides to it!" Avoid doing that!
A good rule of thumb is: shoot for square quads as much as possible. That doesn't mean more polys and smaller quads - and sometimes it's just not possible to adhere to that rule (because microbevels or support edges are necessary) - but to come as close as possible as you can might help :) Also, try not to get any non-square (ie: diamond shaped) quads on a corner edge. You might get results you don't want. I see two of them that may cause problems there on the bottom front of your new couch. Actually those could be triangles too, in which case might cause less of a problem. What I usually do is while I'm modeling, I regularly show the model smoothed to see what it looks like and to see where any problem areas might be so that I can fix them as I go.
Laurie
Thanks but at the momment i'm no where near thinking about morphs and deforms, just trying to get the basics right.
I did see some of the geekatplay vids. They are really good at showing different uses for tools. I did notice as you said the ngons, I thought that might be addressed in later vids.
I was wondering about those edges being so close. Is there another way to to take off sharp edges without the chamfer tool? I tried with smoothing but its too harsh and rounds it off way too much.
I'll check out your other links thanks.
Edit: No worries on the edges. I've added more faces then smoothed. A little more curved than I wanted but It will do for now till I learn more.
I did notice the triangle looking faces, they are quads. By what you say it seems i need to go back and try to make them more square.Thanks
Don't misunderstand...there's nothing wrong with diamond shaped quads at all, and sometimes you have to have them, but on a cornered edge like that they can cause problems because the face on the polygon is planar and yet it's having to bend around a corner ;). As for the chamfer for the edge, there are support edges (which is what I use most of the time). Rather than splitting the edge into many multiple edges, you have your sharp edge, create another edge and snug it up close to the corner edge. Do this on each side. You can actually adjust how sharp the corner will be by how far away from the corner edge you place the support edges. The closer to the corner, the sharper when smoothed. Farther away and it's rounder when smoothed. I use Wings 3D most of the time, but the same things apply in any modeling software. See images below...
Laurie
Think I've got you there. The smoothong on a corner will only round off as far as the next edge. I'll give it a go.
Thank you for your time to explain.
Edit: thank you again, got it.
Even worse, not smoothening the edges at all. Razor sharp edges and corners look terrible and amateurish, and yet you often see even skilled PAs do them. I wonder why they can't see it looks bad.
Yep, no razor sharp corners in nature ;) I have one exception tho. I WILL use sharp corners on a faceted gemstone. The nice thing about the iray uber shader is that it will add the tiniest rounded edge for you so that the light bounces off that edge ;)
Laurie
OK, it must be subtle though as it doesn't seem to help much on those sharp edged models I'm thinking of. I wonder if the scale matters here, gemstones are pretty small.
I make the roundover on the gems I've done REALLY small, like 0.00002...lol. On my Chunky Gem Bracelet the Round Corners Radius is 0.00005 and the gems are what I would call medium to large sized as jewelry goes. Maybe start there and work your way up?
Laurie
Ah, you can adjust it. Yes, that works great, actually. Thanks!
Good advice from everyone here, and I don't have anything contrary to add. What I will add, however, is that if you want to re-export from DS without that triangulation happening, you can unmark a check-box in the export dialog that will leave it exactly as you imported it. That said, however, it is strongly recommended to not allow n-gons in the first place. The check-box, by the way, is literally titled "Triangulate N-Gons" in the export dialog box.