2

I have a model that needs a little mesh patching which has been imported from a .stl file. It seems like the model started off with a nice curving face made out of triangles, which was then cut through and patched to add features. The goal is to remove those features and bring the model back to its original curved face by adding/removing vertexs where they need to be. Below is a quick example as to what currently needs to be patched.

Model with missing vertices

The selected hole will need to have the already existing sweeping curves reintroduced in order to look as it did before, as seen below.

Clean model with new vertices

I've tried to do a few methods in patching over the hole, such as bridging the edge loop, grid fill, and just adding a face over the hole, but it seems like the new faces created looked flat instead of following the contour of the model. grid fill may do the trick, but I may end up dealing with a miss count of vertices on all four sides of the grid layout. I believe shrink wrapping a subdivided plane over the hole worked pretty well, but causes plenty of odd looking geometry. Any thoughts?

Jake
  • 25
  • 5
  • The fill region command seems to work pretty well filling in the hole, but it seems like it loses the ability to keep with the contour of the mesh. For a few of the touch ups, I was able to create working grid fills which keeps the curvature in mind when placing new quads. Also, thanks for the heads up on the conversion from tris to quads. Really helps out to see the mesh in a cleaner fashion. – Jake Mar 06 '16 at 21:14
  • Would you mind posting the .blend for us to examine? I do have one idea, but I want to put it to the test before recommending it. – Mentalist Mar 07 '16 at 00:57
  • Yeah of course. You can grab the .blend file here. By the way, this file has a different hole to work with compared to the images shown above. Hopefully that isn't an issue. Also, I was able to find a way to keep with the curve of the model by using a mixture of bezier curves to provide extra vertices the grid fill would need to work correctly, but I am still curious to see what you have in mind to solve the issue. The adjustments I made with the mesh is also included in the .blend file if your curious to see. – Jake Mar 07 '16 at 17:33

1 Answers1

1

You can fill holes in curved surfaces like this either with extruding with snapping set to Vertex or using Mesh:F2 addon.

Using F2

After enabling add-on, select vertex in the corner of the hole and hover mouse cursor over hole (mouse position matters regarding to where face is created if there are several possible ways).
After that press F to fill the face. Continue until finished with other vertices.
Split uneven parts of hole to make it of square / rectangular form. Once it is use Ctrl+F > Grid Fill and choose options to have clean topology.

filling curved surface

See more about filling faces with F2 addon: Make quad face from where two edges will meet?

Extruding and snapping

The same could be done with extruding with snapping turned on and set to Vertex as element to snap to. Fill the surface until the hole is rectangular and then use Grid Fill.

Community
  • 1
Mr Zak
  • 10,848
  • 4
  • 28
  • 77