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Trying to create a bed pillow-top, or quilted-top mesh. I'm just beating my head against the wall on this one. It's so close, but for some reason i just can't get it to work. Essentially, I modeled the pieces of it just fine, but when trying to add a subsurface, or subdivide the faces, or loop cuts to get it to smooth out, it just goes nuts.

I need to maybe subdivide just the mesh parts around the diamond shapes? And perhaps subdivide just the diamonds to be able to round out those shapes. Ideally it would look like the photo, where the hard stitching outline around the diamond shapes defines the depression in the fabric.

enter image description here

Here I am using a plane and could add the thickness to the bottom later, unless there is a much better way to do this.

enter image description here

and here how it is currently rendering; very blocky.

enter image description here

any help would be greatly appreciated!

here is the blend file

blender file

AlexD
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  • maybe the normals of the faces are not on the correct side. Select in edit mode the whole object then click SHIFT+N. – gladys Sep 17 '21 at 07:29
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    hello please share your file: https://pasteall.org/blend/ – moonboots Sep 17 '21 at 08:01
  • thanks gladys, i tried, it didn't do anything. and moonbots, i added the link to the blend file in my post. thanks! – AlexD Sep 17 '21 at 23:49
  • What's wrong with adding a Subdivision Surface modifier? https://i.stack.imgur.com/0B4oa.jpg – Blunder Sep 19 '21 at 09:49
  • Blunder, thanks for the idea. I tried it but it makes the diamond sticking shapes into round stitches. The actual material though requires those diamond shaped stitches that you can see in my wireframe view. That's been the major hangup with subsurface and subdivisions so far. Your's looks good, i just need diamonds instead of round. – AlexD Sep 20 '21 at 03:05
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    Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/19241/model-upholstery-with-buttons – batFINGER Sep 20 '21 at 19:44

1 Answers1

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The topology might not be ideal for the quilted pattern.

The diamonds (quads) are surrounded by large N-gons, and the diamonds are duplicated. Removing the duplicated vertices doesn't help.

But if you add a Bevel modifier limited to the diamonds vertex group and a level 1 Subdivision Surface modifier you get a nice quad mesh:

mesh with quads

I had no idea how you can easily edit this mesh. So I just extracted the marked "diamond" and "filler" pattern, edited and duplicated them:

models for seamless pattern

Finally, used Array Modifiers, and a Subdivision Surface modifier (level 2) to create the mesh:

final mesh

For testing, a few diamonds are raised while others are flat.

Test render with a shader:

test render

Blunder
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    Really nice result. Is that texture image, or procedural? – Robin Betts Sep 20 '21 at 23:04
  • Blunder, thanks! That is a great solution. I didn't quite get exactly the same results as your render (yours looks much better), but i think i got it good enough for this particular model. I really appreciate you taking the time to figure this out! – AlexD Sep 23 '21 at 00:12
  • @RobinBetts Thanks. It's procedural. A Wave Texture+ColorRamp for the base color and a Magic Texture+Bump node. The sides have a Displacement modifier – Blunder Sep 24 '21 at 00:42
  • @AlexD You're welcome! I've forgotten to mention the Crease value for the edges. You can see it on the 2nd screenshot. Crease can be added in the N-panel or Shift+E. – Blunder Sep 24 '21 at 00:49