Help re: Cut nice round holes in SubDiv saxophone

[bishop00s]

So I have this subDiv Saxophone shell. Shell is just fine... easy as heck with subDiv modeling.

But now I'm confused. I don't really get how I can go about cutting nice round holes in this sax for all the key holes. The project needs to be done mainly in subDivs, but I can do things in other geometry types and convert as well.

http://5thstreetband.com/sax.mov

http://5thstreetband.com/sax07.ma

Thanks for any help.

[mindsample]

i guess there are various approaches to this, and my one surely might not be the best one, but i would have started with polygons in the first place.
with your model, you could easily convert it to polygons, create the holes (negative extrudes or booleans if necessary) and then reconvert it to subd when your finished (also try polyproxy modes for instant feedback)

keep in mind that the closer the polygon edges, the harder the resulting sub curve, if you want a almost 90degree corner in subd you have to subdivide the polygons and move the edges really close (try and error works very self explanatory here)

[bishop00s]

Ok... I'll give that a go. Thanks.

What seems a little annoying to me with polygons, is to try and place the hole exactly on the sax where I want it (they aren't just on a straight path vertically up the sax but also shift horizontally from key to key) and still keep the perfect roundness of the rest of the tube around it.

It still feels weird to me to be modeling curved surfaces using boxes. I've used mostly NURBS in my short experience modeling so far and liked those because I could so easily get exactly the results I wanted with nice accurate curves and such. Then I really started using Polys and found it frustrating to try and do small details like that... at least in trying to get them to look like exactly what I wanted.

Any tips and pointers appreciated.

[bishop00s]

I'm making headway on doing it with just the polys and negative extrudes... though its still frustrating to try and get exactly what I want.

Any suggestions on a method for all the poles and keys and such on the outside of the sax?

[joojaa]

Subdivs are polygons, kindoff from modelling point of view, only the interpolating nature is different.

Your kindof doing thsi the wrong way around. you should first form the holes and build the shape around theese features. Bacuse adding detaiul causes the interpolation to change in nature.

You should realy search for tyhe keyword edge loop and understand that.

OR then you should have modelled with nurbs, Since hard objects like this actualy are easir to do with nurbs tools.

[idagrove]

Yes, without (roughly) circular edgeloops around the holes, they'll never look right. Also, someone earlier said that for a sharper edge in subdivisions you have to move the vertices close together, which is not necessarily true. Try to crease or partical crease the edges and see if that works. The problem with that method, of course, is that your approximated circle around the hole will become more faceted. Just giving you some options.