Phone - Cutting holes in geometry properly?

[Mewse]

Hey Guys! I’m just over halfway through the course now and thought i’d take a little time to do some practice, so i decided to model my phone. It’s an iPhone 6+ and has that curved edge all the way around with buttons/holes extruding inwards and outwards from each side. (I know it’s not completely finished )

What I’d really like to know is how best to make these types of geometry. I’ll document my approach to the overall design so hopefully someone can tell me at which point I went wrong / which order i should’ve done it in.

1. Using the starting cube, I made a cuboid the depth of the phone (I kept the square face so that the bevelling is uniform)
2. Bevel the corners into the appropriate angle.
3. Resize to the phone scale

Speaker Holes
First I made the speaker holes on the bottom. To do this i used the boolean modifier.
4. Make a cylinder the correct diameter
5. Use the array modifier to repeat it
6. Use the boolean modifier with ‘difference’ on my cube to cut the holes into the phone
This worked great and cut the exact holes i wanted, however when i went to render it the surrounding faces appeared to curve into the model, even though they were flat. To fix this, remembering a similar issue from the bowling bowl finger holes lecture, I selected the surrounding faces and inset them with 0 length to create overlapping geometry. This worked to the extent that my renders no longer went inwards, but it did leave a rather flat look, that stands out from the smooth shaded faces around it. I found that this is the least visible issue, so i left it at that, but i definitely feel like that wasnt the best approach.

Home Button
All the other buttons and openings in the phone were created using the Knife Project tool.
7. I added a bezier circle to the scene
8. Select the circle and the phone, enter edit mode and apply the Knife Project tool.
9. Inset my newly created edge to make the bezel around the button.
10. Lowered the button face down into the phone.
This created the shape i wanted, but again left a range of triangles around the button that reflected the light differently and in some cases appeared inlaid into the front of the phone. To fix this, i used a mixture of rebuilding the faces by hand and using Alt + F to beautify larger faces. This appeared to work and leave an overall clean finish.

Finally, the side buttons.

I used Knife Project again which caused the same effect on surrounding faces. I’ve rebuilt the faces by hand to get a smooth finish on one side. This image shows an example of the effect I’m getting after I cut the faces.

If anyone could tell me what I’ve done wrong, or anything I could do to fix this, that would be great! Equally, if someone could go through the process they would use to make these kinds of extrusions, I would find that helpful too.

Thanks for reading this wall!
Keep up the awesome work peoples!

[OboShape]

Very nice work, well done

[NixeKnox]

It looks great! There’s not really a right or wrong way to do things in Blender, just do it the way you’re comfortable with.

[Morgaine_Christensen]

Has to agree with OboShape and NixeKnowx, you have done a very nice job modeling this item. Nice documentation as well! I also agree that there is really no right or wrong way to do things in Blender as stated by NixeKnox. You have to be comfortable with your processes and be open to alter/change your methods as you add to your personal knowledge and experience.

You could play around with the subsurface modifier for a smooth effect but, it could add too much geometry for what you are working on. Also, you might play around with the Boolean Modifier for your holes; however, you might end up with some funky geometry. If you have enough geometry in place, you might play around with the Loop Tools…the circle selection for holes. I can’t recall if this set of tools is a default item or one of the Blender Add Ons you need to enable. Again, all depends on your project and how you wish to go about it. I don’t feel there is anything wrong with building something by hand or in parts that join to achieve the look you want, although it may add more time to your project if you are on a deadline.

Again, nice iPhone!

[Mewse]

Thanks for the feedback guys @Morgaine_Christensen I will look into understanding the Subsurface modifier better, thank you

To finish it off, I got a little animation practice in for a product placement video

Cheers!

[shifteight]

Nice work @Mewse!! I can’[t wait to share my work too.

[OboShape]

nice animation clip too, nice n slick
on a side pat on the back, thats a good use of glossy/glass materials and emmisive planes too

( i need to stop using the word ‘nice’ in every sentence, just cant help myself lol)

[Mewse]

Thanks! That’s nice of you to say I was going for the table by the window look
In the stills I had the plane in the wrong place and too small, but I like how it looks on the animation

[azaotl]

I love the model. For the animation , video, you might want to use multiple cameras, I mean to give the effect of having multiple cameras or views. Great work!