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I'm following a tutorial how to blend 2 object and get a smooth transition using the data transfer (after Shrinkwrapping my object), but I still seem to be getting the hard outline. Any ideas why this is not smooth?

Reference for the tutorial is at 4min to 5min.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luFz5gzvM9s

And here is my result which I'm getting.

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Just in case.. you've got Autosmooth switched on for the modified object? (Data transfer should warn you about that) $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts ♦
    Dec 30, 2019 at 7:18
  • $\begingroup$ Hi Robin, thanks for your reply. I have Autosmooth enabled, which was suggested in a warning by the modifier to be turned on. But I toggled it off and on, which didnt make a difference. Can I upload my file so you can have a look? $\endgroup$
    – blender breath
    Dec 31, 2019 at 1:08
  • $\begingroup$ Please. Go ahead... Blend Exchange is the best place to do that for BSE. $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts ♦
    Dec 31, 2019 at 5:47
  • $\begingroup$ Here is the Link: <img src="https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/embedImage.png?bid=rd8ZpOpg" /> Thank you. $\endgroup$
    – blender breath
    Dec 31, 2019 at 6:03

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Your reference video illustrates a way of applying 3D decals to curved surfaces, filleting and concealing the junctions between the decals and the surface.

The way I went with your example involved quite a bit of incremental adjustment - I'll just try to cover the main points:

  1. Sanitize the mesh. Your decal had a lot of duplicate faces and vertices, normals pointing the wrong way.. possibly from abandoned extrusions / solidifies? To locate errors, H hide some faces in Edit Mode to check for duplicate or internal faces, jiggle some vertices around.. Use Overlays in the 3D view to display normals, face orientation. Delete surplus faces and AltM merge vertices by distance to leave yourself with a single skin.
  2. Consider the method. The reference method is well-suited to small decals, in the scale of the curvature of the substrate...

enter image description here

...asking the Shrinkwrap modifier to cover the gap at the extremes, here, is pushing it. The parts of the decal which you'd like to spread on the surface will wind up piled on top of one another. Fixes for this might be to model the decal with a curvature more similar to the substrate, or 'pre-bend' the whole decal with a Lattice modifier, (the lattice shrink-wrapped to the surface) before assigning the other modifiers... but I guess that's what the reference was trying to avoid.

The decal in the reference is modeled with a skirt, part of which will conform to the surface closely,and become the fillet after deformation, so I added one to yours.

  1. Adapt the method I found that with such a large decal, 2 vertex groups helped. One to deform the mesh with the shrink-wrap..

enter image description here

and a smaller one to pick up the normals from the sphere...

enter image description here

The vertex-groups can be edited 'live', under the influence of the modifiers by assigning edge-loops with weights in the decal's Data > Vertex Groups panel, so you can see what they are doing.

This result is sort of getting there..

enter image description here

.. but I think things would be easier if you bent the decal as a whole, preparatory to making the invisible fillet.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the information Robert, I highly appreciate your time to point out all this helpful insight. Much is to be learnt within 2020, and lots of practise will be made. Thank you. $\endgroup$
    – blender breath
    Jan 1, 2020 at 2:06

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