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How can I cut holes into a hollow cylindrical mesh using the boolean modifier and a UV sphere mesh? I use the boolean modifier ('difference') and it leaves the hollow cylinder, but with the shape of the sphere being indented into it.

But what I actually want is the hollow cylinder with just a hole where the cylinder and the sphere intersected. I feel like it has to do something with the orientation of the normals and I played around with that (for both objects) and at one point I think it actually worked but unfortunately I can't reproduce it. Thanks in advance!

Edit: I'm not free to choose the cutter object. It is yet to be created but it will be a bunch of rigid body spheres that are stacked on top of each other. And I wanna subtract those from the cylinder plane.

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  • $\begingroup$ use a cylinder to cut the hole? $\endgroup$
    – Marty Fouts
    Dec 4, 2021 at 21:31
  • $\begingroup$ The single sphere was just for demonstrating purposes. In the end I actually need a more complex object (a random stack of spheres) to be the cutter object) $\endgroup$
    – f_p_k
    Dec 4, 2021 at 21:34
  • $\begingroup$ So boolean + selecting the faces overlapping with the cutter + removing those faces? $\endgroup$
    – Markus von Broady
    Dec 4, 2021 at 21:51

2 Answers 2

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Create a cylinder and a sphere, display the sphere as bounds for boolean visibility, add a vertex group to the cylinder (no need to assign vertices to the group), then add following modifiers to the cylinder:

(non-default settings marked with red rectangles)

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  • $\begingroup$ Does not work in Blender 3.3. Everything below the Boolean modifier has no useful effect at all. $\endgroup$
    – Lissanro Rayen
    Sep 28, 2022 at 11:43
  • $\begingroup$ @LissanroRayen I just checked on Blender 3.2 and 3.3 and it works for me. See answer edit and make sure you've set all the settings marked red. $\endgroup$
    – Markus von Broady
    Sep 28, 2022 at 13:38
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  • Assign all vertices of cylinder to a vertex group
  • Add boolean modifier and apply modifier
  • Select > Select All by Trait > Ungrouped Vertices
  • RMB > Separate > Selection

enter image description here

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