Bending a ping-pong racket

Question

I want to bend a ping-ping racket.

I tried to use a curve modifier and I faced a problem which I think it's solvable only in Python scripting. I hope there is an easier solution without any programming involved.

The curve modifier, to make a smooth bending, requires a lot of cross edge loops. It's easy to get them for Mesh objects like a cube or a cylinder using the tool loop cut and slide. Tutorials about bending, I have found, don't discuss effective ways to doing so for complex objects, created with extruding a bezier curve.

I created a half of the contour of my racked with a bezier curve, mirrored it and extruded. Back and front sides are covered with triangles. I tried to beatify, poke triangulation, etc, but I cannot get faces in form of wide trapezoids automatically.

Subdividing pocked ngon is not good. It enforces to make a lot of triangles I don't need. Such triangulation doesn't give equal distribution. Some places has a lot of faces but others don't.

Here it my desirable ngon trapezoidation (Top view)

    ______ 
   /______\
  /________\
  |________|
   \______/
      ||
      ||

An idea about limitation of an triangle edge also looks promising, but I wonder why there is no such parameter for the triangulate operation. I would get a lot of small triangles, but at least vertex density of the surface would be homogeneous.

Answer 1

This case is pretty basic modeling stuff, so I will not go deeper in simple details and just show you an overview not to write full blown tutorial here (it's not place for this). If this is your first day you will need to know some starter pack things like:

• Edge Loops and Edge Flow in general (tris, quads, ngons, poles and such),
• creating, joining, cutting (Loop Cuts), extruding faces,
• adding simple modifiers (Mirror, Subdivision Surface, Curve).

Everything is here, on Blender Stack Exchange as well as on YouTube or any other place with Blender resources (there is topic with them here too).

I'm trying here some new answer technique, so be gentle. I'll expand this answer as much as OP will need it.

Overview:

1. Start with simple Plane at extrude one edge along green curve 9 times (to get 10 faces).
2. Add Mirror Modifier with Clipping checked.
3. Fill in faces in the middle of paddle (I don't know how this rubber surface is called).
4. Extrude bottom face to have a handle.
5. Add Subdivision Surface Modifier.
6. Select all and extrude it to gave depth to paddle.
7. Add Loop Cuts along green curve (the same from first step) and the short one at the bottom.
8. Add Bezier Curve.
9. Add Curve modifier for paddle. Important! It should be above Subdivision Surface.
10. Move the paddle along Curve to adjust it.
11. Edit Curve to give it bend.

In the blend file, on layer 2 you have 3 models of paddle to study them.

Blend File:

Temporary link (Blend Exchange giving some error with URL):

paddle.blend