Let's cover both scenarios... If you are going to use a workflow where you subdivide ("smooth") the model pre-render there are some issues with the way you modeled your piece - 1) Concave Quad, and 2) 6 Pole Verts. Neither of those are going to smooth nicely and should be avoided. See here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1649069/Permanent/XSIList/XSI_List_1.jpg
If you are going to use a workflow where you don't subdivide the model you can work like this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1649069/Permanent/XSIList/XSI_List_2.jpg If I had to guess I would say the helicopter dude did a lot of this (2nd) type of modeling. This method allows you to use Booleans to cut out those circles and pill shapes, even cut them on curved pieces as per my example. The evidence is that some of those circles on the side only have 4 edges running into them and you need more than that to smooth a mesh and get a perfect circle! He has enough supporting geo on the curved parts to make them appear "smooth" at viewing distance. My example doesn't have the smooth curve leading in but I do it on the bottom of the cut shape. This is to show that if you want the curve you have to add geometry - he has plenty of supporting loops or bevels. A good tip someone here wrote was separating geometry - good hard surface technique. I think you need to choose a methodology and stick with it. Right now it is confusing - like you want to model hard-surface but are employing subdivision modeling techniques. Nicholas Breslow From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Steven Caron Sent: Friday, August 23, 2013 2:19 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Hard surface modeling question but here he says... "It depends, on some parts I use it, on others I don't." http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=7451715&postcount=154 *shrug* On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 11:05 AM, Steven Caron <car...@gmail.com<mailto:car...@gmail.com>> wrote: sure, but in a post he says he isn't smoothing. http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=7171444&postcount=55 explains he doesn't like the UV issues with smoothing. but he could be showing us a smoothed version in the viewport but doesn't intend to smooth a render time. On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 11:01 AM, Nic Sievers <siev...@gmail.com<mailto:siev...@gmail.com>> wrote: Well a lot of times when I render models I render them smoothed, but overlay them with the lo res. So he could be doing the same thing.