car hood+hard surface

[Eliadan]

hello, im having problems with making nice corners around the vent on the following picture. i have tried many variations of applying edge loops, nothing works fairly well and the result is quite ugly when smoothed.
also i couldnt find any tips while googling, or tutorials how to do it properly.
its the last thing on the model to do, and im stuck there for days already :/

http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/8739/67411077.th.png (http://img210.imageshack.us/i/67411077.png/)

[Tjakalen]

You need to have a set of polys that allow the smooth modifier to make connected quads that blend together in a way that leave no distortions that are visible. Basically you can change edgeflow any way you want across portions of flat surfaces to tie together all the excess edgeloops you get from creating carvings in geometry. I recommend you try putting a edit poly on top of meshsmooth and look at the resulting wireframe to develop a feel and understanding for how it work, if you look at it carefully its very simple, NURMS create 4 quads of every 1 quad, and 3 quads of every trigon in a predictable manner. And to awnser your question; to create a inset corner you can always apply this simple shape, the smaller the feature compared to the size of the corner the sharper the edges, simple as that.

edit: you need to have a perfect blend of the angles of the neighboring faces to get a smooth surface if the carving needs to be bent, it is therefore a good idea to modell it "flat" like in my image and use a bend modifier on it to get the bent shape just the way you want and then simply attatch the piece with the carved geo to the rest of the modell and just bridge the faces in less critical areas.

[Eliadan]

i know the theory, so that didnt really help me. and i dont want to redo the whole hood using nurms either

[Tjakalen]

Well you see, you're probably already using NURMS - Non-Uniform Rational MeshSmooth. It's the default max setting for meshsmooth. Possibly you have it confused with doing the surface in NURBS, Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline. Big difference there.

[Eliadan]

ah that, yes, my bad, didnt read properly :)