What is the best way to smooth folded spots?

[Con Chim Trong Sáng]

So I'm practicing myself by creating a popsicle. I use the Cylinder to be the primary mesh. I scale two-part near the centerline of the popsicle for beauty effect. The problem appears around those two-part. They become folded. Is there any quick and cheap way to smooth those folded lines? I already maximized the loop cut. Adding more loop cut won't have any more effect.

https://imgur.com/gallery/nUB1AAo

Also sculping doesn't work on my popsicle anymore for some reason I don't know. My best guess is because of some hotkey that I accidentally press but I don't know what it is. It used to work but it suddenly stop. Is there any hotkey or hidden setting that I need to know about?

[still__alive]

It's because of the topology up there that those lines are "folded" like that.

The caps of a cylinder are horrible topology for what you're trying to do. What you should do instead is add a UV sphere that has the same amount of vertices as your cylinder, cut off the bottom half of the UV sphere, then attach it to the top of the cylinder.

That would work out better topologically.

[still__alive]

Like this screenshot. You'll probably want to make use of vertex snapping to line things up. I made the smooth looking on on the left with the same pieces in edit mode on the right.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2746572260

[Con Chim Trong Sáng]

Originally posted by still__alive:

Like this screenshot. You'll probably want to make use of vertex snapping to line things up. I made the smooth looking on on the left with the same pieces in edit mode on the right.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2746572260

First, I want to thank you for your reply. Back to the problem, I can easily work around with the round head by using Loop Cut. What I want is the make some part in the middle scale to make it look like a real popsicle.

Like this image: https://imgur.com/K0FhWrO

Which means that I need the mesh to be a single one. And those folded lines only appear when I scale them and I can't find anything to smooth them perfectly yet.
Also do you know what happen to my sculping problem?

[still__alive]

Originally posted by Con Chim Trong Sáng:

Originally posted by still__alive:

Like this screenshot. You'll probably want to make use of vertex snapping to line things up. I made the smooth looking on on the left with the same pieces in edit mode on the right.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2746572260

First, I want to thank you for your reply. Back to the problem, I can easily work around with the round head by using Loop Cut. What I want is the make some part in the middle scale to make it look like a real popsicle.

Like this image: https://imgur.com/K0FhWrO

Which means that I need the mesh to be a single one. And those folded lines only appear when I scale them and I can't find anything to smooth them perfectly yet.

You're missing the main point I'm making. What I'm saying is you're not going to be able to use a default cylinder with the n-gon cap. The topology of that will not work when you try to shade it smooth.

The solid object on the left I made from the sphere and cylinder you see on the right, then I just scaled it along x and y a bit. I joined the cylinder to the half-sphere and made them into one mesh, my screenshot was just trying to make it really easy for you to understand what I was trying to describe.

So basically I made my own cap for the cylinder instead of using the default n-gon or triangles you get when you create the cylinder. The default topology of a cylinder will not work. You'll have to create your own cap with better topology for what you want to achieve.

Originally posted by Con Chim Trong Sáng:

Also do you know what happen to my sculpting problem?

No, need more information about that.

[Con Chim Trong Sáng]

Originally posted by still__alive:

No, need more information about that.

I don't know. I was just playing around with the texture of the Wooden part, then I get back to the ice cream part and my sculping just suddenly stop working. Sorry if this is too much but could you check if something is wrong with some setting somewhere? It's a very simple and basic mesh so it shouldn't take too much time.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jtaCQyGwJGcITxnG2bUQIOy62TeJzztl/view?usp=sharing

[still__alive]

Originally posted by Con Chim Trong Sáng:

Originally posted by still__alive:

No, need more information about that.

I don't know. I was just playing around with the texture of the Wooden part, then I get back to the ice cream part and my sculping just suddenly stop working. Sorry if this is too much but could you check if something is wrong with some setting somewhere? It's a very simple and basic mesh so it shouldn't take too much time.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jtaCQyGwJGcITxnG2bUQIOy62TeJzztl/view?usp=sharing

You seem to have masked the whole popsicle somehow. On your end, try selecting the box mask brush, near the bottom, and while you hold ctrl down, drag a box around the whole object. That should remove the mask and allow you to sculpt again.

And yeah, I'm pretty sure you're getting the weird folded lines from your topology. You need some better topology there to avoid that.

[still__alive]

Also, another thing is you have all your normals on the popsicle part pointing inwards. Along with some more bad geometry along the bottom middle that isn't being recalculated properly.

It makes the sculpting tools work wrong which was why I was checking the normal orientation. I'll take some screenshots before work here if I get the chance.

[still__alive]

You can turn on face orientation in the box I circled here near the top right. Red is bad, blue is good.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2748484995

You have to recalculate the normals to get them pointing in the right way. Select the whole mesh object and hit alt+n and select "recalculate outside".

However once you do this, you'll see there is still an issue near the bottom center of the popsicle stick. This is because of bad geometry in that area and Blender isn't sure how to calculate the normals properly for those pieces. Fixing up that geometry is preferred, you can skip it though if you're just rendering this object inside blender. Not fixing it might break some functions and make it weird to work with that area though.

Any of the red faces would be invisible if you were putting this object inside a game engine, as such you'd have to fix those faces if you are putting this inside a game engine.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2748485263

Somehow you masked the whole popsicle, masked parts of a mesh cannot be affected by sculpt brushes. It's a tool to prevent you from sculpting areas you don't want to affect by accident. There is probably some hotkey to mask everything that you hit by accident or something.

Unmask everything and your sculpt brushes should work again:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2748485479