How to round the edges of a mesh with small faces? I'm trying to round the edges on the top of this model.


Inner (90˚) edge is easy – I can just apply a bevel modifier and limit by angle. I'm having trouble with the outer edge. The bevel modifier either does nothing or makes a mess because the faces near that edge are too small. I've messed around for a few hours and have tried using the sculpting tools, but they don't work well because of only having two faces on the top. I tried selecting all the vertices near the edge and scaling them in towards the center, but it doesn't look good and will take a really long time to get a good result. I also tried doing some boolean stuff with a torus to cut off the sharp edge, but I couldn't get it to look right.

I found this post that addresses almost the exact same problem, but the solution given would ruin the soccer ball look of the model and seems to only be a visual solution. I plan on 3D printing this (soccer ball napkin rings), so the model itself actually needs rounded edges. How can I do this?

I created this model by loosely following this tutorial then using two boolean modifiers with a cylinder and a rectangular prism. Do I need to somehow model this in a different way to be able to round the edges?

.blend file

[edit]

Selecting the very top outside edges and using proportional editing (sharp mode) to scale them inwards starts to do what I want but the resulting curve is lopsided and not a proper bevel.


This is what I'm looking for (except with the soccer ball pattern)
I took a look at this but honestly stuggled to find a good solution.



This was the best I could come up with given the starting point. If this is what you are looking for then I can reproduce the steps. Let me know. Maybe others have different ideas.