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Why Can't I Generate A New Poly/Face?

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RudySchneider:
Don't beat yourself up about going down "blind alleys."  The best way to learn is by trying, failing, trying something else, failing again, trying yet something else again, until you either finally succeed, or you reach out to the forums for guidance.

And to reemphasize that, "if you ain't failing, you ain't tryin'."

Old Codger:
Thanks, Rudy. Yeah, I know about going down blind alleys. I figure learning is kinda like walking around in semi-darkness with your hands tied behind you and running into doors. Learning takes place when you figure out how not to run into that particular door. Problem is after a while my nose starts complaining about doing all the work and paying all the price. Ya know? I included the blind alley example to give anybody reading it a chuckle. Just now I'm busting my nose on smoothing and rounding. I "need" a box with rounded edges. So far all I'm getting are either sharp edged boxes with geometry multiplying faster than gerbils (remember, gerbils were on the front row taking notes while rabbits were sitting in the back of the room reading comic books and throwing spit wads.) With a tension = 1 the only effect I have observed is a doubling of the basic geometry without any smoothing. Steven answered my question and I gotta try to digest the Wikipedia entry for "Catmull Clark subdivsion". Sometimes seemingly simple questions can only be answered like when the Creator answered Job, "Where were you when I made the world?" Steven, bless his heart (and I mean that sincerely) gave me a straightforward, honest answer which is gonna take some serious boning up on computer graphics to understand. Fault lies entirely with me. I asked a technical question and Steven gave me an proper answer like the genuine professional he is. Every time I open up a session of Anim8or my respect for Steven grows by leaps and bounds and that is no bravo sierra.

RudySchneider:
As you will no doubt discover for yourself, you get varying results when smoothing.  However, another thing to learn about is the use of edge loops and the "tightening" of edge loops.  For instance here's some examples of smoothing 1x1x1-division and 3x3x3-division cubes.  In the bottom example, I've "tightened" the edge loops, which results in a tighter smoothed edge.  This also helps makes renders appear more realistic, because the rounded edges reflect light.

Oh, one thing I did forget to mention is that smoothing essentially adds more polygons, which in turn makes more work (and takes more time) for the render engine whenever you do decide to render an image.  That's why it's sometimes important to strike a balance between how "real" you want things to look versus how long it takes to get that look.

Old Codger:
Sorry but even after searching through the manual for every instance of the phrase "edge loops" I STILL have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. HOWEVER! I WAS able to reproduce your results which is the important thing. I may never understand or speak the proper terminology but I can now do multiple iterations of cut-and-try with different tension settings to see what shakes out. Just looking at the geometry that results from your two passes at tension = 0.1 I can see some possibilities for using the smoothing function to get me into the ballpark then tweak the geometry (I have no problem moving points around) to achieve what I want. What was driving me up the wall was trying to do the smoothing after setting the edges to rounding at various levels per the manual. Perhaps someday it will dawn on me how to employ rounding as an edge property. Then again, maybe not. with me you never know.

Anyhow, thanks for the concrete examples with labels.

Old Codger:
Rudy,
I kept playing with rounding the corners. I found that I got better results in my corners and edges (of the model not the actual geometry's edges) by making the little squares that result from moving groups of points around as small as possible. Here is a shot of what will ultimately be a specialized shipping container. No materials yet or textures and I want to experiment with bump maps for some things but I'm kinda proud of my progress - after the HUGE leg up you gave me.

Anyhow, here it is:

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