scott wrote:
>>>  Like I said,
>>> build a rough mesh by hand with maybe 100 or so polygons
>>
>> Uh... wouldn't that still be absurdly time-consuming?
> 
> No, not with all the tools in 3D packages specifically aimed at drawing 
> meshes from scratch.  Like face/edge extrude, multiple selection and 
> operation on vertices/edges/faces, mirroring ummm countless others I'm 
> sure.

That's like saying "yeah, the GIMP has functions to draw flat colours, 
blur edges, and copy sections of an image". Well, sure, it *does*... but 
how do you do useful stuff with that? (Clearly it's possible - but I've 
never figured out how. It's highly non-obvious how these features "help" 
in any way.)

> Here's a screenshot of a car I'm working on by drawing the mesh 
> from scratch.  You can see I have the front wing shown in wireframe so 
> you can see the vertices, it really doesn't take very long to get them 
> lined up nicely with a reference drawing.  After that the modeller will 
> smooth it out for me by replacing each face with perhaps 4 or 16 faces 
> in the correct places for a nice smooth finish.

Jesus, how did you get so many points all spaced out so perfectly like 
that?? o_O It must have taken you *hours*!

Also... just placing them in 2D is no good. You have to somehow position 
them in 3D space - which (in every package I've seen) is absurdly hard.

> Actually, using this method with NURBS surfaces is very similar to 
> adjusting the vertices by hand of a rough mesh and watching how the 
> smoothed mesh changes.  The number of control points required in NURBS 
> is quite similar to the number of vertices needed in a rough mesh to get 
> similar control of the final surface.

The difference being that NURBS produce a well-defined mathematical 
surface which can be drawn at arbitrary resolution and can contain sharp 
corners, whereas a polygon mesh presents only a very crude approximation 
to such a surface (unless you generate terabytes of mesh data).

Post a reply to this message