I’m new to the forum (been lurking for a while) and relativly new to computers and Blender. Worked thru loads of tuts and have a general idea of how things work. However, although the info IS available in tuts and the books one area that could help noobs (and slicks too I think) is a better definition of the most basic structures we work with… meshes and curves.
What are the REAL differences between bezier and nurbs;
… between Ico and UV Sphere
Where would you use one rather than the other
What can and cannot be done with each of them…
( ) < Use this space to fill in the questions that I’m too inexperienced to ask! Thanks.
Icospheres use triangles, UV spheres use quads (shapes with four edges)
Icospheres can only be created with a certain resolution all around, UV spheres can have, say, 3 segments and 50 rings (segments are like segments of an orange and rings are the horizontal sections)
Nurbs are sometimes referred to as glyphs (possibly gylphs, not sure how its spelt) they consist of several ‘points’ and the line of the curve doesnt usually touch them, the line is almost an average of where the points are. Beizer curves: they have ‘points’ but the line goes through the center of them and it is bent by the handles either side of the point, the longer the handle, the more it curves the curve.
|Sorry if this doesnt make much sense but it is hard to explain|
I most definately agree with you. Part of the problem( and I hope I am not sounding nationalistic) is that blender was created in Europe. So many of the users are from Europe (France,Holland,Germany e.t.c) and the tutes that they write sometimes lose something in the translations. Now do not think I am saying that only Americans write good tutes. I have seen some tutes by native english speakers that just leave out whole paragraphs of explanations, where they are assuming that the reader will know how to do something. Some of them are even on this site.
What I do is just read and read and read again. Somehow between reading the same tute three to four times or a tute on the same subject written by another person the information finally sinks in.
Yeah… I know what they look like and I’ve played with them (a lot) and got them to do what the tuts instruct me to do with them. I’m sure though that you prefer nurbs in one situation to bezier or a path. Or use a UV sphere for one type of model rather than an Icosphere. I want to know why???.
And I’m sure that many of us may differ, may swear that you should be using a curve to later convert to a mesh, for the same task, theirs is just a different approach. It’s this kind of debate that should give us all a better understanding of wireframes. I chose it simply because it is, afterall, THE most basic stuff we have to mould, and there simply isn’t a whole lot of info about it out there… not all in one place anyhow.
Thanks for the replies. I now know the difference between a glitch and a glyph/gylph!
Everyone has their own preferences, but I know that you cannot create things like faces with beizer curves, only the nurbs from the surface menu can be used to create solid objects (other than logos or wires).
Icospheres are my favourite in most situations, but the UV spheres are better because they give you more control over the resolution. I find that UV spheres are best if you want to start with a sphere and continue to model something, but icospheres are better if you just want a sphere.
Most of this is preference, I found my favourite ways by playing around with them.
Thanks Bulletdodga, That’s exactly the kind of explanation I was looking for! Though it doesn’t answer all my mystification. If someone were to ask me which horse to use for a particular purpose I know that I would recomend a Welsh Pony rather than a Shetland as a Childspony, a Warmblood rather than a Lippetzaner as a dressage horse, a Hanovarian as an Event-horse, a Quaterhorse as a Cutting Horse and a Thoroughbred as petsmeat etc… etc… and I could give convincing argument for my choice of each of them based on conformation, temperament, ability etc… But I guess this being the virtual world I’ll just have to go play till I have a better virtual grip!
Shabai, Agreed! What I don’t understand is why those who write tuts dont use blend files with the tut in the text window. Kudos to you H@dj!!!
as to what to use depends on your preference. it’s like almost anything in life such as playing guitar… you can learn all the rudimentary stuff but once it comes to actual musical feeling and creation it’s up to you to use what’s at your disposal. there are a million and one ways of doing things… find your path.
sorry if that doesn’t help much - i too had the same problem until one day i made enough modeling realizations.
as for the triangles and quads… don’t use triangle is you plan to use the SMesh function.