Say we want to make a 3d shape that is an Z-extrusion of the letter “S” (this letter is not just a think snaky line - it’s “filled”) without using Text functionality. The resulting outline (as view from above) must precisely match a reference drawing of the letter “S”.
The intuitive way seems to be:
Form the outline of a 2d letter “S”
Extrude that outline
The problem is in step 1. To easily draw the outline with precision, I think these are the functionaliites needed:
beizer/curve creation
straightforward line creation (specialising a beizer/curve to a line doesn’t count)
vertex snapping (e.g. for starting a new line at an end point of an existing line)
It seems that in blender, 2 and 3 are not straightforward. Am I missing something?
Also, is it possible to somehow import line drawings, eg SVG, into blender and convert these to surfaces?
snapping can be indirectly done by shift+s cursor to selection and then select vertex to be snapped-shift+s selection to cursor,but these two bezier vertices cannot be welded.
u can try inkscape-u can import plain svg into blender or make outline in any freeware cad soft and import as dxf(kitsu’s importer)
You could create a 2D outline, like you said, but then apply a lvl 2 subsurf. It’ll allow you to model it like a mesh, but will still be smooth. Then, yea, select the points and hit e.
Thanks everyone for your replies. The inkscape method is what I am looking for - I’ll use inkscape for all the 2d magic and then import the svg into blender for the 3d magic. This works really nicely for me.