Loop cuts and curves

I have yet another couple of dumb n00bish questions. First of all, I was just reading the tutorial by modron on modelling a lizard (very useful btw), and he mentioned using ‘loop cut’. I’ve never used this tool before, and am baffled about exactly what it does, what people use it for, and how to use it.

And while I’m here, is there a way of extruding a mesh (e.g. a circle) along a curved path, so you get a perfectly curved object, rather than extruding a bit at a time and using set smooth, where you still see the polys. And can you scale it at the same time as extruding along a curve, so you get a ‘clean’ increase in size rather than steps.

Thanks. :smiley:

Lets see if I can get this right… A loop cut basically introduces an edge-loop on a set of connected faces. The faces are divided into two by the new edges. When you’re editing a mesh hit Ctrl+R and move your mouse. You should see a new edge loop that encompasses a set of polygons. Once you click the left mouse button that is used to divide the polygons.

For example, if you edit a cube in the top view and you hit Ctrl+R you’ll see a line dividing the polygon and depending on the mouse position 2 different edge loops will be drawn. When you click left button it will subdivide a set of connected polygons (either top, left, bottom, right OR top, front, bottom, back).

Just as an aside: there’s also a Knife tool (Shift+K) which basically divides polygons intersected by lines that you drag around on the screen. Optionally you can use the Knife tool to divide using midpoints of edges intersected by the lines you create by dragging the mouse around.

As for the second question see http://download.blender.org/documentation/html/x3148.html

Also, if you were looking for a way to get a lizard body in one shot - you could try using dupliframes and IPOs instead of extrusions. There is a very good introduction to this on the Blender community documentation page:

http://download.blender.org/documentation/html/x7757.html