I’m wondering if it’s possible to have different degrees of subsurf in the same mesh.
I worked through the spaceship tutorial in the Tutorials section, and I want to make a few tweeks to one of my spaceships. I want the ship to have lots of jagged angular corners (for fins, etc…), but I want to cockpit window to be smooth and bulbous. I only want to apply the subsurf to the window not the rest of the ship, but they are a part of the same mesh.
Is there any way to do this?
You could split the window from the rest of the mesh, by selecting the vertices of the window then pressing ‘p’. Then just put subsurf on that.
Other than that, I dont think that you can put subsurf on only some of a mesh
Ok so that sort of works, but the next problem is that the resulting subsurf does not fit into the hole from which it was seperated. Can the window subsurf be “stitched” or something back to the spaceship?
yeah, but it’s a lot of work…just press Shift-Alt-A (i think, you gotta check with someone else) and convert the subsurf to a mesh. then select four vertices and press F 
Correction, it’s Alt+C then at the popup menu you select Mesh (keep original)… After that you have to press X to delete the subsurf and here you are… You’ve got a really nice looking Mesh…
The subsurf doesn’t fit because when you subsurf the Mesh, it becomes somewhat… “smaller”… than the original Mesh… and more “rounded”!!!
Perhaps if you size it a bit it will fit a little bit better… Anyway, that’s the only solution I can think of right now…
I hope it helps a bit…
Spyros.
You can go to all of that trouble, or you can use a simple technique to get more angularity and sharper edges on portions of your subsurfed objects. Let’s say you’ve extruded a fin out of the bulbous body. The fin is just a blob with the same characteristics as the main part. Select the vertices of the fin, do an extrude, but don’t move it or scale it or anything. Just hit E-OK-Enter. This will give this portion a sharper edge (i.e. bring it closer to the cage boundries.) Repeat until you have the desired sharpness.
harkyman, that was the exact effect I was looking for! 
How on Earth did you figure that out?
Just like many of the brilliant scientific discoveries of our time - by trying to do something else and screwing it up. Eureka! 
haha, i guess someone should write a tutorial on that, cos everybody figures that out for himself. 
cya henrik
He, he, he…
A tutorial on:
“How to do wonders by trying to do something else and screwing it up”
would be something I’d like to see…
Well, I am just joking… 
Excellent tip harkyman… thanks for sharing it with us man… 
Spyros.