I use Proportional editting alot. But what do you use the Other stuff for?
The only Falloffs I use are Smooth (The Basic one), Sharp, and sometimes Random.
But what are the others used for? They never seem to help.
Take having 12 different types of knife in the kitchen: you might use 2 of them daily, but others only in a specific circumstance.
I sometimes use the linear mode. It can act similar to the shear tool, but it works in any direction and even on curved or spiraling meshes. It can also be used to uniformly stretch or compress a section of a mesh (like scaling, but it can sometimes be more convenient). I do need to criticize it a bit though, as it’s not completely perfect and there is a very small falloff at the edge.
I was hoping for an example.
Like an effective way of using it. So I can be more open minded about the other tools.
I get that with Root. It seems so ineffective. So I wanted to know if it was just me.
The linear trick sounds pretty good. I might give it a go.
Oh I see. Hey Linear is pretty good. It’s like Sharp in a way. But it’s not very strong in bending things. It makes the mesh deform weird.
It’s really good for Stretching things though that’s for sure.
One thing I really like linear for is its ability to compress or extend a spring correctly. This is really useful for mechanical animation. If you use the basic scaling tool, it’s going to flatten the profile of the cylinder itself, but linear proportional editing does it like a spring would actually react, keeping the volume intact. Note that I’m using “connected only” for this, so the effect spreads the long way along the spiraling length instead of affecting it like a compressed mass and jumping between levels.
Cool I see.
But can you explain to me why it has to be Linear?
Can’t you achieve the same effect with smooth? I was gonna say sharp But. I doubt it. Sharp is a little different.
But yeah. Can’t smooth do that too?
If you can. do you have an example for all of the Fall offs being used? Like a Youtube video or something?
default plane 2mt long.
subdivided, then I set proportional editing to 1.21mt distance…then the falloff type. In my opinion the curve icons are quite self-explaining but if you want to see it more in action this is a quick recap.
If you look how much the vertices are moved, you can recognize the curve icon of each falloff type.
more than this there is just to try by yourself.
That is 2d…it works in the same way for tridimensional mesh.
It’s hard to give you an answer, because you can use Blender for anything. Those are simply tools that you might have a use for at some point. You know and understand what they do, right? well, when the time comes and for some reason you need to move vertices in an arc, you’ll know to select “root” or “sphere”. That’s all there is to it
I use linear all the time. For example for making all sorts of spirals or scaling stuff when I need some parts of something to scale, and others not. Sphere falloff is very useful, inverse square, root and sharp as well - it’s hard to explain, but they just give you different forms, that’s very useful. I am not even sure if smooth is the one I actually use most… well, probably. I don’t use random very often, but I can see why it’s extremely useful for some cases as well. Constant is the one I have never used in my life though. I imagine it being useful for some cases as well, maybe if you want to quickly replace making a selection based on distance… I can see it working, just never used it.
I think if you do a lot of modelling you can find use for all of them. Maybe the constant one is a bit questionable in my opinion, maybe I could live without root as well, but I am happy it’s there. But who knows? Maybe the next guy will say they use constant all the time for some very good reason.
Yeah, this is really useful:
You can make a spiral out of any shapes! I don’t know other easy way to do this just linear fall off with Connected Only. I don’t know what explanation you need after seeing it. The falloff has to be linear for this.
Linear is handy for straight slopes or cone shapes. Sphere works for domes, while Root gives a more pointed bulge. Inverse Square falls somewhere between Smooth and Sphere. Constant moves everything inside the radius equally so it’s useful for lifting flat patch. Try pulling one vertex upward on subdivided plane and switching falloffs with same radius. Differences are much easier to see that way.
Because in that example with the spring, the other modes would make an uneven spring, with varying distances between each section.
I’m not sure this exists. I can give more examples myself though.
The modes “root”, “inverse square” and “sphere” can give you a quick way to make different kinds of arches.
Something else the different modes can give you is a quick way to make a fancy table leg out of a cylinder with many loop cuts (by scaling edge loops with different modes).
