"Vase Tutorial Help"

Support Modeling
#1

a.k.a “I’m a Blending Newbie and I can’t even get through the simple vase tutorial without going ‘WTF?? Why did that happen??!!’”

I am using 2.49b and this is all in referance to thisVase Tutorial

First of all, in step 2 it tells you to scale it down 5 MAJOR grid units. Later that is defined as being 1.000=1 major grid unit that can be achieved by using [CTRL]. My issues with this is that I start out with a circle as 1 Radius…to scale it down 5 major units (as defined by the tutorial) is not achievable, correct? So perhaps this is a misprint (one of many possible misprints, it seems) though this is all the assumptions of a newbie. The other issue is that only a minor unit can (as defined by this tutorial) be achieved by using [CTRL] and I have yet to discover the key for the major (1.00) grid unit jump. Even a smaller jump using a combination of [CTRL] and [Shift] though in the tutorial it says this would make a minor jump (0.100) even though it makes really small unit jumps (0.01) in this version.

The other issue I am having (and only the first of a few others that might be detailed in a later post) are some different results despite trying to follow the steps. I had to reserach where some terms and funtions changed placement and names depending on the Blender version (ex. Subserf is now within Modifiers window)…

Also when it asks for subdivision all I see is Levels and Render Levels. So I use Levels :2 and Render Levels:2. Levels 1 and Render Levels:2 I’ve also tried but it does something completely different with the vertices and still not like what is shown in the tutorial.

At step 6 instead of looking like this:
http://www.geocities.com/gauravnawani/tutorials/beginner/fig-6-surface-normals.png

I get this:

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a164/rf1981/verti_wut.png

I’m not worried about the shade it appears to have in edit mode. It changes to a normal greyscale in object mode. This is after I “recalculate the normals outside” (whatever that really means all I know is that it smooths out some artifacts). But, what’s with all the vertices?

#2

The five units thing is probably right, if you zoom in you will see there is a further level of grid subdivision.

The difference you see in Step 6 is because you applied the subsurf modifier. There is no need to. Levels applies to what you see in the 3D View and Render Levels is what Blender uses to render with. If you have a lot of objects with subsurf it can slow the 3D View, so it makes sense to have a higher render level than view level. They can both be the same, but it helps to be able to turn down the view level without having to turn it up to render.

Other than that you are doing fine.