Spline/Surface modeling utility and when to use ?

SimãoSilva

Like the little suggests whats is the best use of techniques such as spline/surface modelling ?

I regularly use splines for modelling, using sweeps and extrudes, never really used them in this way, but though i might try it, tried to model the front panels of a Ferrari f355, obviously really need to improve, but figured out that its a fun way to get a rough shape to start off.

Any other ways you guys use these techniques ? Also any good tutorials or guides for this out there ? took me a while to figure out how to surface modifier works

This is a picture of my work with Spline/Surface modelling.

poopipe

Almost everything I make starts with splines. 

You'll have to go back a few years (like 15) to find decent tutorials -

The main thing for me is to stick to corner and smooth points wherever possible - if you need a more specific curve, add points. Bezier handles are difficult to manipulate explicitly (can't be snapped/aligned etc.)  A great feature of this is that if you drop spline interpolation to 0 and leave points as smooth the curve is maintained when you refine segments
Sweep is the best thing ever
Make use of explicit spline interpolation and the optimize feature
I often combine smoothing groups and turbosmooth on top of basic spline blockouts to get smooth shapes
Lofting is great if you need control along the length of your object that you can't get from sweep
Don't forget you get free UVs from most of these tools (UVWXform is your friend)

SimãoSilva

thank you for the info!

Yeah i realized quickly how using bezier kinda locks you, if you add a point to the bezier it completely change the gizmo, which gave a few weird shape

Never used loft before actually, will give it a try, another tool is always good!

Will also try UVWXform !

On the tutorials even after searching a lot cant really find anything, guess not many people use these techniques maybe.