subD levels?

4evra · Oct 2012

Hello.
Been here for a while,started learning 3d couple months ago,mostly selftaught with random experimenting and some tuts.I follow the forum threads on regular basis,awesome stuff to learn.

Anyway,i stumbled upon this comment:

JoeCyriac wrote: »

Work on the overall gesture a bit more. I'd do this on subdiv level 1 or 2. The concept's pretty imposing.

So,my concept of subD was that it reffers to manipulating a parts of a 1 object.Like going into vertex/faces/edges mode while modeling.

This comment throw me off a bit,since it mentions some lvls,i'm not quite sure what does it mean by that?

So,is the SubD something else than what i think it is,or did the the JoeCyriac reffered to "steps" in creating a complete object(like first blocking out,then general details,then little details,then finishing touches)?

Also,i tried to investigate alone,run into this:

As mentioned earlier, Sub-Division modeling allows you to create a polygonal model that acts as a `cage` that contains the structure of the smoother, subdivided one. Only the smoothed version is taken into account at render time. It is achieved by using sub-division algorithms (math routines that do the smoothing)

It says it uses subD algorithms.What are those?Are there premade algorithms or do advanced users create custom ones from specific needs?I'm only familiar with turbosmooth

cptSwing · Oct 2012

I think the quote refers mainly to sculpting programs, where you step up and down between subdivision levels as well. As opposed to SubD modeling in a standard app, here you basically layer details on top each other, by subD level.

The most common subdivision algorithm is Catmull-Clark if I'm not mistaken, and I'm pretty sure that's what TS uses (?).

respawnrt · Oct 2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catmull%E2%80%93Clark_subdivision_surface

joeriv · Oct 2012

I was actually confused about this as well when I started out.

basicly Turbosmooth = Subdivision
Because what it does is subdivide your mesh according to a certain algorithm.

You don't need to write ones yourself (atleast I never heard about anyone doing this).

4evra wrote: »

So,my concept of subD was that it reffers to manipulating a parts of a 1 object.Like going into vertex/faces/edges mode while modeling.

I think here you are confusing "Subd" with what is referred to as "going into subobject mode", wich are 2 different things.

In the first part you mentioned (and the picture), generally for characters (and organics), people will start at a low subdivision level (see it as in max putting turbosmooth on 1 iteration), and just work on the overall big forms.

Because it's a lot easier to work on the big shapes with less polygons then immediatly subdiving the mesh to a high level.

Then when those are correct and looking good, they will add more subdivion levels (again basicly see it was increasing the iterations on your turbosmooth) (smoothing the mesh and making the mesh more dense, so more polygons to manipulate), and then they start working more on the small details of the mesh. (wrinkles/pores/etc)

So let's say you have been mostly been modelling hard surface things (guns/props/etc) this "concept" usually doesn't apply, since it's another way of working.

In that case you are usually doing something like -> Blockout -> refine blockout -> Add control edges -> Apply turbosmooth/SubD to get the final mesh.

I hope this sort of makes sense.

4evra · Oct 2012

Yes it does.
Many thanks

subD levels?

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