Interesting. So I could leave a bend modifier on a mesh and turn it into a primitive and it would always have that bend modifier on it when I create a new prim? That would be awesome! So in the Lamp Post example, what sort of modifier would the guy have been using to allow for adjusting the height of the pole? I was an…
do you have an edit poly modifier on top of that wave object? i'm guessing you used the edit_poly modifier to be able to keep the entire plane on the bottom of the modifier stack in case you want to do some variation of control tiles try this also you are changing your selection if it hits so that will give you errors…
To fix the harsh shadows you'll need to modify your vertex normals so that they're pointing outwards from a tree. The workflow will be different from program to program, but you'll probably want to either bake the vnormals from a sphere or use a modifier. Modifying the vnormals is no magic bullet though, if you want a…
Of course you could add support loops to the edges to control skewing. Assuming the shading between modified and original is consistent, could even apply textures to original. Adding support loops to an instance of the mesh using something Blenders Bevel Modifier would keep both in sync.