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I have always liked the example x.files that ship with the DirectX sdk and have wondered if the bigship1.x is a product of some type of spline editing as I have heard the term spline editing used in the context of editing mesh objects.

So, is the following mesh a product of spline editing or not and if so what type of spline editing would edit the curves (or is it just mesh smoothing?).

How would you create this model using Blender?

enter image description here

zeffii
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Jason Jones
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  • Welcome to the site, Jason. If you've not done so already, you might want to take the tour. You might also want to consider working through one (or both) of the online courses referenced on the resources page found under the "On Line Courses" entry under the "Learning" heading. – brasshat Sep 15 '15 at 18:50
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    Your last question is more appropriate to this forum because its about Blender. ...... The ship could have been done with a combination of spline editing and other techniques. .... Everyone who uses Blender is clever. Very clever. – atomicbezierslinger Sep 15 '15 at 18:56

2 Answers2

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Spline Surfaces / Patches are used to define surfaces/objects using very few points. It's quite a convenient way to model with the right tools. It is quite possible that the bigship.x was modeled using a form of splines or NURBS, but it's hard to be certain even after seeing the mesh. Blender has (October 2015) a limited set of these tools, but they are there and can be found in The Add > Surface > NURBS Surface menu.

enter image description here

Not many Blender users use this feature, and that might explain why tutorials on the subject are rare. It doesn't fit within the format of this site to give a detailed explanation of how to model something using those tools.

In general modeling inside Blender is done using Polygon modeling techniques and Subdivision surfaces and creased Edges. I made a rudimentary model in about 3 minutes purely by extruding / insetting a Cube object and placing a Subdiv modifier on it. When the object is symmetric you don't even need to model both sides instead add a Mirror modifier.

Here model without mirror or subsurf, but with creases to indicate where the subsurf should become sharp.

enter image description here

Here with the mirror modifier:

enter image description here

Here the added subsurf modifier adds the interpolation and smoothing.

enter image description here

Here in object mode to show the result, also note i've set the mesh to Smooth Shading to get away from the tessellated look:

enter image description here

There are plenty of tutorials about how to do polygon modeling. See our resources page:

Here's what the low poly approach of the ship might look like to the left, and to the right again the model has subsurf and smooth shading and edge creases.

enter image description here

Community
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zeffii
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As I understand it, splines are a device in some game engines for modeling highly repetitive things, like walls, power lines, roads, forests, (among many other objects) in a way that calls for a minimum amount of geometry. Splines can be created in Blender just like any other Blender Mesh object (or set of objects).

The image in you questions appears to me like it could have been created with rather ordinary mesh modeling techniques.

brasshat
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