Polymodeling: The basics

by Daniel Buck
http://www.danielbuck.net/

Polymodeling. You have probably heard that term thrown around, a lot of people model using this method. It's my main method of modeling, as it is so versatile.

To begin with, make a plane, and convert it to an editable poly

these are the selection types with in the editable poly. in order from left to right (and their hot keys) they are: Vertex (1), Edge (2) ,Border (3), Polygon (4), and Element (5). Press 6 to exit the selection modes so that you may select other objects. Using these hot keys will increase your modeling speed dramatically (as well as other hot keys, such as viewport moving, objects moving/rotating/scaling, and others).

select an edge

hit Ring (Alt-R) undo that, then hit Loop (Alt-L). easy way of selecting multiple edges.

select a polygon (will also work for vertexes, and edges), and hit grow. this will expand selection to it's neighbors. Shrink does the opposite.

now for the modeling. most of my modeling is highpoly objects achieved by using NURMS iterations.

This will smooth out the polygons (like Meshsmooth modifier) and will let you edit the lowpoly "cage" and see the highpoly model at the same time. drag a vertex, and see what happens!

now extrude a vertex (right click, and click the box all the way to the left of "extrude") it will bring up a dialog box, and you can change the height and base. change these and see what happens!

here is all 4, vertex, edge, polygon, and border:

More to come later!!