Contributed by asdf_46.
Smeshes give the effect of a smoothing that acctually makes the shape of an object smoother, not just the apperence.
For the details read on.
Smeshes are for giving nurb like properties to regular modeling. The effect is simeler to Cinema 4d's meta-nurbs. Using the smesh feature can give similar affect as using the subdivide smooth function. Smeshes are an easy way to model organic looking things. The down side to smeshes are that they generaly have a high poly count and they don't work in the game engine. The subdiv button controlls the subdivision of the object. The higher the subdivision the smoother the edges, but for general modeling the default subdivision should do good. Unless you have an incredible computer I only suggest using a high subdivision for rendering. One last note, the allignment of the normals has an effect on the shape of the object. If the normals go in the mesh will pull in.
To enable S-meshes select a mesh, go to the Edit Buttons Window (F9) and select 'S-Mesh'. You can control the resolution with the 'SubDiv' value.
Contributed by B@rt.
Blender does not have patches, but you can use _s-meshes_ for this purpuse as well. Blender 2.14 also has Catmul-Clarke subdivision surfaces that generate even nicer surfaces.
Contributed by B@rt.
S-meshes don't support UV texturing.
Contributed by Kiernan Holland.
I used to model completely in "Surfaces" until I started using
the new (Catmull-Clark) subdivision surfaces. These are the same
surface types used exclusively by Pixar to make the models such
as Woody in Toy Story. Their advantage over blenders "Surface"
type is they can have holes in them and you can attach arms and
legs to a character without having to play tricks like cover the character
with clothes to hide the fact that surfaces can't be attached. Its
also better to use subdivisions surfaces because unlike bevel/fillet
surfaces implemented in programs like Maya, Alias and Rhino, the
computer doesn't spend a lot of time trying to recompute the continuity
between the arm and the body. This is why fewer and fewer animators
are still using surfaces for character animation and a majority are
going to packages such as hash animation master and packages that
have subdivision surfaces such as Lightwave (and also Maya). But
now blender has these powerful surfaces.
The drawback to using subdivision surfaces, if you've used NURBS
style surfaces for modelling, there is no way to select isoparms or
the ribs that make up a surface. With surfaces you can construct
a series of Surface->Curves and loft them together (using the F KEY),
and you can control the number of polygons (which are always quads)
in the surface. Its also possible to select the lofted curves (called isoparms)
individually going along the model in two ways, either on the U or V of the
surface. By selecting two curves parallel and next to each other,
you can subdivide the surface adding a isoparm between the two that
is also on the surface. This allows you to add more detail.. BUT WAIT!!
... Surfaces get more complex and hard to deal with when you add more
isoparms, especially in the design of human heads. If you are designing a
human head with surfaces and you start thinking about adding eyes and
a mouth, think about converting the surface to a subdivision surface.
Its possible!! If you hit (Alt-C) you can convert the surface into a mesh.
Sub-division surfaces are an toggled option in EditButtons. The consistency of the surface between Surfaces and Sub-Surfaces are so good that you won't lose much between going from one to the other.
Just make sure that before converting the surface that you adjust the
polygon count such that they appear symmetric to the nose.
Then you can add eyes and nostrils, ears, etc. Just by selecting some quads and extruding. Keep an original copy of your surface in case
you don't like the size of shape of the head. You can make another
object and cut of the nose, eyes, etc and append them (using Cntrl-J to
join the new head to the already made body parts. In the mesh modeller,
the F KEY, same one used to loft surfaces, can be used to create
new faces, and subdivision surfaces are extensions of meshes, so
you can use any mesh tool. You can't for instance use the magnet tool with surfaces (which would be a nice addition, but not available yet).
Also you may notice that if you use the Surface->Circle that is already
in blender, you will get polygon distributions that are biased at the four corners. This is because blender's default primitives are mathimatically
correct representations, using the weighting of the curve to interpolate
the curve. You can get away from this odd distribution of polygons,
by making a circle, selecting all the points, going into editbuttons
set the weight to 1.0, then take the four corners of the CV's that make up
the square, and scale them down until the squarish curve looks like a circle. If you want more detail subdivide and select the new corners to
make a smoother circle. You might want to use a copy of the existing circle
to align with such that the circle is more perfect. Then go and make your
head model, the distributions of the polygons should be more even such
that you can add detail where its needed.
To make it easier to model the mesh, you can select all the polygons from
the back of the head, and hit "h" to hide these polygons. You can't do this
with surfaces, but you can with sub-surfaces because sub-surfaces are
just extensions of polygons. I'm going to write a more comprehensive
tutorial based upon these tips, you will find them at my website:
www.bl3nder. com, note the 3 for the E in the name, making the
url www.bl3nDer.com .
Thanks to B@rt for this cool auto-FAQ-site.
Kiernan