Planarize, align, and smooth CV layouts

00:02

I'm gonna show you three ways to tidy the CV layout.

00:06

And I'll start with the Planarize tool and have a look at this rear end.

00:11

There's an Edge Loop option here because Planarize works on edges, not CVs.

00:17

So if I pick those, I get a preview of the plane

00:21

and I can choose here if I want a Z direction plane centered on the selection

00:25

or a Best Fit plane that averages between the two end points.

00:30

But because I want this half to mirror across smoothly,

00:33

I'm just going to check in the side view

00:35

and there's still a little bit of twist there.

00:37

So I'm gonna choose View Based which works best when I'm in Orthographic

00:42

as it's created perpendicular to the view plane and between the two end points.

00:48

And if I zoom in these yellow lines show the Projection Type,

00:52

so Closest moves the CVs 90 degrees to the plane,

00:56

and Adaptive moves them in the direction of the edges.

01:00

So then I can just hit space bar to Planarize,

01:04

and you can see that the subdivision

01:05

isn't green because there's no construction history.

01:08

But because I can pick by edge loop, it's very quick to pick another,

01:12

do a space bar

01:14

and another and a space bar.

01:17

So that does a nice job of making that layout more controlled and regular.

01:22

And we can do a similar job with the Align To Curve tool.

01:27

So let's just say I wanted these CVs to be in a straight line.

01:31

So a straight line here would be degree 1.

01:34

I'm just going to use the simple Align option

01:36

and it's highlighted as the default.

01:38

So space bar will align all of those

01:40

without creating the actual curve or the history.

01:44

And then I can use my Shift to Add-select

01:47

and space bar again

01:50

and again, Shift and Add up to here and space bar.

01:55

So that's straightened out these three sets of edges.

01:59

And then on this hood area,

02:01

I'm going to want curved shapes, not straight lines.

02:04

So I can use degree 2

02:07

and I'll pick from here and Shift-Add to here

02:11

and then just do the space bar to Align

02:14

and I can select again

02:16

and space bar

02:18

and again,

02:20

and that does a really quick tidy up.

02:23

And the key really is to understand the

02:25

effect of different degrees on a curved shape.

02:30

So then finally, I've got a Smooth tool

02:33

and this has got two modes, Smooth and Relax.

02:37

So I'll start with Smooth and keep this Strength value reasonably low.

02:43

And then I just click and hold and drag

02:45

across faces to reduce the angles between the edges

02:49

and smooth out some of these zigzags.

02:52

And again, there's no history but the Undo works well

02:56

and I can reduce this Strength value

02:58

and then do it again more iteratively this time with a bit more control.

03:05

And if I do a Smooth on this middle section here,

03:07

it will soften that inwards, but it doesn't really change the layout much.

03:13

Whereas if I now switch to Relax and do the same thing,

03:17

then it does the same smoothing. But it also changes the edge lengths

03:21

and moves towards a more even distribution

03:24

which changes the layout quite significantly

03:28

Over here, if I use smooth it

03:31

improves the layout, but I've still got this angle here.

03:35

So I'll do an Undo

03:36

and this time I'll use Relax

03:40

and I get a nicer layout.

03:42

But if that's too much, I can do Undo again,

03:45

reduce the Strength

03:47

and then just do a series of small click and drags to get a more subtle result.

03:54

But be aware that even in Smooth mode, you can lose too much of your design shape,

03:59

particularly in the interior.

04:03

And with Relax, the effect is even stronger.

04:06

So to avoid losing too much of your original work, then keep a low strength value

04:11

and just use Undo if you go too far.