Starting a T-spline with sharp edge details

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Welcome to your next lesson on digital prototyping where we'll

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explore how you can turn your spines into a mesh.

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How you can use box mode to refine your sculpt

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and commonly used tools to help develop your design.

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First, I want to show you how we can turn our previously created blinds into a 3d T

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blind mesh which will act as the basis of our model

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to create a mesh. Using these blinds

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go to the crate form environment

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and select the lo command from the crate, drop down,

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select the two profiles

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and make sure uniform spacing is selected to give us evenly spaced T

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blind patches,

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curvature spacing would more accurately resemble the shape.

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Although you will have a lot more faces, edges

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and vertices to manage when refining the design.

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As you can see here,

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I'll use uniform spacing and select one face on

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the length and four faces on the width.

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As these will give us a good starting point,

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go into your top V mode just to make sure

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everything lines up and that the spacing looks good,

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then press OK.

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It's worth mentioning here that sketches and teeth blinds are not associative

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meaning you can update one and it won't reflect on the other.

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Now, we want to match our lofted surface to our canvas

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and there are a number of workflows you can adopt to do this.

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In this case,

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I'm gonna show you how to alternate between the

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display mode options to give you better topology.

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You can go into box display mode either by selecting display mode from the drop down

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or by using the shortcut command. Alton one

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to revert to smooth display,

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simply click on the button or press alt and three

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box mode is the underlying control rig beneath the smooth

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shading to get best proportions and best patch layout.

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So if it looks good in box display,

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smooth mode will have better topology.

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Before we refine, I'll first get these edges to zero.

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So we know that they will be completely horizontal.

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I can also see we would benefit from inserting an edge to get a sharper corner.

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I use the insert edge command

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set it to the exact midpoint between your subsequent edge.

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Then refine using the edit form command.

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Next,

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I'm going to line this with a side view of our canvas by again using the edit

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form command to select a mill plate until we have a shape we are happy with.

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Again, we can change between display modes to check the topology of our mesh.

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Now we have our mission in place,

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we can start adding more faces using the face command

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and bridging the two to create a smooth transition,

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I'll create a four sided face the same length as our first set

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of edges on the mesh using the construction plane we created earlier.

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Then I'll move it vertically so it lines with our canvas.

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Now

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I can box select the end edge of our mesh and use the

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edit form command along with alt and drag to create an adjoining phase.

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I'll repeat this until we have the same amount of edges on the corresponding phases

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which will make it easier when you go to bridge the two together later.

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As you can see,

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I am refining this shape again to better align with our canvas by changing the

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view and alternating between display modes until

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we have something we are happy with.

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You can see here how having as few control points as possible benefits us

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when creating our base shape as you have less geometry to worry about.

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In this next step,

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we'll bridge the two measures together.

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I'll select both sides and change the number of faces to one.

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So we are working with less mesh data.

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The great thing about T blinds is we can add

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or crate as necessary as we continue through the process.

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Press OK,

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then go into box display mode again to

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double check the topology and refine as necessary.

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Finally, I want to mirror our body.

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So I only have to worry about working on one side

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knowing that the changes will be reflected on the other automatically.

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First though

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it makes sense to align the vertices with the plane we are going to mirror around.

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So there are no gaps when you perform the command

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to do this, select the flatting command,

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then box select these vertices

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click on the direction drop down,

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set the exit plan

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and the selected vertices will automatically snap to that plane.

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Now, we can use the mirror command

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under the symmetry drop down. You'll find a number of mirror and circular features.

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We're going to select the mirror duplicate feature

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as you want to mirror an existing body,

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simply slit the body,

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the mirror plane

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and the well tolerance

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press. OK. And you'll see the green mirror line.

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Now when I go to edit one half the other updates automatically,

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this is probably a good time to use the

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make uniform command before we end this lesson,

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make uniform as a command that simply relaxes a T

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blind mesh helping to improve the topology

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and is recommended to do so after a significant change in your design.