Well, my entry is probably not very recognizable, and I doubt that anyone has actually seen one of these before, but I refuse to give it away by telling you what it is! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
From the beginning I decided that this object was going to be modeled using LightWave's SubDivision surfaces. In case anyone is unfamiliar with this type of modeling, I tried to demonstrate how it works in my submition below. Basically, you are still working with points and polygons. The polygons must be either 3 or 4 sided - nothing more will work. With those poly's, LightWave generates NURBS curves, definied by the points. The curvature of the NURBS is determined by the weight that you assign each vertex. In my image, you can see the Weight Shading, and how the weights actually form the shape. If you've never modeled with SubDivision surfaces before, I highly recommend you give it a shot.
So, what's the big deal about SubDivision surfaces? Well, first of all, they are extremely easy to work with. Your system doesn't have to be a $7,000 workstation because your underlying 'cage' is often composed of only a few points and polygons. Yet, with those few points, you can raise and lower the SubPatch level on the fly, and walla! You have an object that has an infinite level of detail. I can't stress how powerful this is when it comes to animating your object...not to mention making last minute changes...
Ok, so enough on SubD's and more on my mystery object. First of all, there are NO parts to this object. Everything is a connected curve - no breaks in it, no seperate pieces. That's probably the biggest advantage to SubDivision and NURBS modeling - you can keep your objects under one continuous cage of curves (nice alliteration!) - eliminating undesired distortions, seams, and object explosions during animation. Anyhow, the surfaces are all simple - no textures. I only changed the base color so the 'parts' could be distinquished. I rendered the object at a SubPatch level of 20. At that level, there are 62,400 polygons. The base object itself (without any SubPatch level) is only 156 polygons. See the top row for example renders of a few SubPatch levels. Please note that NONE of those top row renders have any surface smoothing turned on. The third render on the top, at level 20, is naturally smooth due to the high number of polygons. The best part is - render times were not very high - even at a SubPatch level of 20.
The middle row shows the actual renders, at level 20, with surface smoothing turned on. No fancy lighting - one light on top, one on bottom. The wireframe on the right of the middle row is there just in case you wanted to see it. It's only rendered at a SubPatch level of 3, thus it is NOT the wireframe for the renders next to it. Since they were at a SubPatch level of 20, the wireframe was actually solid (the spaces inbetween were too tiny to see).
The bottom row shows a probably more useful wireframe - the NURBS wireframe. Those are the curves that I'm dealing with when adjusting vertex weights.
Well, that's it I think. If there are any questions about SubDivision modeling, feel free to ask. I know that I was a little timid of it when I first got LightWave, and I would have loved to have had someone explain it to me 5 or 6 years ago. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]
[This message was edited by Earl Wilson IV on August 21, 2001 at 22:28.]
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