Dealing with complex surfaces

dzign

hello all.

ive been using sketchup for a couple of years, but only on a basic level. i'm getting very serious about 3d modelling rendering so i hope to learn a lot!

my first question has to do with how to deal with complex surfaces. ive tried searching for this issue, but came up empty.

say for example, i want to model a very basic bucket, consisting of just the cylindrical cone, and a small "spout" on the rim of the bucket.

the only way i know to do this, is to create the main bucket form, using follow me. then for the spout, i would try to make the spout separately and then just stick it on the bucket.

but then there is the issue of joining the 2 surfaces to become one, which requires removing sections from the bucket. which i have tried to do by the "intersect" command. but this causes me lot of other issues, and i just don't think this is the best way to do it. i intersect and have to go in and delete the leftover mess which is just ugly.

i think there is an issue with my fundamental approach.

im also learning rhino, and there i understand all about joining surfaces. now im just trying to understand how sketchup deals with this.

thanks!

dzign

modelhead....

thanks for the image. i will play around with it, and see where it gets me.....

so then if you intersect, then the parts that you don't want, you do have to delete by hand? all the lines, etc....

if so, then does it make sense to model in low poly... and then add more poly at the end? is this possible?

thanks!

remus

The first thing to understand is that rhino surfaces and SU surfaces are differnt things entirely, its best not to mix up stuf you can do in rhino with stuff you can do in SU.

When your dealing with complex shapes in SU the first thing to do is turn on hidden geometry (view->hidden geometry.) In this view its easy to see that SU treats all surfaces as a set of polygons, and when you want to create complicated stuff the cleanest way to do it is to shape these polygons by hand.

edit: sorry for the rather lacklustre reply, i was pushed for time.

dzign

ahhh...

i meant as a general approach, you do have to delete by hand, no matter how complex?