heyas; once upon a time i learned a method of building models in which you draw a top/front/side view on the walls of your workspace (or the backdrop) and use that as a guide to build your model. the tutorial author said it was 'bill flemming's box modeling technique.' so i thought box modeling is where you draw the silhouettes on a box around your model. but i have seen some 'box modeling' where you start with a box and subdivide, and sculpt the box, and THAT is called box modeling. ainnit? so which one is box modeling?

Box modeling is where you take a box, and then add detail from there. The other is poly by poly modeling where you create the polys, then move them into shape over a background images. Some ppl. just prefer to map their template image on a box.

The 'bill flemming's box modeling technique.' should be the way Bill used to build his model in that tutorial Box modeling = subdivision modeling so it must be the 2nd one

Well from the way I understand it, I've always been using box modelling. I use Lightwave (LW. Box modelling in the general term, is where you start out with a very basic shape (not always a box) and you cut, smoothshift(LW), and move points around building outward as you go, and then detailing. The Sub-D Surf that to a final model Bill Flemming (from what I've read in articles; one here even) draws the model in polygon's 1-dimensionally. Then he pulls those vertices out into 3D space. Kinda like if you took half your model and flattened the point values to 0 on one axis. Seems like a complicated way to go about it, and hard to get multi-limbed figures his way; without a lot of planning and welding, or to build things made for animation. Some people also use the per-polygon method. There are examples of that for LW owners in Dan Alban's books. This is where you build sections of a face poly by poly, then weld those sections together. Its good I think for areas that are going to ahve a lot of detail, and need a certain style of topology. I've used it before. ML

heyas; okay, cool. i'm glad i'm straightened out, now. ;) now don't knock bill flemmings' method, that's what i use. drawing the silhouette and pulling out points is not any 'weirder' than pulling points around on a box to make a shape. ;) i dunno, i find it easier to start with the shape and then build the geometry, than to start with the geometry and build the shape. ya know? i look at a box and i have no clue what to do with it ;)

slice it with a knife and season it with extrusions. bake it to perfection.

I saw the "Flat Method" being used to make a dino. In a side view (with an image of the dino as a template), the basic shape is layed out and then extruded into 3D where points are pulled around and so on. It looks like a decent way of modeling things.

heyas; i also prefer the add-on method of sculpting (molding in clay) rather than the subtractive method (chiseling, etc). if i started chiseling a block of marble, the best i'd end up with is a pile of marble chips. :) i confess, though, i HAVE box-modelled some things. i used it for the rabbit lure for my falconry gear (after all, that's basically a block of wood dressed in fur! lol!), and i even used it to sculpt the torso of my latest figure. a very SIMPLE figure. for stuff with detail.... i'd be lost.

I have a problem with the slicing method. Mainly that when you're dealing with complex models it's quite difficult to determine where you whould be creating the shape and where it should be positioned. But there are many objects that lend themselves to this extremely well! I guess that's why there are many different ways to create the same thing. What works for one, may not always work for the other. Jared

Wow, all these techniques! Am I strange that I like lofting curves?

Naw...that's the one that I have problems with though! Just can't seem to get the curves right :) Oh well, maybe with practice I'll get it.

heyas; i like lofting okay, except when you try to make closed ends on something :/

I dunno aboyt LW, but Rhino is sometimes fickle about capping ends. Lofts require resolution, you know; they need a distinctive finality. Well, I'm still enamored of the rail/curve thingie, too. :)

heyas; but in rhino, if you dont want things to end in a point, you have to build the cap on separately. which i hate! and which is why i prefer netwrksrf. ;)

I have to say that sometimes in Rhino, I just simply can't get certain things to cap, for no apparent reason that I can see. shrug Rhino's kinda weird about booleans every now and then, too. Yeah, I know what you mean about having to close the thing yourself..... What's netwrksrf?

heyas; netwrksrf is... well, to me, its kinda like lofting in 2 directions at once. you build the horizontal and the vertical cross sections, and skin it. there's a tutorial on that at my goodie page. i think every program is kinda flaky about booleans. i tried to boolean union my glaucus body to its head, and that came out a TOTAL mess. (in lightwave.) but then again, i used a cone to cut the top off the daz jack o lantern and make a lid, and that came out splendidly. it depends on the meshes, i guess.

I guess no one uses splines which I find make very handy templates.

heyas; that's not true, teph. instead of scanning my horse head sketches on a grid, i drew splines on the grid as guidelines :) and netwrksrf uses splines as well.

Cool! Glad to see I am not the only one :)

The term box modelling as stated by mallenlane is a term that is generally used. What is more acurate and one that is least understood and the proper is primative modelling. When take a primative ie: box, sphere, cylinder or cone and you build from it. Some software even include advance primatives such as the torus but that is not a universal convention. In programming, there are dozens of ways to perform a single task. Many of the conventions are preferential but to goal remains the same.

I'm sorry, least mis-understood