| > What about creases? Creases are done by just making polygons/bevels/line loops close to the edge that needs to be sharpened. > What if you want a creased edge smoothed and it’s part of two separate mesh groups? Mesh groups don't have to mean their polygons don't share vertices and this is one of the reasons why - you need to be able to interpolate the attributes of the vertices, like normals. > You can subdivide polygons without smoothing them, and people still do polygonal modeling without planning for subdivision, and produce models that aren’t intended for smoothing and wouldn’t smooth nicely, so it is important to be clear in your language that you’re talking about a subdivision surface and not just polygons. I'm not concerned with what random people do. Professionals just say polygons in general and the workflow is all about working with the polygonal mesh directly. If two people are both making polygonal models and they will save them as .obj files, but one will be smoothed at render time , they don't say they are working with a different type of geometry. Technically there are actually many different ways to smooth polygons. > My issue with what you said far above is the claim that smoothed surface representations require extra tooling, No, I explained that nurbs require extra/different tools. Technically if someone (like pixar) were to use extra attributes like edge crease amounts on subdiv surfaces, some tools would need to address that, but that's not on the same level as the difficulty of working with nurbs. > Nonetheless, a pure polygon workflow can mean things that aren’t compatible with smoothing or subdivs. I think when you say things like this you are trying to salvage your confusion, but it really doesn't shake down like this. Any mesh can be smoothed and unless you have messed up meshes it works well and no one has an eye. To recap: nurbs are a nightmare to work with, everyone works with regular polygons that could be saved as an .obj, they get smoothed at render time. Everyone calls them polygons because that is what they are working with and it has been this way literally for decades. Try not worry too much about it. |
I’m sorry if you feel defensive. I was responding to your explicit inclusion of “other curved surface representations” besides NURBS here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23043791 and here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23044537
Really just pointing out that a subdivision surface is literally another curved surface representation, does have some conceptual differences from polygons, and can be ray traced without subdivision. Calling it polygons was confusing to me, but now that I understand what you mean, call it polygons if you want.