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Voiceover: Hey everyone and thanks
for watching 3D Motive.com.
My name is Cordell Felix and on this video
I will show you how to use the TurboSmooth modifier.
TurboSmooth is used mostly for its effect
it gives a high poly model.
It helps the model look smooth by
subdividing its geometry and
averages angles every polygon.
There are other ways to smooth the model,
like the Mesh Width modifier or HSDS,
but those aren't as quick and efficient
as TurboSmooth.
I'll be using 3D Specs 2013 for this quick tip
and this video assumes you have basic knowledge
of modeling in 3D Specs.
This MEC shows a couple of examples how I use
the TurboSmooth modifier.
One of the reasons I like to use it is
because it can quickly help me concept a model out
without having the spend too much time on it.
I modeled this entire MEC just in two hours
by doing some low poly shapes and then
throwing the TurboSmooth modifier on top.
Then I used the FFD modifier to shape them.
I'll show you some examples now.
Before we start using the TurboSmooth,
I want to first show you how to set it on
this menu so it's easier to grab
instead of going to this list every single time.
Click this configure modifier sets button here
and then click configure modifier sets.
That'll bring you to this menu here.
You can select the amount of buttons that you have,
like you can add more here
and these are just modifiers.
You can search through this list and
you can grab whatever modifier you want
and just throw it on here if you want.
You just drag and drop.
My normal amount is 12 and I have all these.
These are all just modifiers that I use the most
and so if you want to copy these,
you can if you want.
To go to TurboSmooth, just click in here
and type TU and it'll bring you to TurboSmooth
and just drag that onto your first one
or wherever you want.
Then click okay.
You have to make sure that you have
show buttons enabled.
Now if I throw the TurboSmooth modifier on,
it's going to subdivide it and it averaged
all the angles out and to try to smooth it out
as best as possible which made it into a ball.
I can throw the iterations up a little bit higher
and it'll smooth it out even more.
This is some of the things I want to get into.
The iteration count is just the amount
that it subdivides it and if you go past
three iterations, that means that you're just
getting into a really high poly count
and you really don't need this much detail
into your model unless you have that detail
to support it, like a bunch of edge loops
and small micro details.
Three is a good number for this little sphere
because it's small and it's already
pretty low poly.
There's this other cool button called
isolating display here which basically
makes your wire frame look a lot nicer.
If I go back to my MEC here, you can see that
he looks really smooth and just really sharp.
That's because I have isolating display on
and if I have isolating display off,
you'll see a bunch of his wire frame.
It doesn't look as nice.
That's not really pleasing compared to this.
I only use isolating display just for
viewing purposes.
I wanted to grab this piece of my MEC because
I did some cool tricks using smoothing groups.
Let's go ahead and isolate that amount.
Okay, I have the TurboSmooth applied
and I have the smoothing groups option turned on.
This allows the mesh to smooth only the
low poly smoothing groups.
It does a really good job of smoothing it
and it gives it a nice hard surface look.
If I had that option turned off,
it turns it into an organic model
and I didn't want that for this MEC.
The smoothing groups option allows me to
quickly throw a TurboSmooth on a low poly model
without having to do any support edges.
That way I can still get a smooth model which
still has some sharp, hard surface shapes.
I'll show you how I set my smoothing groups
real quick.
I'll delete my TurboSmooth and all I did was
I selected faces like this and I just hit
clear all/all smooth real quick
and then that set it for that.
I just did that for each angle.
If it's something like this, you might have to
select or make this about 60 so that way
the angle it smooths at is a little higher.
Now that'll be smooth.
For this mesh, I'm going to show some tricks
with soft selection NNFFD modifier to
get shapes that would be rather difficult
to model or just take forever.
We're going to apply our TurboSmooth and then
if you go back to the edible poly stack and
then you click the show end result button here,
kind of looks like a Roman numeral one,
and it'll show you what your stacks are above
and then you can turn it off and on with
the light bulb here.
I have my show cage turned off.
If you have show cage turned on, it would be
like an orange thing that goes around it.
It kind of gets in the way of what you're
trying to do or what you're trying to see.
I have some edges selected, then I'm going to
have this show end result on and then with that,
I'm going to have the soft selection turned on.
Let's see here, that's probably a good amount.
With those edges selected, now I can do whatever
I want with those edges.
I can make a nice little bend and kind of
turn this into a sci-fi looking pillar and then if I just
go back to the TurboSmooth and turn off wire frame,
you can see it looks pretty nice.
Another way I can do this, I can go back.
I can add an FFD modifier, so I'm going to do
a four by four and then I'll just go here and
select these middle ones.
Then just to have the show end result on,
I can just bring these all up and do whatever
I want with this mesh.
Grab these ones up here and here.
Turn it to like an S-shape I guess,
something like that.
Cool, now I can make this like a nice tail
or something from my MEC,
make it into a modular piece.
Just a quick note when you're using
the TurboSmooth modifier, you need to have
these control loops that support edges and make
them sharp because if I did't have these edges
and I have this TurboSmooth, you're going to get
a very soft crease here, compared to the rest.
I talk more about that on my swift loop tutorial
for 3D Motive.
It's one of the first videos I made for them.
You want to watch that if you want to understand
how to use TurboSmooth for high poly modeling.
When I work with a TurboSmooth, I never usually
collapse it into enable poly because I never
really need that much detail.
I can't mess with this anymore or anything.
I don't need this much detail because I can just
make this into low poly.
There might be some cases where you could
save out and convert this into enable poly.
Like you can go in here and select
every other loop and then delete those to
get a bit of a higher poly version of your low poly,
but one thing you never really want to do is
you never want to have on isolating display on
when you collapse into enable poly because
it doesn't collapse the model very well.
If I go into vertex mode, you can see that
I have all these floating vertices and this
is something you just don't want to mess with
so try not to collapse your stack when you
isolating display on.
Most of these little tricks help me make this
MEC really quickly and if I just go to this
little part right here, I can see that I copied
this from this part right here.
A lot of the time I just did the four by four
modifier and I just scaled the parts up.
If I can just go like this to bring this part out,
maybe this will rotate and go out.
Maybe it'll also create a swift loop and give it
an extra edge, bend this a little bit.
I can just throw TurboSmooth on here
and it'll look fine.
Just smoothing groups.
It's just stuff like that that make this
whole MEC come together really quickly.
That's it for this quick tip.
My name is Cordell Felix
and thanks again for watching 3D Motive.com.