Cre@teOnline - The Web Designer's Bible CH04 Page 19
The fact that face extrusion enables you to build up additional mesh out of
a single object makes it easier to create projections that are smoothly
blended into a single form. For example, you could use repeated face extru-
sions to create the fins of a shark by drawing the extra needed mesh out of
the smoothly swept body.
Face extrusions also are useful for building bevels from a squared-off sur-
face, or for doing sweep-like work on an existing object. As you generate an
extruded face, you can make use of the fact that it's already selected to
scale, rotate, and move it into other positions.
Polygon Operations
Working our way up from sub-polygon manipulation, we'll now take a
look at operations that deal with groups of faces and polygons. Because
these still deal with portions of a single object, they too are considered sub-
object operations.
The range of operations and transforms available for polygon ops is pretty
similar to the ones that can be used at the face level. Having a polygon
operations level is really more of a convenience feature, enabling the user
to quickly select and deal with entire polygons, rather than trying to round
up all their constituent faces.
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F
IGURE
4.16
Effects of face extrusion:
(a) Cylinder showing
unmodified faces, (b) A
group of selected faces
extruded outward.
(c) The objects in
shaded view.
(a)
(b)
(c)
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