After we programmed the surface renderer for our last project, we decided to work a little more in order to implement a simple editor that could give use the opportunity to model simple objects based on a single surface. This editor enables us to work on further materials and uses for lighting, and it also allows us to make simple morphing surface animations in the near future.
The above image is a saddle modeled with the editor, the initial surface is a 7 x 7 RationalBezier Surface and all we did was to move points arround in order to get the shape done. The editor has a very easy interface to use, you can rotate the view by pressing on the screen and moving the mouse arround, when you press the control points you can drag them in 3d in order to adapt the shape to the convex hull made by the points.
There are some commands that enables you to view your model in differents ways, these are:
- “w” : sets the wireframe mode.
- “t“: sets the texture mode.
- “l“: shows or hides the yellow guides lines.
- “c“: shows or hides the control points and the lights.
- “r“: reset the mesh and the lights.
As you can see, you can model your object using the control points and the guide lines, changing your view on a wireframe to get the mesh without lighting and change the texture mode to see how the lights affect the mesh. You can also move the lights in every moment to see how the shading changes with the light´s position.
By the moment we have made two shapes with this editor, the first one is a simple attempt to make a basic surface with the shape of one mouse, and the next object was the saddle shown in the beginning of the post. The first mesh, the surface mouse, is shown on the next two images
Since the surface is a rational Bezier surface, there are some artifacts that happend in the border with the texture, this is because the weight of the control points in the borders make the surface tessellate with less spacing around them. If you want to give it a try just press on the editor´s image (next image) and have fun!…
