Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2009-10-24 18:56:33
As I was trying to turn a 2d sketch of a spaceship into a beautiful 3D image I ran into a couple of problems. One problem was that the mesh I was projecting my 2d image onto was becoming more and more complex as I tried to distort it – to add interesting lighting to the finished render.
So I looked for a way to make the poly count on my 3d shape lower. And I think I found one…
The Decimate modifier will do two things for us. Its primary job is to reduce the poly count of a mesh. A pleasant side-effect for our purposes is that it will begin to rearrange the topology into a more manageable heap of triangles and quads. Keep reducing the Ratio slider below 0.5 until it becomes as coarse as you can stand. You want the lowest polygon base you can have that still maintains enough detail in the limbs and shapes you made…
Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Making Your Creation Smoother – Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks
But as I simplified my 3d shape, and then made it more complex again in a repeating cycle of faffing around with the image my the renders got stranger and stranger. The mesh seemed to disintegrate.
First it twisted like it was going through a space warp, and then it broke apart all together.
I decided to go back to a simpler shape as
the base mesh for the spaceship sketch to be projected on. It worked pretty well, but it still looks like a 2d image floating about in a 3d space.
I’m losing faith in this whole process and might go back to sculpting a 3d spaceship, and only using these 2d elements as decoration. I could use this technique to add airlocks, logos and such like to the 3d model that eventually gets produced.
I’m actually quite looking forward to sculpting in Blender again. It’s the most enjoyable part of the whole 3d process.

