Hi,
I was just wondering if there was any way to use Catmull Clark subdivision on a part of a mesh? Like a way to use Catmull Clark in addition to plain “Smooth” when using the subdivide function? I just ask because I recently did this by hand and it was enough of a PITA that I’d love to be able to do it automatically if it’s possible.
Subdivide smooth tool in edit mode is one way. Subdivision surface modifier applies to whole object and you would either have to separate mesh parts to their own objects to have the modifier only on some of them, and/or control the density in the control cage like supposed to.
Thanks so much for your reply. Unfortunately, smooth doesn’t do anything similar to what Catmull-Clark does. That was why I had to spend quite a long time to do this by hand. I know how the modifier works, and was wondering if there were another function that had a Catmull-Clark option I was unaware of. I often find little modeling features I’ve managed to remain ignorant about despite almost daily Blender use for the past several years. So I thought it would be a good idea to ask.
Yes, I did separate out the parts I wanted to subdivide, subdivide those parts, delete the unwanted edgeloops, combine the subdivided parts with the original mesh, delete the unsubdivided parts, add some edge loops to necessary areas of the original mesh, and sew the two parts back together. All of which could have been done programmatically and taken several orders of magnitude less time by just using Catmull-Clark instead of Smooth on the Subdivide function. I’ve never once found Smooth useful, and often found it harmful. I have often wanted to use Catmull-Clark with Subdivide/Loop cut. And it seems like such a no-brainer to provide as a function that I thought I might just not know about a way to do it.
Any digital task that has a consistent process can be done programmatically. What I had to do was very specific, tedious, and obvious if incredibly time consuming. The only part that I think wouldn’t be possible in one step is making part of the new loops regular subdivision and part of Catmull-Clark. But it really wouldn’t have been hard to flatten those areas out after making the cuts I wanted if I’d just been able to choose “Catmull-Clark” in addition to “Smooth” when I made loop cuts.
So if Blender doesn’t support it now, I’m sure Blender could support it, probably fairly easily if one was already familiar with Blender’s code. I’d do it myself if I was. Unfortunately, I’m very much not.