What does the "Smooth Shape" item on the Vertex Me

[Terry Capps]

Question for a more experienced user:

I have been experimenting with ac3d and when I attempted to use the "Smooth Shape" function on the Vertex menu, it simply reduced the size of whatever I had selected by a factor of two. Am I mis-using this function or just not understanding what it is supposed to be used for?

[Andy]

Hi Terry,

It does something similar to the smoothing in subdivision - it moves vertices to smooth the overall shape.

If you take a box, do a Surface->Divide, then (in Vertex select-mode) Vertex->Smooth-shape, you'll see it's similar to doing a single subdivision.

The function can be useful if you are roughing out a shape like a head from a sphere. Create a sphere and move/size vertices to make a chin, forehead, nose etc. The shape will be sharp/rough but can be smoothed out with Vertex->Smooth-shape. Another example might be making a landscape from a mesh. Remember that you can select areas to smooth - if you do select all vertices of an object, the effect will be to shrink the overall shape.

[Terry Capps]

Thanks, Andy