Week 3 Class Practical: Part 4 - Curves

The final part of this weeks practical covered the topic of curves. Curves are a set of 2D shapes that are not rendered by default, meaning they can be used as a guideline when creating models. They can also be used as a way to draw in paths for animating an object or moving a camera along with the action. When working with curves they have their own specific menu set that you can change to by selecting "Modelling"  in the top right of the program window.

This first tool I will be using is the "Bezier Curve" tool. This tool allows me to create a complex set of curves using nodes that I can refine later into the desired shape. Every time you click with the bezier curve tool a new anchor point is created, from here you can drag the mouse to set the degree of curvature. You can also shift and right click for extra options regarding the type of curve that is drawn in. Once you have created your curve, you can press enter to create it. One thing I noticed very quickly while using this tool is that with the 3D space and perspective it can be very tricky to figure out where you curve actually sits in 3D space. In the pictures below, you can see that in one camera angle the curve appears very different to the second.

After creating the curve you can still edit it afterwards at any time by reselecting the bezier curve tool and clicking any of the anchor points. You can "close" a bezier curve by placing the first and last anchor points very close to each other and selecting "Open/Close Curves" from the "Curves" menu. There is also a pencil tool that you can use to draw freehand curves, although this is much less accurate than the bezier tool.

My own observations about curves are that they are much easier to work with when you use an orthographic type camera. In perspective camera it is very easy to lose track of where you are moving an anchor point in 3D space and often you'll end up with a very sporadic curve that doesn't match what you were trying to achieve.