Blender Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people who use Blender to create 3D graphics, animations, or games. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I'm trying to make a sort of an elongated tear drop.
What is an easier and quicker workflow that gives a more accurate shape?
Thanks.
You can use Proportional Editing.
The Screw modifier is still a great choice for this style of object. Make sure Merge is turned on to fix the shading at the wide end.
It lets you control the profile with a single curve of vertices, adjust the resolution dynamically, and generally gives you a lot of control with very few drawbacks. You can apply it later if you need to make rotationally asymmetric changes.
That being said, to arrange mesh verts into a teardrop profile so as to have something to spin via the modifier is certainly easiest using proportional editing (apply that answer but on a circle of vertices, then delete one half) - but if it's going to stay as a teardrop, a curve object may be preferable because then you can control the whole thing via bezier handles and only two or three points, leaving your final shape a lot more dynamic and easy to edit and tweak later.
In most workflows you should start with the simplest possible control surface (that is, number of editable points) and move to more complicated, higher density geometry only when needed - this lets you change your mind later or adjust things as needed. Sculpting is an obvious exception to this, as it needs high density real geometry to work on from the beginning.
Left is a curve with two points, right is a mesh object with 17 vertices.
Control points for curve object:
Vertex locations for mesh object:
Both have very similar Screw settings - the only difference is the axis of rotation is X for the curve object because I used a 2d curve:
With the Default Cube.
Just as a cube turns into a sphere with enough levels of Catmul Clarke Subdivision surface, can make it a tear drop.
Add the cube, in edit mode select top face and scale to 0. S0. making the top face a zero area, (edge length 0) ... all 4 verts in same location quad face. Without quad faces, sub'd modifier results look like rubbish.
Assign the cube a subdivision modifier. To fatten the teardrop, scale the bottom face in edit mode... to elongate move bottom face down, etc.
For example sake have added a shapekey to the sub'd cube and scaled its top face to zero. Here I scrub the influence to go from sphere to tear, scale the bottom face to make it fatter, or move it around
A Cone
Scaling the top face of cube to zero, (a pyramid) is akin to a 4 sided cone. Add Mesh Cone, To make sure it has a top face, give it a nominally small minor radius.
Add sub'd modifier will produce result similar to above.
The major difference being the rotation of 45 degrees about Z. Compare the front views of above and below.
Example of 3 subdiv levels on cone, scaled in X, Y and Z. Showing front top and right view. 2 of the base cones corner verts are higlighted in red, (connected to 3 edges not 4)
A Lattice.
Looking at animation above, could not help but notice it looks very similar to using a lattice modifier to deform a mesh. hence, have added this as a quick addition, so many ways to skin a cat in blender.
Add a new lattice to scene and transform and scale, in object mode, such that the lattice nicely encompasses the sphere object. (pretty much so it matches models bounding box).
A lattice modifier is added to the sphere object pointing to the newly created lattice. Now in edit mode of the lattice select the top four points and scale to zero.
Example of deforming a lattice (as shape) to deform the sphere, once again I've used a sub'd cube for example sake, try it with Suzanne (the monkey). By way of example have given this lattice a bit more resolution (grid) than the default, and used proportional editing, when transforming top 4 points
Same lattice as above, deforming a 3-Icosphere
I struggled to understand what you're trying to make based on your top/bottom/side views, is this what you're going for?
I made the object a couple of times, and this was the best workflow I could figure out:
You should have this object, call it object A
On Object A, add a shrinkwrap modifier targeting object B with Project mode set to axis Z, both negative and positive.
Hide object B (or apply shrinkwrap and delete object B)
Refined it a bit more here:
