Using the Surface Tool (Available with 3D Canvas Pro)

The Surface Tool is primarily used to create organic shapes.

shapes are built from a patchwork of surfaces. Surfaces are added to the shape by clicking on .

Clicking on a surface exposes its control points (handles), which can then be dragged to deform the surface.  Selecting a control point on an edge and clicking results in the current surface being cloned and glued to the selected edge.

A perspective view is provided as well as three orthographic views. A default background grid is provided, but is customizable. You may specify side, top and front view bitmap images of the shape you want to create to replace this background grid. Providing a side view image of the shape you are creating makes modeling much easier as you can use this image to "trace" your desired shape.

The best procedure for creating a model from an image is to lay out one surface at a time matching edges to your side view image. Once you are satisfied with the position of the surfaces and the shape of the shape, begin adding depth to your shape. Adding depth is easiest with  the orthographic side view of the shape. Right-click and drag on control points while watching the other three views for correct depth.

Control points glue to each other if placed near each other. Be sure to have "snap to grid"  on when linking control points.

If you right-click on a group of control points, you can choose to Un-group them.

There are two sliders available. The top slider is only available for NURBS surfaces. When a control point is selected it becomes active, and can be used to adjust the amount of weight given to a particular control point. An increased weight results in the control point drawing the surface closer to it. Note that this slider will only be shown when modeling with NURBS.

The bottom slider is used to adjust the quality level of the surfaces. Surfaces are rebuilt in real time as control points are moved. It helps to keep the quality level low during modeling to ensure frequent rebuilds. 3D Canvas will stop rebuilding surfaces in real-time if you raise the quality too high or if the surface you are working on has a large number of control points.

The default Surface type is a NURBS patch. Alternatively, you may use N-Spline patches or Bezier patches. For more information on Bezier curves and N-Spline curves see the Lathe or Extrude tools.

saves the shape.

deletes the active surface.

undoes the previous operation. Only modeling operations can be undone.

redoes the last action undone.

constrains operations along the X axis.

constrains operations along the Y axis.

constrains operations along the Z axis.

enables snap to grid.

allows you to provide a replacement image for the grid. This image should be the side view of the shape you wish to create. Clicking a second time resets the image to the default grid.

allows you to provide a replacement image for the grid. This image should be the top view of the shape you wish to create. Clicking a second time resets the image to the default grid.

allows you to provide a replacement image for the grid. This image should be the front view of the shape you wish to create. Clicking a second time resets the image to the default grid.

displays all control points for all surfaces. Having all control points displayed causes significant performance degradation, but is useful for when you want to glue control points together.

displays solid surfaces.

displays translucent surfaces.

displays the surfaces in wireframe.

hides all surfaces.

displays the surfaces' control point cage.

paints each surface a unique color.

adds a new surface to the shape. This surface will be made up of 16 control points. Surfaces with more control points can be created by merging surfaces.

clones the active surface and glues the clone to the selected surface.  Select a control point on the edge of an existing surface to glue the cloned surface to that edge. If no control point is selected, 3D Canvas will attempt to glue to the most appropriate edge.

divides the selected surface into four surfaces.

divides the selected surface horizontally into two surfaces.

divides the selected surface vertically into two surfaces.

merges two surfaces. To merge two surfaces, click on a surface, then click , and finally on a second surface. The surfaces must meet along an edge to be merged.

mirrors all surfaces along the z axis. Once you have completed a side view of your shape, you can use this to mirror the completed surfaces.