C4D - Subdivision Surface Weight

In this tutorial I will show you a simple trick how to control Subdivision surface (aka Hyper-Nurbs) with Subdivision Surface Weight tag.

I am not very good at sub-d modelling, also not a great fan of it :) but its a powerfull technique and lot of great 3D artists use this all the time. As you can see in the top render, you can get really nice results from very simple meshes, what are easy to modify (not like highpoly objects).

In the top render is 3x the same object, from left to right: base mesh -> base mesh in subdivision surface -> base mesh in sub-d with edges modified with sub-d weight.

This tag allows you control the impact of subdividing, either on edges or on points.

Sometimes you need razorsharp cuts or corners and cutting the object wont help very much. On this example one side of the pipe is not exactly 90° to world axis, so near cut did terrible mess after subdividing.

If I do the cut more inside, it will look too much beveled. And in this case I want the ends of pipe look like sharp cut.

My solution is to add a Subdivision Surface Weight tag (object manager/tags/cinema 4d tags/sub...) to the base mesh. First put the base mesh under Subdivision Surface, so you can see what you change.

We want to modify the pipe ends, so we need to select the end edges. Switch to edges mode and choose loop selection (prees "v" in perspective view for popup menu - select - loop selection) and select both end outer edges. You can disable sub-d for this step, if you cant find them on subdivided mesh.

Re-enable sub-d, push and hold the "." (dot key) on keyboard and drag the mouse (left-right) anywhere in view. You have to hold the "." key. You can see the changing of Subdivision Surface Weight by changing of blue color to red.

Thats it :) Now click off the tag, to see the result better.

You can change the weight of points too (same action) and also combine point and edges weights. Also the tag allows to change subdivisions amount. Happy experimenting :)