A Better Cylinder in Blender.

Blender provides us with a cylinder with two options for the endcaps which both cause problems with the subdivision surface modifier.

In polygon modelling, shapes change at will and in anyway you want. In subdivision surface modelling we need to think about areas of transition when things change shape.

This is the first object we will tackle that requires some thinking about how objects are really composed.

The best way to think a cylinder is that is has a top, a bottom, a cross section and some areas of transition between these things. These transition areas are lacking in blenders cylinder – and in fact in all polygonal models. This may seem obvious but what we will do here is essential thinking in creating anything suitable for subdivision surface modelling.

These areas of transition are the main difference between polygonal modelling and subdivision surface modelling.

We don’t want to model curvature, we want to control it. This is where these boundaries become necessary.