Here it is the first Strata CX tutorial on SimplyStrata.com! This one is for beginners because this may be new to a lot of you strata users. What would be new you say? Well for along time now users of other app's have had this great modeling method that we haven't had, and that is Sub-Division Surface modeling. Better known as SDS or SubD. Take a look it is very cool

The first step is to use the filled pen tool in CX to make the profile of a cup.

Below you can see the profile I have made. This is the beginnings of a coffee or tea cup.

Now lathe the profile with the lathe tool. Grab one point and start the rotation. Once the rotation is started you can type in 360 to finnish the rotation.

Okay, one thing to keep in mind when you get ready to make something with SDS is to keep your geometry simple. Make sure your segments are NOT 8. Make them 4, this will simplify the geometry a little.

Now covert your lathed cup into a Bezier Surface.

Okay, now you get to simplify the geometry even more. Use the complexity slider to bring it down to look something like I have below. Don't worry about how blocky it looks, it will smooth out later on.

Now convert it to a Polygon Mesh.

Okay, here is the fun part. Click on the new reshape icon, the one with the hammer and light at the top right of the menu bar. Now, with the new sds tools choose the face mode (the little filled rectangle icon) and use the extrude tool to pull out one of the faces.

When you select a face the edges of the face will highlight red. Hold down the command key (mac), Control key(win) to constrain the extrusion to the normal (that means straight out from the cup).

Now you can narrow the handle down with the scale tool, in the face mode.

I am using a beta version here and I think this was fixed for the release but just in case I will put this step in. I needed to rotate the cup around so that the handle is perpendicular to the Z axis. That way it will rotate down correctly.

Okay, so now you will need to activate the Z axis. Just hit the Z key. With the Z axis activated you can rotate the handle down a little. If your face rotates on the wrong axis or looks like it is "spinning" your active axis is incorrect. Hit the other X and Y keys to activate the other axises to get it to rotate the right direction. (this confused me for a while until somebody told me about the axis thing.)

Continue extruding and rotating the faces until your handle starts taking shape. Okay here is the magic, on the extensions pallet hit the sds tool.

Here is what it looks like after applying SDS to the cup. Nice and smooooth, ahhh! And the un SDS tool now becomes active. You can turn it on an off at will. Very nice.

Finnish out the handle of the cup and then your done! It is very easy and a very flexible toolset that we can now use to make just about anything.

Here is a quick render with the new light dome. I will write a tutorial up on this one too. Stay tuned.