Make 3D
Turning drawn profile lines into a solid you can paint and sculpt — one line, two, or several views of the same form — and the axis the spin runs about.
Reference
- Tool
- Select
- Panel
- Tool Options
- Section
- Make 3D
Make 3D takes lines you have drawn and spins them into a solid — a vase from its profile, a limb from two silhouettes, a head from a front and a side view. It is the way a form gets into a shot without any modelling: you draw the outline, and the outline becomes the object.
There is no Make 3D tool. It is a section of the Select tool's Tool Options panel, and it appears when the Scope is Object and something is selected.
3D shots only
Make 3D produces a solid, which is the one thing a 2D shot must never gain. The section does not appear there.
Making one
Draw the outline
Draw the shape's silhouette as ordinary strokes. A "line" here is a run of strokes that chain end to end, so an outline drawn in several passes still counts as one line.
Select the lines
Switch to Select, set Scope to Object, and lasso or tap the strokes you want. The panel's heading counts what it found: Make 3D — 4 lines.
Tap Revolve into 3D
The solid is built on the main layer, the source lines are consumed, the new solid is selected, and the tool leaves the gizmo aimed at it. If it cannot be done, the reason appears in the panel in orange rather than nothing happening.
How many lines you draw
The line count is what decides the shape, and each count means something different.
| Lines | What you get |
|---|---|
| 1 | A lathe. The line spins a full turn about an axis, the way a vase profile does. |
| 2 | A tube whose centre runs down the midline of the two lines — a limb, a branch, a horn. Where the lines are far apart the form is fat; where they close, it narrows. |
| 3 or more | Silhouettes of one form seen from different angles. Orbit between them: draw the side view, turn, draw the front view. Four lines at four views is the usual way to build a head. |
For two or more lines, the axis is worked out from the drawing itself, so you do not place one.
A single line is the exception: it needs an axis to spin about, and Adjust axis appears beside the button to place it. Tapping it hands the axis to the Transform gizmo, which moves the spin line only — an orange overlay shows where it lies — with Revolve and Cancel buttons in the transform panel.
One line can be a whole cross-section
A single line does not have to be half an outline. Draw the full cross-section — down one side, around, and back up the other — and it works too: a closed outline is split at the axis into its two sides, and each side keeps its own radii. That is what lets an asymmetric shape like a face profile come out asymmetric rather than averaged.
Options
Builds the solid. Disabled while no line has been found in the selection.
Shown only for a single line. Places the axis it spins about.
By default the source strokes are consumed — they have become the solid, and leaving them behind puts a wire cage around it. Switch this on to keep them, which is useful while you are still trying line placements.
Building a solid is one undo step, and it covers the insert and the consumed lines together: one undo puts your drawing back exactly as it was.
What the solid is
The result is an ordinary three-dimensional object of the same kind a folded fill produces, which is the point — everything already knows what to do with it.
- Paint on it with the Draw tool. A stroke over a curved solid is laid down as a chain of flat marks that follow the surface, keeping the brush's full character, and anything that runs off the silhouette is dropped.
- Sculpt it with Sculpt 3D. The whole brush set applies, and the body subdivides itself where you use a brush finer than its triangles.
- Fill, erase, transform, rig and animate it like any other content. It is saved with the shot.
When it refuses
The panel states the reason rather than failing quietly.
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| Select the profile lines first. | Nothing in the selection is a stroke it can use. |
| The selected strokes are too short to read as lines. | The marks are too small — a line needs some length to describe a profile. |
| This line needs an axis — use Adjust Axis to place one. | A single line with no axis. Tap Adjust axis. |
| Couldn't read a shape from these lines — draw them lengthwise around one form. | The lines do not read as silhouettes of one object — they are side by side, or crossing, rather than running along the same form. |
| Couldn't build the 3D surface. | The solved shape produced no usable surface. Redraw the lines with more of the form's length. |
Practical notes
Draw each view in its own plane. Orbit the camera between views so each silhouette is drawn facing you. How far a line sits along its own plane's normal is treated as sketch placement, not as shape, so you do not have to line the views up in space.
Loose ink stays where it is. Only the outline strokes are consumed. Flat marks and fills on the drawing plane are untouched.
One long stroke is fine. Strokes chain into lines automatically, and only within their own drawing plane, so a silhouette drawn from the side is never welded onto one drawn from the front.