In this lesson video we are going to cover different methods of adding ages into a mesh. First, we will cover the loop cut and slide methods and then after that learn how to connect vertices using the F and j shortcuts method. To use the loop cut and slide feature in blender, you can do this in two different ways. First by using the shortcut, and second by using the loop cut tool, let's discuss how to use the shortcut first and then later using the tool. The shortcut for loop cut and slide operation is control are the loop cut and slide as the name implies, are like two operations in a single command. It will first create a new loop cut and then after it is confirmed, move on to the next process which is a sliding process.

Let's see how we can do this. Press Ctrl R, then move the mouse cursor over an age vendor We'll create this preview of where the loop cut will happen. Now in this condition, you can scroll the mouse up and down to define the amount of ages for the loop cut. If you want to cancel now, you can right click, but if you want to proceed to look at the ages, you can confirm it by left clicking. After left clicking the loop cut process is finished. But we are not done yet, as we are now inside the age sliding process.

In this process, we can move our mouse to take the position of the newly created loop cut ages. If you want to confirm the sliding, you can left click again. But if you don't want to slide the ages, you can press right click to cancel the sliding. So this is something you need to keep in mind. The first left click or right click will be for confirming or canceling the loop cut process and the second left click or right click will be for confirming or canceling the sliding process After performing the loop cut and slide, you can still access the parameters using the less operation panel. Provided you haven't done anything else afterward, you can set the number of cuts here.

Smoothness will make the loop cut bulge like this are stretched thin like this if we set it to negative value, and we can find the sliding factor in here to adjust the H sliding process before. The second method of accessing the loop cut and slide feature is by using the tool here. The way to work is a bit different from the shortcut mode. First, up here you can specify the number of loop cuts. For example, let's make it three. then hover the mouse over an age where you want to add the loop cut Blender will display a highlight to preview the loop cut operation.

Then we can click to create the loop cut or we can also click grow to slide the loop cuts, then release. As with the shortcut method, you can tweak the parameters here in your operator panel if you need to revise them. Next, let's discuss this option here. To understand what these options do more clearly, I already prepare a cube here. Notice at the top area, we have one vertex slightly moved towards this direction. Now if you do a loop cut by pressing Ctrl R, and then click to confirm the loop cut and then right click to cancel the sliding.

You can see that by default, the loop cut operation always places the vertices at the center of the ages essentially just flow at the center. Now by turning on the even option here, the new loop cut will not flow at the center anymore. Instead, it flows copying the flow of the adjacent loop cut and clicking on this flip option will make the flow copying the other adjacent. Look at so this flip option will do nothing if we have the even option turned off. Next is the claim option. If you have this turned off, you can input the factor value here to be greater than one or smaller than negative one, which basically makes the loop cuts able to slide beyond its adjacent loop cuts.

Normally, you always want to have this option turned on. The last one is the correct UVs option. You also want to have this option turned on all the time. I know we haven't discussed UV editing here at this lesson with just for a quick explanation. UV map is a flat 2d representation of a 3d surface. It is created to accommodate to the texture placement on a 3d model.

If your model already has a UV map, and then you need to do a loop cut on it. This option will prevent the UV map from distorting as it will find the best To fit the new loop cut into the existing UV map. The last method of adding ages that we want to discuss in this lesson is the Connect vertex path. The shortcut for this is J. And you can only do this correctly in a vertex mode. So go to Vertex mode and select this one and then this one for example, then press j, notice we have a new age connecting these two vertices.

We can also select multiple vertices like this brander will remember the order of the selection slot when we hit J. Again, new ages will be created following the order of the selection. We can even do something harder. If I select this vertex and then this vertex which is a bit far away from the first one, and then hit j again brander can connect these vertices by cutting through these ages. Now you may have seen people on the internet using the F show To create ages between vertices, I must warn you guys that these two shortcuts are totally different. If you right click, we can see that the F shortcut is for creating new edges or faces, while the J shortcut is for connecting vertices.

To show you the difference, if I select this vertex at the top of the head, and then this vertex at the eyebrow, if I press j, this is what I get. The new ages will confirm to the existing topology. Now let me undo this first. If I press F instead, look what happened. I think we can see this better in wireframe mode. So press Shift z, we can see the new age was created directly from this vertex to this vertex completely ignoring the topology.

The problem occurs when someone tries to connect to nearby furnaces. For example, this one and this one in this condition You should really use the shortcut, not the F shortcut. If you use f Instead, it seems that nothing is wrong, but this topology is actually bad. Notice if I go to the face mode and try to select this face, this is still a single face. So, this age is actually floating above this phase and not part of this phase. And you cannot fix this problem using the merge vertices command, you have to select and remove the ages manually.

So to save you from hours of frustration later, here is the role in using these two commands. Use G to connect vertices on existing geometry and use f only to connect vertices where there is no geometry exists yet. If you follow this simple rule, you should be able to avoid unnecessary time consuming problems in the future.