Change shapes

A primitive gets you the rough thing. What makes it look made rather than generated is what you do to it next: soften its edges, bend it, cut it back, build one side and let the other follow.

When you need this the shape is roughly right and now has to look like an object rather than a block.

Soften the edges first

Nothing gives away computer-made geometry like a perfectly sharp edge. Real objects are chipped, moulded or worn, and every one of them catches light along its edges.

Bevel is usually the highest-value node in a graph for the least work. A small width does most of it. Its Wear setting varies the width along the edge, which breaks the machined look without changing the silhouette.

Keep the width modest. A bevel wider than the detail around it eats that detail.

Bending needs something to bend

This is the one that catches everyone, and it does not look like a mistake.

Bend, twist and bulge move each point by how far along the shape it sits. If the shape has no points in the middle, and a box has none by default, there is nothing between the two ends to move. The result tilts instead of curving, and nothing about it says why.

Give the shape rings along the axis you are bending, six to twelve, and it curves properly. Taper and shear are straight-line changes and need no rings at all.

Worth knowing: Taper's amount is what the tip KEEPS, not what comes off. At 0.5 the tip is about half the base, and at 0.99 you will see no taper at all.

Build half

Anything symmetrical is half the work and half the fiddling. Model one side, then hand it to Symmetrize and the other side is made for you, exactly matching, forever.

The real gain is later. Move a detail on the side you built and its twin moves too, which is the thing that goes wrong when you place both by hand and then change the size.

Cutting back

Slice takes a plane through a shape and keeps one side. That is how you get a wedge, a gusset, a chamfered corner or a broken-off piece, none of which start as a primitive.

It only cuts along the three main axes, so an angled cut is a rotate, a slice and a rotate back.

Order matters more than you expect

Most of these read the shape as it currently is. Bevel the edges before you bend and the chamfers bend with it; bevel afterwards and it follows the new silhouette. Neither is wrong, and they do not look the same.

If a change lands somewhere unexpected, the usual cause is that it is reading a shape that an earlier node already moved.