Does lonely edges exist in C4D?

#1

Hi guys.
I am trying to learn C4d and it’s going pretty well, but there are some concepts I can’t understand.
For example - is it possible to delete polygons and leave the edges?
Is it possible to extrude only edges without creating polygons?
Or is it possible to convert spline to mesh without filling it?
I can extrude individual vertices but I don’t know how to connect them.
Please, help!

#2

In C4D, an object contains (1) points, made from three coordinates (not containing rotational or scale values per point), and (2) polygons, made from three or four points, and (3) Ngons, made from several polygons.

Edges do not exist in the data model. Edges can only be expressed indirectly through polygons and points (which is what the Edge Mode in C4D does), or through a spline which is a different data type however.

Thus, no, you cannot delete a polygon and leave the edges (but you can leave the points).
And no, you cannot extrude an edge to get only a lone edge; if you extrude an edge you will always get a polygon.
And no, you cannot convert a spline to an edge sequence with no polygons.

You can change an edge sequence into a spline though.

I’m not sure what you mean by “extrude individual vertices”. If I do that, C4D subdivides the bordering polygons and creates a polygon pyramid to the extruded point, so that point is actually connected by polys.

#3

Thank you kind sir for your accurate explanation.
By extruding vertices, I meant duplicating them by crtl+drag. Sorry for the misused nomenclature.
I guess I will just have to get used to it then :slight_smile:

I wanted to create a “swoosh” behind the car wiper.
I created a spline, made it a child of the wiper, and used a tracer object to leave a trail.
It resulted in a bunch of splines which I then converted into a single spline object.

Then I wanted to create a surface out of it with no luck. So I thought I would just convert it to mesh and bridge every edge. But I couldn’t do that either.

So in the end I extruded the spline, bridged the edges I wanted to keep, and deleted the extruded edges.
It seems like a foolish, and inefficient way to do it but I was not able to come up with any other solution :slight_smile:

Here is the result:

swoosh
swoosh.png1777x1357 538 KB

Could you advise me to do it in a more elegant manner?

#4

Put the resulting splines into a loft. This will create the desired polygon mesh.