Here is my TV head guy…this was an exciting part of the course for me and also helped me understand subdivision modeling a lot better. I wanted to animate the rigged character in a fully modeled background as a practice exercise but I accidentally applied all of my subdivision modifiers halfway through and bogged down Blender tremendously. I wanted to share the attempt anyway though, and my shameless copying of Grant’s low-poly tree tutorial.
Yes, it’s a dangerous tool 
But, it is also undo-able!
And never go from 1 to 5 in one go. Mostly a factor of 2 is useful.
Great nature scene.
Thank you for the reply!
I am wondering, how is it possible to undo an applied modifier like subdivision? The ability to quickly undo was lost to me as I worked further in the scene with everything subdivided and smoothed. Basically I started out with just a few smoothed trees and as I added more I came to regret it. Is there another way?
For subdivision specifically, there is a special “Unsubdivide” function.
But keep in mind that it only works well if you didn’t make changes to the geometry besides maybe pulling it about, so no new loop cuts or extrusions etc.
If you don’t care much about topology or made changes to the mesh you can use Decimate instead, this will give you a bit more control over how much you want to simplify your mesh. It should probably be fine for trees, rocks and alike but it’s not a great idea to use it for characters etc. unless you really have to.
Most modifiers cannot be undone after they’re applied though so be careful with what you apply. The whole point of using modifiers is that you’re working non-destructively and can always back out of them. When you apply a modifier you make the changes permanent in most cases and if you don’t undo immediately or run out of undo steps your only option will be manual cleanup by selecting verts/edges and dissolving them.
Good animation.
No saves pre applying the modifier?
Thank you for the info! I am only familiar with Decimate but didn’t think to do it. I will keep this knowledge with me for future projects, I was just kind of eager to move the course along and didn’t want to spend additional time trying to redo all the trees and rocks and stuff. Next time!
Thanks!
Should I have made an alternate save or maybe accessed a previous auto-save? Blender seemed to work somewhat okay until the scene was basically fully built and I saved over everything beforehand. I did keep a spares folder handy but felt it was better to just complete the lecture instead of obsessing over correcting the scene. I will hold onto the spares and make use of them at some point, subdividing correctly. Now I know!
I tend to make plenty of saves, Especially before doing something like applying a modifier in case I want to go back, or anything ‘destructive’ hard to go back on. It is easy if you number the end of the save name as Blender has that little + you can click and it just increases the number by 1.
Sometimes I do it a different way. Just make a duplicate in the file and put it in a ‘spares’ collection.
