Modeling: A Million to One - Blender Foundations: The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6 - page 77

Let's take a look at exactly
what the Spin tool does. As
we said before, it extrudes a
mesh profile around a central
point. That point happens to
be the 3D cursor. But how
does it know which way to
rotate? It is view dependent.
Spin basically draws a circle
on the screen around the 3D
cursor. Figure 4.18 shows

how this works.

The first thing this means is
that you need to create the
mesh profile on the correct
side of the 3D cursor. If you
are drawing the left profile of
the vase, it should be to the left
of the cursor. Put the profile
close to the cursor and the vase
will be very narrow. Create it far away, and the result will be wide.

Figure 4.17 A vase's profile, before and after using the Spin tool.

Web
You can see the same profile spun narrow, wide, and from the wrong side in the Web Bucket for
this chapter.

Let's go with what you have, though. Change to a top view (Numpad-7) and activate the Spin tool. You
only get a quarter of a vase. Take a look at Spin's Tweak Panel on the tool shelf, or by pressing F6.
Among the number of settings and options there are Steps and Degrees. The first setting to tweak is
Degrees. Change it from 90 to 360, which, if you know even the slightest thing about geometry, changes
things from a quarter to a full circle. The result is kind of blocky, though. That's because only nine “steps”
were used to spin the profile. Raising the number of steps gives you a correspondingly more rounded
result. You don't have to get it perfectly smooth, though, as you'll probably be using a Subdivision Surface
modifier on it later. You can try dropping steps to 4 or even 3. The result looks like a kind of paper
lantern, which suggests that you can use Spin not just for rounded objects but for general modeling of
objects with a consistent contour. Once again, it boils down to knowing where you are trying to get to,
and knowing which tools are at your disposal.

Now that you see how Spin works, and before we finish the model, it should be easy for you to go back
and add some thickness to the vase. A real vase does not have infinitely thin walls with a razor's edge on the