The purpose
Blender offers two types of spheres:
the ICO sphere and the UV Sphere. This section will compare the two.
Environment
Blender：3.4.1.
Comparison
Summary
ICO sphere
It is a sphere constructed solely of identical equilateral triangles. It becomes a regular N-hedron (initially a regular icosahedron).
UV sphere
A sphere composed of quadrilaterals and triangles.
Only the faces connecting the top and bottom points are triangles; the rest are quadrilaterals, which are not necessarily congruent.
appearance
Creating an icosphere with a subdivision level of 3 results in the following.
Creating a UV sphere with segment “32” and ring “16” results in the following.
Most people tend to imagine this when they think of a 3D sphere.
Next, let’s look at the ICO sphere from the side and from directly above. (Edges have been selected for clarity.)
Next, let’s observe the UV sphere from the side and from directly above.
As shown above, the icosahedron appears similar regardless of viewing angle. (It should also be noted that the images are not identical.)
EDIT
The following image shows the result of moving the topmost point and the leftmost point of the ICO sphere.
Although there’s a difference in angle, we can see that the results are similar for both the top and the left.
The same operation is then performed using a UV sphere.
While the left side is deformed into a roughly quadrilateral pyramidal shape, the top is deformed into a cone-like shape, clearly showing a significant difference in the editing results between the left and top sides.
Texture
I’ve read that UV spheres are preferable for applying textures to spheres.
However, it seems ICO spheres also work, and the difference isn’t that significant.
Mesh
When creating an ICO sphere, you can set a subdivision value.
A subdivision value of “2” creates an icosahedron.
When the subdivision value increases by one, the number of faces generated quadruples.
In other words, a subdivision of “3” results in an octahedron with 80 faces and a subdivision of “4” results in an octahedron with 320 faces, indicating that the settings are quite sensitive.
UV spheres allow for the adjustment of segments (the number of divisions between the top and bottom vertices) and rings (the number of divisions around the circumference).
It can be said that UV spheres allow for finer mesh settings.
まとめ
| ICO sphere | UV sphere | |
| appearance | The viewing angle has little impact | The viewing angle has big impact |
| Edit | The results vary little between editing locations. | The results vary big between editing locations. |
| Texture | weak? | strong？ |
| Creating | NOT detail | Detail |
Reference
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