Design Nomenclature / Digital Model Making
Polygonal Modeling
Also called box modeling, poly modeling, mesh modeling
This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.
Building form from an explicit mesh of vertices, edges, and faces, moved and cut by hand. The mesh is the final surface, so its resolution is decided up front — a cylinder is faceted at whatever segment count you gave it. Fast, direct, and indifferent to mathematical exactness.
In practice
“Box modeling” names the classic entry: start from a cube, extrude and loop-cut toward the silhouette. Most artists mean box modeling plus subdivision.
Not to be confused with
- NURBS ModelingBuilding form as a patchwork of mathematically exact rational spline surfaces, each a grid of control points with a degree and a knot vector. Resolution is evaluated on demand, so the surface is exact at any zoom. The work is patch layout, and holding continuity where patches meet.
- Solid ModelingRepresenting a part as a closed watertight volume: trimmed faces stitched along shared edges, with an inside and an outside the kernel can guarantee. Volume, mass, and interference become computable. Every operation is validated against that closure, which is why a CAD boolean either succeeds cleanly or refuses.
- SculptingPushing a very dense surface with brushes rather than editing vertices one at a time — the mesh is a medium, not a structure. Detail is bounded by local density, so the tool must either add topology under the brush or start from a mesh already dense enough to hold what you intend.