Should I create my base meshes in real world units or is there a reason not to do this in Blender?
For example in The Art Of Sculpting tutorial we are given a base mesh for a bust and it's about 2 meters in height:
If I were to always build my mesh in real world units to sculpt or model are there issues I need to be aware of?
Hi kkeenan18,
there is absolutely no problem to always use real world measurements.
It's even preferable...
In the case of a single bust it doesn't matter too much, but as soon as you would want to place it on a pedestal in a room or so, you would make your life a lot easier to use real world scale.
not only does it make models easier to mix and match but it keeps the brightness of lights and such things that have default "real world" settings to work more correctly without lots of adjustments...
I thought simulations were exactly where real-world units were most required.
williamatics There are some engineering flow/stress simulations that don't necessarily need to take size into account, but proportions will mater quite a bit. They take the form of converting things to dimensionless values that you can scale to small objects so that you can test a principle on something like a Freight Plane in a small wind tunnel that only fits something 2 feet tall. There are a lot of practical simulation scenarios where size probably does matter too though.
All in all I would agree that real world units help you to keep track of proportions, especially when making objects that interact with people, like in @jlampel 's course on the mesh modeling bootcamp. He talks about this during the modeling the pistol. The handle and trigger are where the hand would interact so they should be able to be size-proportionate for a hand to be able to grab them. Real world units helps with this.
williamatics Ideally you're exactly right. Unfortunately though, Blender's sims become unusable and unstable at really large or really small scales.