Cylinder

The Cylinder is a round body closed by two caps. The top and the bottom have separate radii, so with different values it becomes a truncated cone, which is the shape of a vase or of a trunk that gets thinner.

Properties

• Top Radius and Bottom Radius: Radii of the two ends, in meters. Equal, they give a straight cylinder.
• Height: Distance between the two caps, on the Y axis. The object is born centered on the origin.
• Radial Seg.: Number of sides of the body. It decides whether the piece reads as round or as a prism.
• Corner Radius: Rounds the edges of the two caps. At zero, the edges are sharp. With one of the radii at zero, the tip is rounded too. The value is limited to what the shape can hold.
• Corner Seg.: Number of divisions of the corner curve. With one segment the corner becomes a straight chamfer. It only has an effect with the radius above zero.

Topology

The cylinder comes out in triangles, even when the project prefers quads. The caps are fans converging on a central vertex, and mixing a fan with a body of quads would leave the mesh inconsistent at the junction.

For a hollow pipe, use the tube, which is born with a wall. For a tip instead of a small cap, use the cone.