These three values establish the 3D location for the center of the ball.

These three values are used to establish the dimensions of the sphere. Set to 1m, 1m, 1m (by default), provides us with a 2-meter ball.

The sides are the latitudinal edges of the sphere running from top to bottom. By default the primitive ball uses 24 sides. By increasing this value you can increase the number of "cuts" in the ball. This is useful if you plan to deform the ball as these segments act as hinges during deformation operations. This also increases the smoothness of the sphere by adding extra facets. If you plan to apply subdivision surfaces to the mesh, you can use a lower number of segments as the subdivision smooths out the shape.

The segments are the longitudinal edges of the sphere running from right to left. By default the primitive ball uses 12 segments. By increasing this value you can increase the number of "cuts" in the ball. This is useful if you plan to deform the ball as these segments act as hinges during deformation operations. It also increases the smoothness of the sphere by adding extra facets. If you plan to apply subdivision surfaces to the mesh, you can use a lower number of segments as the subdivision smooths out the shape.

Options for various Sphere types.

• Globe - the default setting creates a ball, with the controls described above.

• Quadball - this option creates an SDS sphere made entirely of polygons containing only four vertices (quads). When this option is active the Sides and Segments settings are disabled and the Subdivision Level control activates. Increasing this value adds complexity to the quadball primitive surface.

• Tesselated - by default the ball primitive is composed of mostly-quad polygons with some triangles at the poles. Activating the Tesselated flag creates the sphere from all triangles. When this is active the Tesselation Level sets the resolution of the mesh created. Using a tesselated sphere with a high tesselation level creates a more perfect sphere than the default sides and segments, but with many more polygons. Tesselated spheres are not recommended if you plan to use subdivision surfaces.

For the Quadball and Tesselated sphere mode options, the Subdivision Level sets the number of subdivisions, which determines the number of polygons used to define the overall shape. Larger numbers produce more polygons that are rounder with a smoother surface.

You can use this option to determine the type of polygons created:

• Face - creates standard unsmoothed polygon faces.

• Subdivs - creates Subdivision Surface smoothed polygons.

• Catmull-Clark - creates Pixar Catmull-Clark smoothed polygons.

Defines the major axis direction, most useful for a Globe type sphere, as it controls the direction of the segments along the radius.

When this button is active a UV map is automatically generated for the geometry created with the tool. This is a very useful option if you plan to UV map the model you are creating from the primitive as it provides a baseline UV map that you can massage later in the modeling process. In many cases this can reduce the amount of work required to map the model.