by anim8r » Sun Jan 18, 2004 6:22 pm
I wouldn't discount slice so quickly...just make sure you go through and snap extra verts to another point and weld down...slice can quickly allow you to put spans exactly where you need them...I am also a big fan of shape merge which will allow you to draw a spline and then cut it onto your polygonal model...learning to use shape merge is a bit of a trick but once you do you will love it.
All good lo polygon modeling requires vert welding, opening up tools like slice, boolean and shape merge to your toolkit, as well as allowing you to reduce your total polygon count where you need to. Knowing all aspects of the sub-object (vert, edge, poly, element) is essential in good modeling technique.
Also, I agree that the P-38 tutorial is not the best in terms of learning good modeling skills. Essentially the p-38 is a bunch of intersecting objects, not how I would build it as one uniform object.