Polygonal Modeling
February 7, 2003
By Brian J. Immel
Edit Polygon Menu
Split Polygon Tool
1. Edit Polygon > Split Polygon Tool
2. Select a point on one edge, draw a line to another facing edge and hit enter to complete the function. You can also hit the y key (activate last tool used) to complete the function.
3. When creating a new edge, you must start and end on an edge. If you miss an edge and try to complete the function, you'll get the following error message: "Error: Last operation is cancelled : must end up on an edge."
Extrude Face
1. Select a face (right-click and select the face component)
2. Go to Edit Polygon > Extrude Face. The function will enable a ‘multi-tool’ which has the translate tool, scale and rotate all in one tool.
3. Pull the face out by using one of the translate arms on the multi-tool. If you don’t pull the face out and hit the function again, you’ll have another face sitting on top of another face.
Extrude Edge
Works the same as Extrude face except you select the edge and extrude from there.
Bevel
The Bevel function allows you to round edges easily and quickly.
- Select an edge(s) and go to Edit Polygons > Bevel option box.
- Choose how much Offset (how deep the bevel will be).
- Choose the Roundness (how far apart the new edges will be).
- Choose how many segments to create for the bevel edge.
Cut Faces Tool
By default, the Cut Faces Tool will add divisions according to what faces you have selected, where you start the cut line, what angle the cut line is on the surface and at what angle the view is to the object.
- Select the faces you wish to cut.
- Go to Edit Polygons > Cut Faces Tool.
- Start by selecting an edge of one of the faces you select and angle how you would like the faces cut according to the angle of your view to the poly object. As soon as you release the mouse button from this tool, Maya will cut the surface of the poly object.
Merge Vertices
After you combined another poly object you must either merge the vertices of the two objects or merge the edges. This will lower your poly count and make the poly object more manageable and easier to animate and texture map.
- First begin by moving the two combined object’s vertices so that they share a common location. This can be easily done by using the Translate Tool with Snap to Point option turned on. If may be easier to see where you’re pull the vertex when the X-ray option is turned on (View window > Shading > Shading Options > X-ray).
- Select both of the vertices that sit at the same location by drawing a marquee around them. Be careful not to select more vertices than the ones you’re trying to merge.
- Go to Edit Polygons > Merge Vertices. If nothing happens, go to the option box and change the Distance to anything but 0.0000 (like 0.01). This tells Maya how many vertices to merge within a certain distance but since we are only selecting two vertices, it knows to only merge those two. Just because two vertices have been merged, it doesn’t mean that the two faces that are now sitting on top of each other are now one. To remove the extra faces, you can either delete them by component type selection or merge the two objects by using the Merge Edge Tool.
- Test the newly merge vertices by select just one vertex (do not marquee-select them) and use the translate tool to pull it around. If all the faces that are tangent to the vertex moves with it, then the merging was successful.
Merge Edge Tool
Sometimes, merge vertices doesn’t work too well, especially if you are merging to completely separate objects that have faces that will be butting up against each other.
- Combine the objects normally and move the vertices as mentioned in merging vertices above.
- Select both the edges (being careful not to select any extra edges that you don’t want to become one edge).
Sculpt Polygons Tool
Acts pretty much like the Sculpt NURBS Tool.
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