Maya smoothing question.

Gord.T

Gord.T

Still "Senior Member"
In C4D and max you can smooth a polygonal object interactively by assigning a modifier to it. Hypernurbs in C4D and Mesh Smooth or Turbo Smooth in max.

Does Maya have the same thing or is it approached differently?
 
There's several ways to smooth shade in Maya. The easiest way is to press 1 through 3 on to get to the different smoothing levels... that's assuming you're working with polygons. You can also choose your polygon(s) and go to Modify > Convert > Polygons to subdiv. The third method is to go to the Proxy menu on the Polygon section, though I don't really care for that way...

If you do the 1 through 3 method with a polygon, you can only render with Mental Ray. The software renderer doesn't support that.
 
Modify > Convert > Polygons to subdiv

Best way to do in IMHO. You can adjust the parameters of the subdiv in the attribute box.

...at least if my memory serves. It's only been a month or so, but I'm blanking.
 
Thanks. I tired the polygons to subdiv before but couldn't get it to work. I tried it again and I had to raise the Base Mesh Face count for it to work. But I don't get the levels of subd and can't change the number levels afterwards can I?

But I tried the Proxy-SubDiv Proxy method and I like that better at the moment.
That way I get a parent modifier in the Outliner.

A bit strange at the moment though.
 
You can change the levels afterwards. You still have to hit 1, 2, or 3 on your keyboard, actually. That also controls subdiv resolution on a subdiv'd object...

If you do Proxy > subdiv proxy, keep in mind that you'll have extra geometry that will define your object so make sure you keep that in mind. Keep the 2 seperate objects - the polygon mesh that defines the proxy and the subdiv object itself in the same group...
 
Thanks. I should probably join a maya forum. SimplyMaya looks alright as I will be asking all of the noob questions. Any suggestions on a forum though?

Also, do you know of any major issues when rendering with mental ray in maya? I'll need to render animations with it.
 
I'm trying out the fast skin shader which requires mental ray. The tutorial I downloaded uses a sky dome with a few lights so I'm guessing it's GI.
 
If it's a sky dome, it's probably just environmental lighting with HDRI...

And yes, some of the Mental Ray shaders are really really cool... like the car paint ones... You can actually give a car a pearl paint job... :)

So are you switching to Maya or just adding it to your arsenal?
 
I'm not switching to Maya. Adding it in slowly I suppose, mainly for the rendering quality, shaders and probably the character animtion when I get to that part of it.

I know C4D R10 so well now that I wouldn't stop using it. I can model pretty fast with it. Also C4D's mograph and body paint is something I wouldn't stop using. And C4D's scripting.

I've never been fussy with R10's render engine. R11 has a new renderer but otherwise R10 will do me for quite a while yet. It's a great program.
 
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