To smooth polygon meshes
at render time, use the following workflow. This is a very efficient
method of smoothing polygon meshes as it reduces the amount of data
calculations during interactive manipulation.
Major advantages for
this feature include the following:
- During translation, mental ray for Maya
only translates the mesh hull, and the actual smoothing occurs at
render time.
- This workflow delays smoothing until
required because mental ray only tessellates and smoothes the mesh
when a ray, for example, a camera ray, reflection ray, or shadow
ray, hits the object.
The drawback of this
feature, however, is that all Maya creasing will render differently
with this technique, since the creasing appears different in the scene
view as compared to its mental ray render.
- Open the Approximation Editor (
Window > Rendering Editors > mental ray > Approximation Editor).
- Click the Create button
beside the Subdivision approx. (Poly, Subdiv) attribute
to create and assign a subdivision approximation to your polygon.
- Render the scene in mental ray.
NoteYou can also smooth
polygon meshes by selecting
Mesh > Smooth. This
method creates denser geometry in the scene view and can increase
the number of data calculations for interactive manipulation.