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Tangent Space
Polygons nodes
NURBS Modeling
Smooth Mesh
The Smooth Mesh Preview feature
controls how Maya displays a polygon mesh in the scene. The mesh
can be displayed either un-smoothed, fully smoothed, or in both
modes simultaneously.
You can enable this option under the Smooth
Mesh section on the polyShape node for the mesh.
The Smooth Mesh Preview display
modes are controlled by first selecting the mesh and then pressing
the Hotkeys: 2 or 3. In addition, the level of smoothing/subdivision
that occurs on the Smooth Mesh Preview can be
controlled via the Hotkeys: Page Up, Page Down. Other attributes
for this feature are set on the polyShape node via the Attribute
Editor. Press the 1 key to turn off the Smooth Mesh Preview feature
so that the mesh displays in its default display mode.
The following describes the Smooth
Mesh Preview attributes available on the polyShape node.
NoteSmooth Mesh Preview affects
only the display of the polygon mesh in the scene view. If you render
the mesh while
Smooth Mesh Preview is turned on
the mesh will appear in its original un-smoothed state in the final
image.
If you want the mesh to appear smoothed in a
rendering you can convert the smooth preview to a smoothed polygon
mesh using
Modify > Convert > Smooth Mesh Preview to Polygons or
to a subdiv proxy using
Proxy > Subdiv Proxy.
- Smooth Mesh Preview
-
Turns the Smooth Mesh Preview feature on or off.
The default setting is off. If the feature is on you can turn off Smooth
Mesh Preview by selecting the polygonal object and then
pressing the 1 key.
Display
Determines the display mode for Smooth
Mesh Preview. Two display modes are possible:
- Cage + Smooth Mesh
-
Press the 2 key to display the selected polygonal mesh
in this mode. The original un-smoothed version of the mesh is displayed
in wireframe (cage) as well as a smoothed shaded preview version
of the mesh simultaneously. The Edit options lets you specify whether
you can select and edit components on either of the separate versions
of the mesh, or both, by setting it to Cage, Smooth
Mesh, or Both.
- Smooth Mesh
-
Press the 3 key to display the selected polygonal mesh
in this mode. Only the smoothed preview version of the mesh is displayed
in this mode. You select and edit components on the smoothed preview
when working in this mode.
NoteWhen editing components on the mesh in either
preview mode, the transform manipulator always appears in the location
of the component as it appears on the original version of the mesh.
Subdivision Levels
- Display Subdivisions
-
Controls whether the subdivided components in
the smoothed preview are displayed on the smoothed preview version
of the mesh. Subdivided components will be displayed when a check
mark appears.
- Preview Division Levels
-
Controls the number of times the original version
of the mesh is subdivided (Default hotkeys: Page Up, Page Down).
The slider range is between 0 and 4. The default setting is 2. A value
of 0 indicates no smoothing while a value of 4 is the highest smoothing
within the range of the slider. You can input values higher than
4 in the text field.
NoteWhenever a polygon mesh has an associated
subdiv proxy object and the Smooth Mesh Preview option
is turned on, the Page Up and Page Down hotkeys will only control
the smooth level on the subdiv proxy.
- Use Preview Level for Rendering / Render Division
Levels
-
See
Smooth Mesh Render of
the Rendering guide for more information
regarding these attributes.
Extra Controls
- Continuity
-
Controls the amount of smoothness on the smooth
mesh preview. The slider range is between 0 and 1. A value of 0
applies no smoothing.
- Smooth UVs
-
Applies the same smoothing operation to the UV
texture coordinates as occurs on the vertices. Smooth
UVs is on by default and provides better results for
UV texture coordinates.
- Propagate Edge Hardness
-
Copies the edge hardness values from any hardened
edges on the original mesh to the associated new edges on the Smooth
Mesh preview. The default setting is off.
Map Borders
Controls how UV borders are smoothed when the Smooth
UVs option is turned on.
- Do not smooth
-
Border UVs are not smoothed.
- Smooth Internal
-
Internal UVs are smoothed. This is the default setting.
- Smooth All
-
All UV borders are smoothed.
Preserve
Specifies what components will remain unaffected
by the Smooth Mesh Preview.
- Geometry Borders
-
This option preserves the properties of border edges
on the mesh.
- Hard Edge
-
Preserves the properties of any existing manually
hardened or softened edges.
Notes on Smooth Mesh Preview
- When
the Edit option for Cage
+ Smooth is set to Both you
may want to change the active and inactive display colors for the Smooth
Mesh Preview to more easily differentiate between the
cage and the smoothed versions of the mesh. Select
Window > Settings/Preferences > Color Settings and
then choose either the Active or Inactive tabs
to set the related active and inactive color settings found in the
Smooth Mesh Preview section of Colors preferences
window.
- If
you turn on Smooth Mesh Preview for one or more meshes that contain 15,000
polygons each or more you are prompted with the following message: "The selected mesh <object name> contains a large number of faces and may
take a while to smooth or run out of memory. Do you want to continue
with smooth mesh preview?". This message indicates that the
interactive performance may be affected if you proceed with using
the Smooth Mesh Preview on these
high polygon count objects. There are a few ways you can modify
the triggers for this warning.
If you want to set the default face limit to
another value, for example: 20,000 polygons, you can type the following
in the command line:
optionVar -intValue smpSizeOfMeshForWarning
20000;
Alternatively you can disable the warning altogether
by typing the following in the command line:
optionVar -intValue smpSizeWarningDisabledForAllPolys
1;
To re-enable the message, input the same command
with a value of 0.