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.