Modeling Grae - Game Character Development with Maya - page 408

We can construct the wings out of several large, flat polygons; then the individual
strands can be added in the form of a semi-transparent texture.
The first option would produce a better-looking result but would require plenty of poly-
gons. In addition, we would need lots of joints in order to animate the wings; each strand
would need at least 10 joints to animate successfully. Another plus is that we would need
very little texture space.
What about the second option? Both wings could be created with under 60 polygons, and
animation would require only a few joints. The downside: We would need more texture
space for these wings. Let's go with this safer second option and see how the wings turn
out.
Although the wings are not conventional, we still want them to animate like normal wings.
That is, we want them to fan in and out as well as flap up and down. With this in mind, we
will try and create the basic geometry of the wing by placing edges where the joints occur
in a bat wing.
1. Start in a new scene. Create a polygonal plane by going to Create > Polygon Prim-
itives > Plane. Configure the plane so it has six Subdivisions Along Width and two
Subdivisions Along Height ( Figure 7.47a ).