Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Subdivs, metanurbs, and curved shapes
Subdivs (called
metanurbs
in Lightwave) are a simple way of editing shapes.
If you've noticed, all shapes in 3D are essentially made of polygons. Polygons are
made of straight lines to create shapes in two dimensions, and these shapes are put
together into facets to create a 3D object.
subdivs
divide up these polygons into sub
polygons to allow you to work with very complex shapes while not getting confused
seeing every polygon and point in a complex object. Confused yet? You won't be by
the end of this section.
The Polygon proxy mode
Starting off, let's create a subdiv cube in Maya (the other software has this
feature, but for this chapter, let's stick to Maya). Use the top menus and navigate
to
Create
|
Subdiv Primitives
|
Cube
. You should get something that looks like
the top-left image of the following screenshot. Great, we've got a cube, but now
we need to learn how to edit it. The easiest way is to use polygon tools in Maya
on this subdiv. You can do this by entering into the Polygon proxy mode (upper-
right image of the following screenshot). This will draw a polygon cage around
our subdiv and give us the ability to control many polygons by using only one
subdiv (polygon proxy) at a time.
The polygon proxy mode
