Vertex-Faces: Yet another stupid (sorta) question

[wgreenlee1]

I'm not sure to the answer to your question but....
I did a quick search and run across this (http://www.gangslab.com/ModelingPoly/PolyIntro.html) excellent website explaining poly modeling in Maya....

Great for newbies.:thumbsup:

[Electrofirma]

I believe vertex faces are specifically for working with normals at a low level.

Often when you are working at a lower poly resolution, in twisted areas, such as the corners of eyes or underneath the nose, it is difficult to get your hard/soft edges to fit together as smoothly as you would like. Vertex faces gives finer control of the normals at complex polygon intersections.

Vertex faces also serve the purpose of selecting individual vertices when several are close together, such as after using Edit Polygon->Split Vertex. Simply select the vertices using vertex face, then do an Edit Polygons->Selection->Convert Selection to Vertices (Ctrl+F9)

[mhovland]

Vertex faces are used primarily in the game industry.

What vertex faces gives you is the ability to adjust vertex normals independently of one another. We use this mainly for making a flat surface have slightly different normals so realtime reflections work correctly. Without adjusting the vertex normals we would have to make a piece of geometry that wasn't flat, which hould increse poly count in the scene.

It also allows you to have two adjacent face have seperate vertex colors, giving you a nice hard edge. Without vertex faces, we would have to detach the geometry at the points we wanted a hard edge, thus increasing the vertex count in the scene.

Hope that clears some of it up for you :)

[eric3dee]

wow-- pure genius. Thanks guys:applause:

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.