A potentially dumb question about 3D modelling in general (Smooth mesh view?)

#1

Hey, I’ve been studying 3D animation and modelling for quite some time and I’ve come to a dumbfounding embarrassing issue.

In Maya, a model can be previewed with “smooth mesh” by pressing 3, and a lot of edge flows and character modelling forced me to work the “real” model (viewed by pressing 1) in an abstract way as to compliment the smooth mesh render.

How common is this practice?

I’ve only used it for personal products and animations in Maya just because the render comes out super smooth with minimal effort, but I haven’t really heard about this method being used outside of Maya, specifically for Blender and ZBrush.
ZBrush is kind of its own alien technology, and I would retopologize the models in Maya afterwards either way, but I’m very interested in switching to Blender in the near future and it looks like I have to change my approach completely when it comes to modelling.

Half of the reason why I’m asking is because I’m curious if you’re working on a freelance project and a fellow guy asks you for a 3D model, do you not apply the “create edge loops around the object edge” to “define” the smooth mesh edge technique? I know for games you definitely don’t since everything you export with Maya has nothing to do with the smooth mesh preview from inside the program.

#2

I would call this is the ‘smoothed’ or ‘faceted’ display mode of your geometry. Most 3d software have methods to show this. And can be overridden at render time as the ‘real’ geometry so to speak is what ever subdivision setting your final render is. Or I guess a game engine would also have controls for this too.

If your question is (and I am not sure what it is you are asking) should you make your display and 1 look as good as 3 then the answer is ‘no’-normally you don’t want that.
Level 1 is easier to actually lay down your polys. Then switch to level 3 to see if there will be enough to look good
with a reasonable approximation of what the render should have.
So if your level 3 looks as you’d expect it to the that should be fine.

Also useful for interpenetration issues too. Make sure two aligned pieces of geometry don’t overlap (particularly at level 3).

#3

Thanks a lot for replying and clarifying.

I’m also very curious in which situations are the two used. The 1 view modelling I’m assuming is primarily used for video games and interactive applications whereas the 3rd smooth view would be used mostly for renders, product design and animation where real-time rendering isn’t an issue. Am I right with this?

Edge-flow work in Maya to achieve a good smooth 3rd shader view is sometimes a pain even for the simplest of models. I wonder if it’s the same issue people run in when modelling in say Blender or similar software.

#4

Speaking from personal experience Maya has a few things which it doesn’t let you do in ‘display 3’ mode.
The big one -for me- is weight painting- for which I personally find quite ridiculous. But there it is.
Sigh - Softimage never cared about that…