Chapter 8. Polygons


Poly (short for polygon, or polygonal) modeling can be fun and quick, giving you a lot of freedom and control over any section of your model at any time. Polygonal modeling is older than NURBS modeling, but Alias is constantly improving the poly tools to make this approach one of the more powerful modeling choices in Maya 7.0.

Polygonal objects are made up of many small planar surfaces, referred to as faces or polys. These faces are commonly three or four sided, but they sometimes have more sides. A complete poly object consists of a handful to hundreds of thousands of these surfaces. In general, the more faces a model contains, the smoother the surface appears.

Games make extensive use of polygons because the complexity of a game must be limited if it is to offer fast interaction with real-time rendering. If your character has a low poly countthat is, a low number of facesit will render and interact quickly. A character in a game is usually limited to a certain number of polygons so that the game can run in real time (Figure 8.1).

Figure 8.1. This polygon model was designed to have the fewest faces possible. The textures make up for the lack of detail. (Modeled and textured by Toby Marvin.)


You can, however, use polygons to make smooth, highly detailed, even organic surfaces ( Figure 8.2 ). Some surfaces are easier to build in polygons than in NURBS surfaces. For example, you can create a character's body from a single seamless polygon surfacesomething you can't achieve without using many NURBS surfaces.

Figure 8.2. You can use polygons to make complicated, organic, or smooth shapes, such as this hand.





Maya 7 for Windows and Macintosh(c) Visual Quickstart Guide
Maya 7 for Windows & Macintosh
ISBN: 0321348990
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 185

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