Maya- Subdiv modeling, and is it useful?

YellowYeti

Hi! I was just wondering since im in the process of learning maya and keep seeing new features for it and i'm using digitaltutors for that, but i've seen some talk on there of subdiv surface modeling and when it was talked about i was confused because to me it seemed like it made it more complicated to deal with. So i was just wondering if Subdiv surface modeling has any benefits or cons? And is it used in the field at all or should i be putting more effort into learning more about it? Thanks!

Clark Coots

been using Maya for about 7 years and never used Subdiv Surfaces. You do want to use the smooth mesh preview "3" on keyboard which is also a Subdivided mesh... "SubD". When people talk about SubD modeling these days they 99.9% are not talking about Mayas SDS, I rather think its outdated and just there for legacy purposes.

YellowYeti

coots7 wrote: »

been using Maya for about 7 years and never used Subdiv Surfaces. You do want to use the smooth mesh preview "3" on keyboard which is also a Subdivided mesh... "SubD". When people talk about SubD modeling these days they 99.9% are not talking about Mayas SDS, I rather think its outdated and just there for legacy purposes.

Yea that's what i was thinking because it seemed that it served really no purpose and was easier just to click the "3", so then if i don't use subdiv is there an alternative to smoothing it out in a way that can be used in something like a game engine? Because if i remember correctly i've heard that the "3" preview is only for your perspective to see what it looks like and has no effect on an engine and what not. Thanks also for replying!

Bartalon

The 3 key equivalent to a Mesh > Smooth operation with 2 divisions. This will result in actually smoothing your mesh which can be transferred to game engines. Generally, throwing some smoothing operations on your model doesn't result in very optmized meshes for games though; except in certain situations like race tracks, terrian meshes, and other large/long flowing objects.

YellowYeti

Bartalon wrote: »

The 3 key equivalent to a Mesh > Smooth operation with 2 divisions. This will result in actually smoothing your mesh which can be transferred to game engines. Generally, throwing some smoothing operations on your model doesn't result in very optmized meshes for games though; except in certain situations like race tracks, terrian meshes, and other large/long flowing objects.

Oh really? I didn't know that, thanks for telling me! And if i may ask another question lol, why is it not optimal for game engines to do that? And would actually doing the Mesh>Smooth operation be better?

EarthQuake

Raw sub-divided meshes are bad for games because they use too many polygons, most of which are inefficiently placed. Using mesh > smooth doesn't alter this fact.