Maya "smooth wireframe" vs "Scene AA sampling"

Alan_Partridge

Hey there - is there a more in depth explanation of these ? The manual is light on information,
Would I be right in saying the smooth wireframe is less taxing on the gpu, so could just leave on by default and the Scene AA sampling, is 
just an overall sampling ? 

Just I would like more info than the docs gives... thanks ?

Alex_J

AA sampling is just a post process effect for the viewport. I'm not sure if it effects rendering or not as I use Maya LT which doesn't do rendering. It cleans up jagged edges. I believe this is purely for cosmetics in the viewport.

Smooth wifeframe shows a preview of your meshes wireframe if it were subdivided (smoothed). Enabling smooth mesh preview will produce a warning if your model is over a certain polygon count. (I think it has to be like 200k or more, but I'm not sure. not someting you'd likely run into often I expect). The utility of the smooth preview is that you can see where to add supporting edge loops or creasing to get hard edges after subdividing.