[Maya] Practicle and feasible alternative workflow to Max Smoothing groups

Orphydian

Smoothing groups are awesome for high poly modeling prototyping. You just select the faces, give diff smoothing groups, apply a meshsmooth set to smoothing groups and voila you have a blockout that you can edit in realtime that will hold well once smoothed again. I cant honestly think of a better and faster way than doing this.

Smoothing groups are very usefull for baking as well. Try baking some hard poly sculpts onto the retopologized low poly version without working your smoothing groups before : you'll never get clean normal maps.

Max  doesnt only have them but it has an awesome implementation of them.You can asign diifferent numbers to diff smoothing groups, you have selections based on smoothing groups etc. They are passed to several modifiers  that can make use of them like the swiss knife  Chamfer  modifier (recently updated) you can also filter you selection by Smoothed and unsmoothed edges etc and chamfer your entire model  with respect to them  along with other controls.

Is there any workflow similar to this in Maya and anyone using it, I mean a way of quickly getting the shape and details that you like with a pretty increased geometry first without bothering too much initially about supporting edges and topology. I know about the Soften and harden edge thing and creasing but I feel that it isnt fast enough and  that defeats the purpose of getting into that workflow anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZsTYOzfH0s&t=20s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X1-kF89kwU&t=40s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzRgV2dHKmo

throttlekitty

I have three things on a custom marking menu that I use often:  Set Soft, Set Hard, Set Angle (at 32 degrees). Been meaning to write a fourth for face selections for a long time, but never found it that important to do. (it would make interior edges soft and the border hard).

It's not as immediate as it might be in max, but works well enough. I typically start with the set angle, then go about the model with the manual hard/soft as needed.

icegodofhungary

There are SGs in maya like there are in Max. It just doesn't give you that level of control. There's still smoothing angles for edges/verts that you can set using the Mesh Display menu. Max is definitely deeper as a modeling tool than Maya. If I were trying to replicate that workflow in maya, I would do as throttlekitty said, set up a custom tool bar with the Menu Display stuff in it. There's also a Crease tool. I would change my Smooth tool settings to respect creases. I'd probably just use bevel/chamfer with to add in edge creases rather than using the Crease tool because I feel it gives a bit more control that way.

Orphydian

where is that option for the Smooth tool to respect creases. I cannot find it in Smooth options window.  Should I use  Maya catmull Clark or Open subdiv catmul clark ? I should do the same things  in regards to the Smooth Mesh preview

icegodofhungary

I think it's the "Preserve Hard Edges" checkbox under the Maya-Catmull-Clark. It should apply to smooth mesh preview as well.

Orphydian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzRgV2dHKmo

On this video around 27:30  Arrimus uses the so called Double smooth technique  (two turbosmooth modifiers, one  set to respect the smoothing groups and the other not) so you quickly and accurate give a bit of rounding to your edges which otherwise  will look too sharp with the smoothing groups. Its a quick method to get a model for a presentation ofc at at  cost of high polycount.

reading this old topic it seems someone found out how to work around and do this in Maya as well using the Subdivide proxy. https://polycount.com/discussion/117488/double-smooth

File menu> Proxy Subdiv Proxy> Select smoothed mesh> channel box set keep hard edges on> hit 3 on keyboard to smooth again> now move points on the subdiv proxy cage and harden/soften edges as needed.

Can someone replicate this  and provide a short gif or vid pls. I dont think Im doing the right steps. Is this the same thing as in max to begin with  ?