I dont know if you can but I noticed the same thing. What you can do is make a shelf button for "all soft" or any increment of softness you want and just click it when you make a new edge.
i was thinking about the same thing last night. after much surfing on CG talk, highend3D and google, i've found...there is no readily available way to do so. not even a script hack.
You can change the wireframe colors in the settings.
You can change the edge display settings in the Custom Polygon Display Options. You can only set it to change how soft/hard edges are displayed. Not their colors.
Doesn't maya do the colored mesh weighting thing when you're skinning like Max does? I always thought thats where discreet stole the idea from. If it is the case, perhaps you could rip open the Mel and see how it works.
There, a maya related post that didn't contain any sort of anti-maya sentiment. I'm proud of myself.
Colored mesh weighting is only on rigid skinning. Smooth uses the horrible paint weights tool and that is only shades of grey.
Daz I don't think you can use mult wires on the same mesh. Best way to do it is separate parts of the model that you want to be one color and so on. Sure you've already thought of that though. It's a huge pain to do that. I completely know what you mean about the edges. I'll talk to a scripter I know and will see if he can make the extrude edge tool pull out smooth instead of hard. I just end up doing the normals at the end since they usually mess up in Maya anyway you work.
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How about colouring edges different colours? Dont think that's possible either is it?
You can change the edge display settings in the Custom Polygon Display Options. You can only set it to change how soft/hard edges are displayed. Not their colors.
There, a maya related post that didn't contain any sort of anti-maya sentiment. I'm proud of myself.
Daz I don't think you can use mult wires on the same mesh. Best way to do it is separate parts of the model that you want to be one color and so on. Sure you've already thought of that though. It's a huge pain to do that. I completely know what you mean about the edges. I'll talk to a scripter I know and will see if he can make the extrude edge tool pull out smooth instead of hard. I just end up doing the normals at the end since they usually mess up in Maya anyway you work.
i think the weight colors might be native to maya's code, so no amount of MEL digging will reveal anything. on the other hand for split poly it might.
Yeah im really looking for fast ways to visually distinguish my primary edge loops from the rest of my geometry.