Maya questions: fillets, merge vertices

Big Rocket

Hello everyone,

I'm doing a somewhat high polycount model to get comfortable with Maya's workflow, shown here. I have a couple of questions.<ul type="square">[*]Is there a way to put a radius on an edge in Polygon mode? In essence, I am trying to do in Polygon mode what the fillet command does in Nurbs mode. I thought I saw a MEL script that does that, but can't find it again.
[*]In 3DS Max, when you use the merge vertices command, you select a group of vertices, and snap them to the location of a target vertex. In Maya, you select a group of vertices, and they snap to the center of gravity of the group. Is there a way to do it the 3DS Max way?[/list]

Edit: When I was talking about the MEL script, I might have been confused by this. Oops.

Thanks,
BR

Daz

Didn't you read any of the responses in the last thread you had? Working in the resolution as is, is not a good high polygon workflow.
You could build that in a about 1 minute as a subdivision model.

1) Make two spheres that are not so high res that there are too many verts to handle ( 16 sides or so )
2) Fashion one into the ear shape
3) boolean together
4) bevel the edge loop that joins them
5) polygon>smooth

Big Rocket

Hi Daz,

Actually, I'm trying to build the exact same thing using 3 different techniques, so I can learn more that way. I already finished the head in Nurbs, now I'm building it in high-poly mode, then I'll do a low-poly + Sub-D.

But, thanks for reminding me about Step 4. I'm still very new to Sub-D's, and that's the one step I tend to forget most often.

BTW, if anyone's curious, I posted my Nurbs version here, first picture.

- BR

Daz

Heh cool.
I just find that whole 'working in as is' resolution really tricky. Just too many verts too worry about. It can work for more mechanical and geometrically simple stuff, since you can still select stuff with ease, but as soon as you get into more organic shapes, SubD is the way.

Steve Schulze

As for Target Welding, there was a nice script posted a while back. Might have been one of Daz's I think. It makes Maya so much nicer to work with. Lord knows why it doesn't come as a standard tool.

Daz

Not one of mine, but there is one here:

http://www.chemicaldust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9

Big Rocket

Thanks, guys, for the Target Weld MEL script.

FYI, I did the same model in all 3 methods, and yes, SubD was superior overall.