Flipping triangle edges in Maya

skrubbles

I'm making the transition from Max to Maya and there are still a few things I'm trying to figure out. One of the main things right now is how I go about flipping triangle edges.

The problem I'm having is that I want to flip the invisible edge of a triangle in a quad polygon. There is a command to flip triangle edges that works perfectly fine, but only on visible edges. And there's a command view visible edges as dashed lines, but I can't select them to flip. Is there perhaps a command in maya that I'm not aware that allows you to do this. It seems like something Maya should have, Max has it and I don't know how you game modelers can live without it.

Anyway, I thought I could do a work around (that takes a long time). That being to connect the verts to make the edge I want, but then the invisible edges from surrounding polys flip around to fuck up my tri flow again... and if I manage to connect two verts and create my edge, if I delete it then it flips back to the way it was. GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

Only other solution I can come up with is to triangulate the whole model so I can use the "flip triangle edge" command, but that seems tedious... how do you guys keep your tri flow in your models????

Hope this makes sense and doesn't sound like ramblings... I'm a bit tired.

Anyway, I hope someone can help me out.

Thanks

Asthane

I don't have Maya on this computer and don't use it for modeling anyway, but I believe you answered your own question:

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if I manage to connect two verts and create my edge, if I delete it then it flips back to the way it was. GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

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Simply put, in many programs, the 'optimal' triangulation of quads is determined by the program itself-- and will change as you move the vertices. Again, I can't confirm this is how it is with Maya, but I'm pretty sure it is-- max is unique in the fact that it makes you work in tris even when you're doing quads. I don't think you'll find a workaround, unless it's a script designed to let you use edgeloop tools on a triangulated model... which is no doubt possible, but equally unlikely.

Just triangulate when you're done and save yourself the trouble

Jeff Parrott

I'm sure someone could Mel script a tool that would flip the triangle edge on quadrangulated polys as well as tris. But, yeah by default there is no way to do this. I would check on highend or the Maya cgtalk forum. Malcolm, Whargoul, or Daz might have something for what you're trying to do.

SouL

You're only able to edit triangles when they are visible.
The option to display "hidden" edges as a dotted line is nothing more than a visual aid.
Maya will automatically sort out hidden edges inside quads to create a convex shape if the quad is not perfectly flat.
Deleting an edge means you want Maya to take care of the triangulation of the quad.

Tri flow? Irrelevant. I don't know of anyone who pays any serious attention to it.

malcolm

Soul is right, the whole dotted lines junk in 3dstudio is a waste of your time. I used to spend hours flipping that junk around in max. Now that you're in Maya forget about it and get down to the modeling.

skrubbles

Well I model using the edge extrusion method, so my tris tend to go all over the place... And because of this the shading of my model is a bit funky. I guess if I wanna clean it I'll just triangulate the damn thing and flip 'em that way. Seems to be my only choice. And I think I'll follow what you said Jeffro and post in the Maya forum on cgtalk and see if anyone has come up with a mel script for this.

Thanks guys

poopinmymouth

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Tri flow? Irrelevant. I don't know of anyone who pays any serious attention to it.

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Has it been that long since you worked on the PS2? I know I spend a little bit of time flipping my triangular edges on sub 2500 tri models for maximum shape and deformation, and I can definately tell a difference in game. Just because Maya doesn't give you a good way to do something, doesn't make it irrelevant. Though I'm sure it's easier to think of it that way when you have no real way to approach it.

I'd be interested to know how to solve this too, should I ever need to go back to maya, so please post if you find out Skrubbles.

Eric Chadwick

Max does basically the same thing, FWIW, when you're modeling in Editable Poly.

I can flip the hidden edges to my heart's content, but if I move verts around, they may get flipped back by Max.

Justin Meisse

well, if I absolutely need a triangle to facing a certain way I just use the split polygon tool.

Weiser_Cain

FWIW?

Snowfly

FWIW - For what it's worth.

To the original poster:

Sounds more like a workflow issue than a Maya one. If you need an edge lined up a certain way, go ahead and turn it into a visible edge. But like others here, I really suggest focusing on modeling the shape first, and save the edge turning for later. During skin weighting even, so you can see how the edge layout behaves in a deformation at the same time..

I don't see what's so tedious about that. What's tedious is fussing with your edges as you go along.

You can select multiple edges and flip them all in one go, too. Unlike in max epoly where you can work only one edge at a time (as far as I recall at least...)