Smooth Groups in Maya

Cody

Hey guys, taking a Maya class, and I'm definitely a max user. Made a low poly mountain dew bottle, just to learn the program and how uv mapping works in maya. Got all that working, but when i render I see those nasty geometry lines. Any one know the equivalent of smooth groups in maya?

ChaosEidolon

It's called "soften edges" under the normals menu and its pretty gay if you're used to using smoothing groups. Yet another reason why I hate maya.

rooster

sure, my workflow is to select the whole shabang and hit Normals> Soften Edge, and then start selecting edges you want sharp, and hitting Normals>Harden Edge. It's much more straight forward than smoothing groups imo, you just hit an edge and say if you want it hard or soft.
edit: beaten to it, but I'm confused why you would prefer the over-complicated way max does it

Cody

Kick A guys. Thanks for the fast reply.

MoP

Yeah I much prefer Maya's Soft/Hard edges to Max's Smoothing Groups... Smooth Groups just seem to overcomplicate things, and mean you have to keep track of which ones are assigned to which polys... so silly.

You can get a MaxScript which basically does the same as Maya (by obfuscating the whole smooth groups thing so you don't have to worry about it), you can find it here: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/hard-soft-edge

Don't leave your quad menu without it!

Cody

Sweeeeeet, MoP! Thanks man.

SouL

[ QUOTE ]
sure, my workflow is to select the whole shabang and hit Normals> Soften Edge, and then start selecting edges you want sharp, and hitting Normals>Harden Edge. It's much more straight forward than smoothing groups imo, you just hit an edge and say if you want it hard or soft.
edit: beaten to it, but I'm confused why you would prefer the over-complicated way max does it

[/ QUOTE ]

Hahaha yeah. I was going to say... Smooth Groups are far more complicated that hard/soft edges.

"It's called "soften edges" under the normals menu and its pretty gay if you're used to using smoothing groups. Yet another reason why I hate maya. "

LOLERCOPTER.

Funky Bunnies

Awesome. This looks like a fantastical script, but it appears his site is down

Daz

[ QUOTE ]
It's called "soften edges" under the normals menu and its pretty gay if you're used to using smoothing groups.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maya is a pain in the arse, but logically think over what you just said.

Soften/Harden edges=define surface by specifying the shading property of *1* component: an edge

Smooth groups=define surface by specifying the shading properties of *2* components: both faces on *either side* of that edge.

Do the math, it takes exactly twice as long the Max way. If that's how you like to work, it makes perfect sense :-)

ElysiumGX

Smoothing Groups are one of those functions Max has been hanging on to since the 80's. Reason may be, the .3DS format does not contain proper vertex normal information. Instead it adds a bit of smoothing group data so that other apps can try to import them. Makes it annoying as an exchange format. Just as reliable as exporting/importing an OBJ from Max. Maya stopped using smoothing groups many versions ago. It's more complicated, a list of numbers instead of a simple toggle, and not supported by any other app, except maybe Lightwave. So learn what makes sense.