Terminology, Polygon/Face

kodde

Hey guys.

I was just curious if there is a difference between the polygon component called "Face" (Maya only?) and a "Polygon"? Or is this just two different words for the same thing?

Within Maya they always refer to the surface component of a polygon object as a "Face", well except in some menus where you actually find them using words just as "Poly Count", etc.

Thanks.

Farfarer

Yeah, they're the same thing, just different names.

The main point of confusion when related to games is the term "poly count" as when talking about real-time models, that really means "tri count".

SyncViewS

This is a tricky matter. I can bring the 3ds Max experience. In Max you got two geometry types for polygonal modeling: Editable Mesh and Editable Poly

Editable Mesh is the simplest and fastest type as it has a simpler database to keep connections between elements. They are:

• Vertexes are uniquely defined by a position in space.
  
• Every face is always defined by 3 vertexes.
  Every face has 3 edges connecting its vertexes enforcing the relation: face n has edges (n*3)-2, (n*3)-1, (n*3)

It implies between two vertexes sharing two faces, there are always two overlapped edges, one for each face.

Editable Poly is a more complex type as it doesn't have the restriction of three-sided faces, nor the overlapping edge issue.

• Vertexes are uniquely defined by a position in space, and their indexes are shared with the Editable Mesh.
  
• Every polygon can have any arbitrary number of edges/vertexes but its actual shape is given by underlying three-sided faces with hidden edges.

Bottom line: to be accurate while programming, I call Faces only three-sided faces from Editable Mesh or underlying geometry in Editable Poly, and call Polygons every other n-sided surface element in Editable Poly.

renderhjs

btw. is editable Poly not a b-Mesh type? , keeping loop data intact while modeling. There was a nice Blender tutorial recently
http://boards.polycount.net/showpost.php?p=1006146&postcount=185
with some background info on that since they are implementing that atm. in blender beeing able to work on poly (many)- gons.

SyncViewS

I'm not too into b-mesh, but I guess Editable Poly is so, if you're referring to keeping data as flags and so on preserved while changing model topology. Vertexes, edges, and poly indexes are changed every time an element is removed while grow in number when adding elements, to keep a compact array from zero to last element index number, but data associated to each of them like bit flags are always preserved. As an example, using flags is the only secure way to store a subObject selection (unlike the standard named selection, working on element indexes...)

Mark Dygert

As always make sure you only count 3 sided triangles... If you do that then you can call the rest of it whatever you want. Polygons/faces can be made up of many triangles with hidden edges and still be counted as 1 polygon/face. Most people will know what you mean if you say triangle, polygon, face, brush ect.

kodde

I'm not really asking because I've had issues with misconceptions or anything similar. This question is purely to still my curiosity. ^^

Mark Dygert

Ahh in that case. I think it normally means the connecting area between the edges/verts. So a polygon is the sum of all the parts verts, edges and faces?