jarrod, there's an article that Eric has on his site: http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/provost/byf1.html It explains issues with transform/fill rate, and unequal UV distribution.
It's because your mesh is inside a group (or a child of another mesh) that has odd scale values. Freeze transforms of your parent objects and this problem should disappear.
Errrr... Better yet, for areaLight1... setAttr "areaLight1.lodVisibility" 0; Don't use the shape lodVisibility. ( Transform will override ) Parent the light into yer object. Grade A 101%
you ride a transformer? that is shiny. new bike pic. this time it finally looks red. still stock. will begin adding modifications once i finish breaking it in.
the 70s one was blaze, the 90s one was ketch. the story regarding the transformation has been altered for the movie. what i posted above is the movie take on blaze
this is the latest in a series of bad movie scripts. last one was for indiana jones 4, but the transformers script was equally good. http://www.the-editing-room.com/indianajones4.html
If I get weird behavior in Maya, I always delete history and freeze transformations. If it still fails, I export the mesh as an OBJ, and reimport it (though that's a rare occurrence).
Local transforms needs to be enabled in order to use the last editing point instead of the objects center. I also keep Rotate on All Axis on for a more predictable movement.
While in move, rotate or scale you can hold j and it will temporarily toggle discrete transform on, allowing you to do angle snapping or move/scale unit increments.