3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [173]
5. Click the QuickSlice button, which is also in the Edit Geometry rollout, and click in the Top viewport at the point where you want to slice the car. Then drag to align the slicing plane, and click again to make the slice. Click on the QuickSlice button again to exit QuickSlice mode.
6. Select the Polygon subobject mode, and drag over all the polygons below the slice line in the Top viewport. Then click the Detach button in the Edit Geometry rollout. In the Detach dialog box, enter the name Car Front and click OK.
7. Disable Polygon subobject mode, and use the Select and Move tool to separate the car front from the rest of the car.
Figure 13.8 shows the separated car front.
FIGURE 13.8
Using the Attach, QuickSlice, and Detach features, you can slice and separate mode parts.
MSmooth
Both the MSmooth and Tessellate buttons include new caddy interfaces, as shown in Figure 13.9. The MSmooth setting for Smoothness rounds all the sharp edges of an object. Tessellation can be done using Edges or Faces, and the Tension setting controls how tight the adjacent faces are.
FIGURE 13.9
The Caddy interfaces for the MSmooth and Tessellate buttons let you interactively set the Smoothness and Tension values.
The MSmooth button can be used to smooth the selected subobjects in the same way as the MeshSmooth modifier. This button can be used several times. The Smoothness value determines which vertices are used to smooth the object. The higher the value, the more vertices are included and the smoother the result. You can also select that the smoothing is separated by Smoothing Groups or by Materials.
Figure 13.10 shows a simple diamond-shaped hedra that has been MeshSmoothed using the MSmooth button and then tessellated three consecutive times.
FIGURE 13.10
Using MSmooth reduces the sharp edges, and tessellating adds more editable faces.
Tessellate
Tessellation is used to increase the density of the faces or edges. When modeling, you may want more details in a select area. This is where the tessellation command comes in. Tessellation can be applied to individual selected subobjects or to the entire object.
You can use the Tessellate button to increase the resolution of a mesh by splitting a face or polygon into several faces or polygons. You have two options to do this: Edge and Face.
The Edge method splits each edge at its midpoint. For example, a triangular face would be split into three smaller triangles. The Tension spinner to the right of the Tessellate button specifies a value that is used to make the tessellated face concave or convex.
The Face option creates a vertex in the center of the face and also creates three new edges, which extend from the center vertex to each original vertex. For a square polygon, this option would create six new triangular faces. (Remember, a square polygon is actually composed of two triangular faces.)
Figure 13.11 shows the faces of a cube that has been tessellated once using the Edge option and then again using the Face-Center option.
FIGURE 13.11
A cube tessellated twice, using each option once
Make Planar
A single vertex or two vertices don't define a plane, but three or more vertices do. If three or more vertices are selected, you can use the Make Planar button to make these vertices coplanar (which means that all vertices are on the same plane). Doing so positions the selected vertices so that they lie in the same plane. This is helpful if you want to build a new polygon face. Polygonal faces need to be coplanar. This button works in all subobject modes. The X, Y, and Z buttons let you collapse the current object or subobject selection to a single plane lying on the specified axis.
View and Grid Align
The View and Grid Align buttons move and orient all selected vertices to the current active viewport or to the current construction grid. These buttons can also be used in all subobject modes. This causes all the selected face normals to point directly at the grid or view.
Relax
The Relax button works just like the Relax modifier by moving vertices