3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [174]
Hide, Copy, and Paste
The Hide button hides the selected subobjects. You can make hidden objects visible again with the Unhide All button.
After selecting several subobjects, you can create a named selection set by typing a name in the Name Selection Sets drop-down list in the main toolbar. You can then copy and paste these selection sets onto other shapes.
At the bottom of the Selection rollout is the Selection Information, which is a text line that automatically displays the number and subobject type of selected items.
Editing Vertex subobjects
When working with the Editable Poly objects, after you select a Vertex subobject mode (keyboard shortcut, 1) and select vertices, you can transform them using the transform buttons on the main toolbar. All vertex-specific commands are found within the Edit Vertices rollout, shown in Figure 13.12.
FIGURE 13.12
When the Vertex subobject mode is selected, these vertex commands become available.
Remove
The Remove button lets you delete the selected vertices. The Remove button automatically adjusts the surrounding subobjects to maintain the mesh integrity.
Note
You can also delete Editable Poly subobjects using the Delete key. •
Figure 13.13 shows a sphere object with several vertex subobjects selected. The middle image is an Editable Mesh that used the Delete feature, and the right image is an Editable Poly that used the Remove feature.
The Remove button also is available in Edge subobject mode. If you hold down the Ctrl key when clicking the Remove button when an edge is selected, vertices at either end of the deleted edge are also removed.
FIGURE 13.13
Deleting vertices also deletes the adjoining faces and edges, but Remove maintains the mesh.
Break
You use the Break button to create a separate vertex for adjoining faces that are connected by a single vertex.
In a normal mesh, faces are all connected by vertices: Moving one vertex changes the position of all adjoining faces. The Break button enables you to move the vertex associated with each face independent of the others. The button is available only in Vertex subobject mode.
Figure 13.14 shows a hedra object. The Break button was used to separate the center vertex into separate vertices for each face. The face vertices can be manipulated independently, as the figure shows.
FIGURE 13.14
You can use the Break button to give each face its own vertex.
Extrude
The Extrude button copies and moves the selected subobject perpendicular a given distance and connects the new copy with the original one. For example, four edges forming a square extruded would form a box with no lid. To use this feature, select an edge or edges, click the Extrude button, and then drag in a viewport. The edges interactively show the extrude depth. Release the button when you've reached the desired distance.
Alternatively, you can set an extrude depth in the Extrusion spinner. The Group option extrudes all selected edges in the direction of the average of all the normals for the group (the normal runs perpendicular to the face) and the Normal Local option moves each individual edge along its local normal. For polygons, you can extrude By Polygons, which extrudes each individual polygon along its normal as a separate extrusion. To exit Extrude mode, click the Extrude button again or right-click in the viewport.
The Extrude button is enabled for Face, Polygon, and Element subobject modes for the Editable Poly object. Figure 13.15 shows a GeoSphere object with all edges selected and extruded. The Group Normal option averages all the normals and extrudes the edges in the averaged direction. The Local Normal option extrudes each edge along its own normal.
The Extrude settings dialog box includes options for