3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [184]
Another way to slice an object is with the SwiftLoop button. This button lets you click any open space between edges to add a loop between the adjacent edges. Once placed, you can drag to slide the loop to its actual location.
Another handy Ribbon tool for cutting holes is PConnect, which stands for Paint Connect. This tool lets you paint the location of a hole on the surface. As you paint, every edge that you cross is marked, and new edges are created between adjacent marks. By holding down the Shift key, you can make the connections happen in the middle of each edge. Holding down the Ctrl key lets you paint new edges between adjacent vertices. Clicking on a vertex with the Alt key held down removes the vertex, and the Ctrl+Alt keys together removes an edge. The Ctrl+Shift key is used to remove an entire edge loop, and the Shift+Alt keys are used to paint two parallel lines between edges.
Tip
Help videos are available for some tools, such as PConnect. These videos are located in the tooltips for the tool and appear when you hold the mouse over the tool. •
NURMS
The Edit panel also includes a NURMS button. NURMS stands for Non-Uniform Rational MeshSmooth. It produces similar results to the MSmooth button, but offers control over how aggressively the smoothing is applied; the settings can be different for the viewports and the renderer. When NURMS is enabled, the Use NURMS panel, shown in Figure 14.10, appears.
To enable NURMS subdivision, you need to enable the Use NURMS Subdivision option. The Smooth Result option places all polygons into the same smoothing group and applies the MeshSmooth to the entire object. Applying NURMS with a high Iterations value results in a very dense mesh, but the Isoline Display option displays a simplified number of edges, making the object easier to work with. The process of smoothing adds many edges to the object, and the Isoline Display option displays only the isolines. The Show Cage option makes the surrounding cage visible or invisible. The two color swatches to the right of the Show Cage option let you set the color of the cage and the selection.
The Iterations value determines how aggressive the smoothing is. The higher the Iterations value, the more time it takes to compute and the more complex the resulting object. The Smoothness value determines how sharp a corner must be before adding extra faces to smooth it. A value of 0 does not smooth any corners, and a maximum value of 1.0 smoothes all polygons.
FIGURE 14.10
The Ribbon's Use NURMS panel includes controls for NURMS subdivision.
Caution
Each smoothing iteration quadruples the number of faces. If you raise the number of Iterations too high, the system can become unstable quickly. •
The two check boxes in the Render section can be used to set the values differently for the Display and Render sections. If disabled, then both the viewports and the renderer use the same settings. The smoothing algorithm can be set to ignore smoothing across Smoothing Groups and Materials.
If the Show Cage option is enabled (at the bottom of the Use NURMS panel), an orange cage surrounds the NURMS object and shows the position of the polygon faces that exist if NURMS is disabled. This cage makes selecting the polygon faces easier.
Tutorial: Smoothing an Ice Cube
NURMS can give a general smoothing to an object, which is just what we need to build an ice cube.
To create an ice cube, follow these steps:
1. Use the Create⇒Standard Primitives⇒Box menu and drag in the viewport to create a rectangular-shaped box object.
2. Open the Graphite Modeling Tools by clicking its button in the main toolbar. Then select the Convert to Poly option from the Polygon Modeling panel in the Ribbon.
3. Select the Vertex subobject mode and drag over the lower four vertices. Then drag inward with the Scale tool to make the base of the box smaller than the top.
4. Select the Edges subobject mode and drag over all the