Maya 7 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual Quickstart Guide
by Danny Riddell,, Morgan Robinson,, Nathaniel Stein
8. Polygons
Poly (short for polygon, or polygonal) modeling can be fun and quick, giving you a lot of freedom and control over any section of your model at any time. Polygonal modeling is older than NURBS modeling, but Alias is constantly improving the poly tools to make this approach one of the more powerful modeling choices in Maya 7.0.
Polygonal objects are made up of many small planar surfaces, referred to as faces or polys. These faces are commonly three or four sided, but they sometimes have more sides. A complete poly object consists of a handful to hundreds of thousands of these surfaces. In general, the more faces a model contains, the smoother the surface appears.
Games make extensive use of polygons because the complexity of a game ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access