Mesh vs. Poly

[fabittar]

I'm in a hurry here, and the Intro do Modeling in MAX course is flawed. I expected an introduction to the horrible UI and some of the shortcuts, but I've got that covered on my own. If somebody'd pretty please just give me a straight answer, I'll be foverer grateful.

1) Mesh vs. Poly. What's the difference, if any? I know one of them will show me faces (the triangles forming up the polygons - which is pretty lame as I honestly don't see why I'd want to screw-up my polygons making them non-planar; if I wanted to do tris, I should just convert the quads to tris. Duh.

2) I can't for the love of Christ find the bloody %¨&&* Add Edge Loops... where is it? I'm guessing the closest I'll get to SubDs in MAX is using MeshSmooth (is it catmull?) with 3 or 4 iterations? It's kind of annoying, tho... I want to edit the original, non-smoothed mesh, but then a minute later I WANT to edit it in its smoothed state, but using the original geometry, but I can't. Grrr.

[chrisg]

Hi fabittar,

We're releasing an Introduction to the UI in December.

Learning new software is a tough thing to do, and sometimes it seems like the software breaks just to spite you, but I assure you it's not personal.

I know it's easy to post negative things on the internet, but could you please not do it here? I've read quite a few replies this morning bad-mouthing certain software and that needs to stop.

I'll forward this post to our modeling instructor so he can give you a hand.

[justin_m]

Hi fabittar,
When your mesh is an Editable Poly rather than an Editable Mesh, you'll have a wider range of tools you can use on that mesh. The Graphite modeling tools will only work with Editable Polys, for instance. In order to add edge loops, you have a few options. Swiftloop, part of the Graphite Modeling tools, would be the quickest. You can also use "connect" with an edge selection to create loops. For a subd type work flow, one option is to enable "NURMS" subdivision. This will allow you to see the smoothed version and modify the cage. You can find this either on the Graphite Modeling toolbar or under the "subdivision surface" rollout for your object and it can be quickly toggled on and off. You can also try out the HSDS modifier, which will give you a surface with multiple levels that you can manipulate. I hope that helps!

[sam10bw]

Is the release that's coming next month the long awaited Introduction to 3ds max. Or is it just broken down into sections of Max like other videos like Introduction to rendering?

[chrisg]

It's the long awaited Introduction to 3ds Max. :)

[sam10bw]

Thank you Chrisg!!!! Can't wait to see what we're going to be modeling I hope it will be something challenging like the Introduction to Maya. But I know it will be thanks a lot guys.