What are these quads?

[Romancandle]

Hi all-

I've animated in Maya, but I'm new to modeling.

I'm working on a hand in Maya 2015, and I've noticed these little quads on one of the faces of a finger. They only show up when smoothing is turned on. I can't select them or delete them. If I delete the face, the quads jump to the next face. So what are these and how do I get rid of 'em?

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[halfstone]

It's possible you have stray vertices in the middle of edges, left over from deleting edges.  In component mode, try selecting all vertices and hitting the "delete" key.  Only the vertices without complex edge attachment will be deleted, which is what you want. 

It's also possible that you have lamina faces or non-manifold geometry.  Lamina faces are faces that  occupy the same space, with the edges and vertices in common - like a piece of laminated plywood.  Non-manifold geometry is where three faces share the same edge.  

Use the "Mesh->Cleanup" tool.  You can set  this tool to "select" or "fix" - I'd go with "select" for the first go-round, at least, to see if this is what your problem actually is.  

These are  just guesses, of course, based on common modeling problems.  it's hard to tell without picking through the model.  

[Romancandle]

halfstone -

Thanks for your reply. So I tried the options you suggested, but the problem is still there. Looks like I have more investigating to do, but thanks again for your help!

[halfstone]

When you turn smoothing on by pressing the "3" key, that's really just a preview mode.  Why not check and see if it's really happening?  

Press the "3" key, then  go to "Modify->Convert->Smooth Mesh Preview to Polygons".  That will convert your preview into an actual model, with a much higher density than the original.  See if the quads are actually there, and it's not a display anomaly due to a graphics card issue or something similar. 

You can also circumvent this polygon smoothing by using a subdivision approximation node, if you're rendering in mental ray.  

http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2015/ENU/?guid=GUID-9B29526A-612D-4A93-8FEC-2C602A8C2ACF