Creating even tessellation

[Parmenides]

Hello, I have not been able to find a way to add more divisions in an even manner. If I need to deform a simple long flat cube (ex. A) (or send it to Mudbox), I need to add subdivisions but the options seem very limited.

It generally creates very long triangles with most meeting at the middle of the face (ex. B). Not only does this not bend well but Mudbox whines about it every time (can't have more than 16 edges per vertex..) If I send an subdivided simple object to Mudbox and retopolgize it, I get example C. which is useless.

What I am trying to do it create even polys (or 3D mesh) across the object (see ex. D). I did this in another program but it seems there should be a way to do this is in Maya.  Thanks to anyone who can point me in the right direction. 

[damaggio]

My first idea would be to do it with a boolean ...see image.

[Parmenides]

Thanks Damaggio, yes that would work great if it were only that particular shape that was needed. But it is often the case that it is irregular shapes that need to be meshed for deformation, etc. 

[damaggio]

What are the other shapes?...triangle is the most difficult,  the other shapes can be easily modeled in quads so mudbox won't complain.

[Parmenides]

Any round shape can be a problem. Imagine a clover, crescent moon, or a face created with curves and lofted. 

[tony.su]

You can try add Divisions tool.

[slimboJoe]

For stuff like this, I usually start with NURBs curves and loft between them to get a perfectly even tessellation.  Then just extrude the resulting shape to get your dimension.

The loft function has a bunch of tessellation settings.  Generally I would use quads, GENERAL tess method, and Per span # of iso params on the U & V.  I leave the Secondary at default.