Surface "roundness" problem

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here and I need help with a smoothing problem in Maya.

I'm studying Media Design and have dealt with Maya for 1 1/2 years, 4 lessons a week at school + homework. I'd still call myself a newbie cause Maya isn't all we do (filming, audio, drawing, photography...).

I'm having this problem with surfaces - I want them smooth in one place but edgy in others. My teacher told me about this smoothing stuff but that's not what I mean. I don't know what it's called but it's rather to do with "roundness" but smoothing.

When you create a sphere it has a smooth round surface and you can't see the edges of the polygon, even when you're not in smooth mode (3).
I can show you by this simple robot hand; as soon as I extruded the palm part the sphere I created in the first place suddenly beacame all edgy. I want the original sphere part to be smooth, but keep the edges of the palm part. Anything with smoothing won't do it for me cause smooth preview smoothes all edges and Edit mesh->Smooth adds divisions.

How can I give the sphere its "roundness" back? I need advice for polygons cause that's what we're working with.

Thanks.

[n8skow]

Select your desired edges to smooth, and adjust the normals by either Normals->Soften Edge or adjusting the 'Set Normal Angle'.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

thanks a lot this is exactly what I'm looking for!! I can't believe it is so simple and yet nobody showed us! I already used it on a bunch of annoying edges now I can't stop it lol.

Thanks a lot.