Why dose mudbox tell me I have mesh errors with everything I import?

[Anonymous]

I'm new to Mudbox so I'm sure it might be a setting in Maya that needs to be set.  When I create a simple polygon sphere and send to mudbox I get errors.  

[pshwayka]

Mudbox works best with a base mesh that has good topology.  If you want to start with a sphere that you created in Maya, you're better off creating a default polygon cube and doing a mesh->smooth with the settings shown below.  Mudbox will be much happier when you send the resulting sphere to it, as it has all quads instead of containing 3-sided polys and vertices that are the intersection of a lot of edges.

[halfstone]

A default sphere in Maya has what Mudbox calls a "High Valence Vertex" at the north and  south poles - multiple triangles all coming together at a single point.  Pshwayka is correct - if it's a sphere you want, you're much better off creating a shell out of a smoothed cube.  

You can also select a default six-sided cube, press the  "3" key, then do a "Modify-->Convert-->Smooth  Mesh Preview to Polygons".  Same result.