8

1006 Chapter 9: Sur face Modeling
Face-Center adds a vertex to the center of each
face and draws three connecting lines from that
vertex to the three original vert ices. As a result,
three faces are created out of one face.
Set of polygons showing Face-Center tessellatio n
Explode group
Use these controls to detach selected faces from
each other.
Explode—Explodes the selected faces into multiple
elements or objects based on the angles of its edges.
Exploded faces (white) removed from tessellated faces
The angle threshold spinner, to the right of the
Explode button, lets you specify the angle between
faces below which separation will not occur. For
example, all sides of a b ox are at 90-deg ree angles
to each other. If you set the spinner to 90 or above,
exploding the box changes nothing . However, at
any setting below 90, the sides all become separate
objects or elements.
To Objects/Elements—Specifies whether the
exploded faces become the separate objects or
elements of the current object.
Remove Isola ted V er t ices—Deletes all isolated
vertices in the object regardless of the current
selection.
V iew Align—Aligns selected faces to the plane of
theactiveviewport.Inthecaseoforthographic
viewports, this is the s ame effect as aligning to the
construction grid when the home grid is active.
When alig ning to a Perspect ive viewport (or
Camera and Light views), the faces are reoriented
to be aligned to a plane that is paral lel to the
camera’s v iewing plane (perspective v iewports
have invisible camera planes). In t hese cases, the
selection of faces is not translated but only rotated.