8

1046 Chapter 9: Sur face Modeling
Slice Pla ne—
Creates a gizmo for a slice plane
that you can position and rotate to specify where
to slice. Also enables the Slice and Reset Plane
buttons.
Asyoutransformthesliceplane,youseeapreview
ofwheretheslicewilloccurinthemeshobject.To
perform the slice, click the Slice button.
Split—When on, the Slice and Cut operations
create double sets of vertices at the points where
the edges are divided. This lets you easily delete
the new polygons to create holes, or animate the
new polygons as separate elements.
Slice—Performs the slice operation at the location
of the slice plane. Available only when Slice Plane
ison.Thistoolslicesthepolyjustlikethe“Operate
On: Polygons” mode of the
Slice modifier (page
1–815)
.
Reset Plane—ReturnstheSliceplanetoitsdefault
position and orientation. Available only when
Slice Plane is on.
Quick Slice—Lets you quickly slice the object
without having to manipulate a gizmo. Make a
selection, click QuickSlice, and then click once
at the slice start point and again at its endpoint.
You can continue slicing the selection while the
command is ac tive.
To stop slicing, right-click in the viewport, or click
QuickSlice again to turn it off.
Note: AttheEdgesub-objectlevel,QuickSlice
affects the entire object. To slice only specific
polygons, use QuickSlice on a polygon selection at
the Poly sub-object level.
Cut —Lets you create edges from one polygon to
anotherorwithinpolygons. Clickatthestart
point, move the mouse and click again, and
cont inue moving and clicking to create new
connected edges. Right-click once to exit the
current cut, whereupon you can start a new one,
or right-click again to exit Cut mode.
Use
Snaps (page 2–35) with Cut for precision. Cut
supports Midpoint, Endpoint, a nd Ver tex snaps .
Note: Cut performance has b een enhanced in
3ds Max 7.Formoreinformation,see
this
procedure (page 1–1035)
.
MSmoot h—Smoothes the selection using the
current settings. This comman d uses subdivision
functionality similar to that of the
MeshSmooth
modifier (page 1 –714)
.
MS mooth S ettings—Opens the MeshSmooth
Selection dialog (page 1–1076)
,whichletsyou
specify how smoothing is applied.
Tessellate—Subdivides the selection based on the
Tessellation settings (page 1–1078) .
Tessellation is useful for increasing loca l mesh
density while modeling. You can subdivide any
selection of polygons. Two tessellation methods
are available: Edge and Face.
Tessellate S ettings—Opens the Tessellate
Selection dialog (page 1–1078)
,whichletsyou
specify how smoothing is applied.
Mak e Planar—Forces all selected edges to become
coplanar. The plane’s normal is the average surface
normal of all faces attached to the selected edges.
X/Y /Z—Makes the selected edges planar and a ligns
the plane with the corresponding plane in the
object’s loca l coordinate system. The plane used is
the one to w hich the button axis is per p endicular,
so, for example, clicking the X button aligns the
edges with the local YZ axis.
V iew Align—Aligns selected edges to the plane of
theactiveviewport.Inthecaseoforthographic
viewports, this is the same effect as aligning to
the constr uction grid w hen the home grid is
active. When aligning to a Perspective viewport
(including camera and lig ht views), the edges are
reoriented to be alig ned to a plane that is parallel
to the camera’s v iewing plane. (Perspective