2010

Table Of Contents
In this lesson, youll try both methods on your helmet mesh.
To display hard and soft edges on a mesh
1 Right-click the low resolution mesh, set the selection type to Object Mode,
and then select the helmet mesh.
2 Select Soft/Hard Edges.
The wireframe mesh on the helmet updates to display both dashed and
solid lines. The dashed lines indicate edges that are set to display as soft
shaded. The solid lines indicate edges that are set to display as hard
shaded. The reason some of the edges are hard and some are soft relates
to the particular settings for some polygon tools.
To soften the edges on the mesh
With the low resolution version of the helmet still selected, select Normals
> Soften Edge.
All of the edges on the helmet mesh are set to be shaded in a softened fashion.
The wireframe mesh updates to display as dashed lines indicating that all of
the edges are set to be soft shaded. You may not notice any immediate effect
on the smoothed high resolution version, but its important that you perform
this step before you proceed to harden specific edges on this model.
124 | Chapter 3 Polygonal Modeling