Question. I've been experimenting and making comparisons to mesh select and editable poly. I'll add a mesh select to an object, select a polygon, then apply a modifier to the poly(tessellate). afterward, I'll do the samre process without the mesh select. i don't see any real differance. Is the mesh select needed in the newer versions?
You certainly don't need a Mesh Select modifier with
editable poly because it converts the object from poly to mesh and that's sort
of counterproductive.
The comparison should be made with Mesh Select and
Editable mesh or with Poly Select and Editable
Poly.
Let's say you have an object where you need to tesselate
couple of polygons, you have several options:
1.
Convert to editable polygon, select the
polygon, and click the tesselate settings button. You can do this as many times
as you want to affect different polygons. The downside is that you have no
history in case you want to change something a few steps back.
2.
Apply an Edit Poly modifier and do the same
thing as outlined in option 1. The downside is that you have no history to fall back
on. You could apply multiple Edit Poly modifiers in order to retain a history,
but each time you add any of the Edit modifiers 3ds Max has to store a full
copy of the object in memory. This can get very expensive.
3.
Apply any Edit Poly modifier, select the
polygon, apply a Tesselate modifier. You can repeat these two steps as often as
you want to give you a very inexpensive option with a history that you can
navigate easier. The workflow doesn't entirely make sense, however, because the
Tesselate modifier is a mesh editing tool so it automatically converts the
object from poly to mesh and then the next Select Poly converts it back from
mesh to poly. You'd be better off using a combination of Mesh Select and
Tesselate modifiers.
Editable Poly objects or objects with Edit Poly
modifiers are relatively expensive, in any case, compared to editable mesh objects
or Edit Mesh modifiers. At render time everything has to be converted to
editable mesh in order for the scanline renderer to render it, so this a lot of
extra math going on with poly objects.
The choice really depends on what your doing and how
much flexibility you need and can retain throughout the editing. Remember however, you're somewhat limited in navigating backward in the stack if the topology of the object has been changedi.e. you've added new vertices or faces. 3ds Max will issue a warning that the result should get may not be what you expect.
I generally try to avoid the Edit Poly, Edit Mesh, Edit Patch modifiers as much as possible because of memory concerns, but there are situations where you just need to use them. The same concerns actually apply to Editable Spline and Edit Spline modifiers.
There's no right or wrong, but you'll learn through experience which works best for your particular circumstances as long as you understand how the options function.
