I just noticed something in Maya, If I have a polygon mesh that is just a plane but consisting of multiple faces, For example the primitive plane or some plane created using the draw polygon tool (that I then quadrangulated).
If I then, smooth preview it, Maya does not change its appearance at all. I am expecting the surface to be smoothed, at least its border corners to be rounded, even though its a 2D surface.
Is this expected? Or has something gone wrong?
Am on Maya 2026.
Create a poly cone and smooth preview it, you will get a “teardrop” shape. Now delete the bottom face, you go back to a sharp cone. Maya does not smooth OPEN (border) edges.
This explains to me so much more than I was looking to have explained to me. Somethings finally clicked into place.
Thank you!
OpenSubdiv (the default in Maya) has an option for what to do with corners. The “Vertex Boundary” default is “Sharp Edges and Corners” but you can change it to “Sharp Edges” and you’ll see the corners of your plane get rounded.
The Maya implementation of Catmull-Clark subdivision has a similar rule. The attribute names are different, and it’s also not the default, but you’ll find options in the AE for Smooth Mesh Preview too.