conversions as proxys definetely work... but they run uber suggish on my system, and so I was hoping to avoid that method, but then I ran into a post saying how to get fast SubDivs (making it possible to hide the subDiv surface and show only the polys, but be able to flick the SubDiv's on when you need to render em, w000t!) So, I guess there's no reason to not use this technique then?
Altho, u can't add creasing to edges, or edit the points on the SubDiv surface anymore, but you can always edit the poly edges and afaik, it's better to create the harder edges on the polys anyway...
(but I'm new to Maya, so... if any1 knows better plz let me know!)
Quote (from mestela):
" yeah, they [SubDivs] suck intensely, but we've found a way to use them that suck less... =)
After you've bound your poly cage to a skeleton, blendshaped and whatever else, take your poly models, modify->convert->poly to subd like usual, but hit the option box. Choose 'keep original' and 'proxy object', apply.
You get a poly cage around your subdiv surface. Turn on 'show shapes' in the outliner, expand your object transform, stick the poly surface in one layer, and the subd in another. You can now hide the subd layer, and you have a fast interactive poly cage to animate with, and a subd layer to render with.
You can also assign shaders back to the poly shape to get rid of the wireframe, if thats your preference. A possible problem could be properly bringing uv's across (4.5 is meant to address this), but for our project we're not using any textures, we've got lucky. =)
I'll upload some pictures when I get some time...
Cheers,
-matt
"
mestela - http://pub33.ezboard.com/fnendowingsmiraif...picID=141.topic
koolies!!
btw, sorry from tripple post 
