9

Editable Poly 933
patch surface to an editable mesh. Editable meshes
requirelittlememory,andareanaturalmethodof
modeling with polygona l objects.
An ac tively lin ked object cannot be collapsed to an
editable mesh. Using the File Link Manager (page
3–422), you have to Bind the object f irst.
Editable Poly
An editable poly (page 1–1022) is a type of
deformable object. An editable poly is a polygonal
mesh; that is, unlike an editable mesh, it uses
more than three-sided polygons. Edit able polys
are useful in that they avoid invisible edges. For
example, if you use a cut-and-slice operation
w ith editable polys, the program do esn’t insert
extra vertices along any invisible edge. You can
convert NURBS surfaces, editable meshes, splines,
primitives, and patch surfaces to editable polys.
Element
The antler is one element of the moose head.
An element is one of two or more individual
mesh objects (that is, groups of contiguous faces)
grouped together into one larger object. For
example, i f you attach one box to another, you
create one mesh object from the two boxes. Each
box is now an element of the object. Any function
you perform on that object affects all its elements.
However, you can manipulate the elements
independently at the Element sub-object level.
Emitter
Anemitterisanobjectthatemitsparticles;
particles are born, or first enter the scene, at the
emitter’s location. By default, Particle Flow uses
the source icon (page 2–135) as an emitter, but
alternatively any other object in the scene can emit
particles u sing the Position Object operator (page
2–148).
End Ef fector
In histor y-dependent inverse kinematics (HD IK)
(page 2–461), the end effector is the pivot point of
the selected child object at the end of a kinematic
chain.
The kinematic chain is a single branch of a
hierarchy used for animation with inverse
kinematics (IK) (page 3–958).Thechainstarts
w ith the selected child object and travels up
through ancestors until it reaches the start of the
chain. When you move t he end effector, the H D IK
solver then uses IK calculations to move and rotate
all other objects in the k inem atic chain to react to
the object you moved.
The end effector has two transforms: one that
connects it to its parent, and another that connects
it to the End Effector Parent. By default, the End
Effector Parent is none (equivalent to World); you
can assign this in the Motion panel.
Note: You can move the end effector away from
the child object, which causes the IK chain to
straighten out. When you move the e nd effector
back toward the child object, joints in the IK chain
will bend again.