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654 Chapter 8: Modifiers
button, and then drag ver tically on any ver tex to
extrude it.
Extruding a vertex moves it along a normal and
creates new polygons that form the sides of the
extrusion, connecting the vertex to the object.
The extrusion has t he same number of sides as
the number of polygons t hat originally used the
extruded vertex.
Important aspects of vertex extrusion are:
• The mouse cursor changes to an Ext rude cursor
when over a selected vertex.
• Drag vertically to specify the extent of the
extrusion, and horizontally to set the s ize of the
base.
• With multiple ver tices selected, dragging on
any one extrudes all selected vertices equally.
• You can drag other vertices in turn to extrude
them while the Extrude button is active. Click
Extrude again or ri ght-click in the active
viewport to end the operation.
Chamfer box showing extruded vertex
Ex trude Settings—Opens the Extrude Vertices
dialog (page 1–1073),whichletsyouperform
extrusion via interactive manipulation.
If you click this button after performing a manual
extrusion, the same extrusion is performed on the
current selection as a preview and the dialog opens
with Extrusion Height set to the amount of the last
manual extrusion.
Weld—Combines contiguous, selected vertices
that fall w ithin the tolerance specified in the Weld
dialog (page 1–1077). All edges b ecome connected
to the resulting single vertex.
Weld is best suited to automatically simplify
geometrythathasareaswithseveralverticesin
close proximity.
Weld Settings—Opens the Weld dialog (page
1–1077), which lets you s pecify the weld threshold.
Chamf e r—Click this button and then drag
vertices in the active object. To chamfer vertices
numerically, click the Chamfer Settings button and
adjust the Chamfer Amount value.
If you chamfer multiple selected vertices, all of
them are chamfered identically. If you drag an
unselected vertex, any selected vertices are first
unselected.
Each chamfered vertex is effectively replaced by
a new face tha t connects new points on all edges
leading to the origina l vertex. These new points
are exactly <chamfer amount> distance from the
original vertex along each of these edges. New
chamfer faces are created with the material ID of
one of the neighboring faces (picked at random)
and a smoothing group that is an intersection of all
neighboring smoothing groups.
Forexample,ifyouchamferonecornerofabox,
thesinglecornervertexisreplacedbyatriangular
face whose vertices move along the three edges
that led to the corner. Outside faces are rearranged
and split to use these three new vertices, and a
triangle is created at the corner.
Alternatively, you can create open space
around the chamfered vertices; for details, see
Chamfer Vertices dialog ( page 1–1070).