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Quad Draw:

The Quad Draw Context was created to help with retopologizing as well as model building. Everything is done on a contextual level with combinations of ctrl and shift. Click on the icon and you will enter the Quad Draw Context. You will see your cursor change to a cross hair and any mesh that was selected will automatically highlight into vertex mode. If a mesh has not been selected, hover over a mesh, right click, and go to any component mode.

CONTEXTS:

A lot of the times I mention contexts to people who use Maya, they tend to not understand what they mean or how they are used within Maya. Let me explain so you have a better understanding of what these custom contexts do and do not do and why.

Above is a picture of the left side toolbar in default Maya. If you do not click any of these icons, I am sure you enter them at some point mostly by hotkeys. Each icon above is a context that Maya has created. The default Maya hotkey for the move tool is "W"... when you hit "W" on your keyboard, you are entering the "Move" context which is highlighted above.. Clicking "Q" enters the default selection Context or the top icon, the arrow.. The "Move" context allows the user to select as well as move both objects or components. The default select tool only allows the user to do selecting. If you want to actually move something, you must exit the context and enter the "Move" context. Maya also has special contexts for splitting edges or extruding faces.

Why am I telling you all of this? Users tend to not understand the principal of switching contexts and the limitations that contexts have. For example, if you are in the splitting edge context, you cannot move an object until you exit the splitting edge context and enter the "Move" context. Hopefully this makes sense.

QUAD DRAW CONTEXT:

The Quad Draw Context is not an object selection tool. As described above in the context section, one must program the context specific to do specific functions. Therefore, if you click on the Quad Draw Context Icon and try to drag and select objects, NOTHING WILL HAPPEN! This is very important. Please be aware of what context you are in when trying to perform actions in Maya. If you want to select an object, click "Q" to exit the Quad Draw Context and enter Maya's default selection Context.

Quad Draw Context is meant for editing mesh components. In order for anything to happen you must be in a component mode. If you have an object selected before selecting Quad Draw Context, the tool will enter a component mode for you automatically. If not, you must right click over an object, and select "edge", "vert", or "face" to enter a component mode. You can also start creating a new object with nothing selected.

HOW TO USE:

If you want to create a new object from scratch, you do not want to have anything selected. If you want to build on an already existing object and are not in a component mode, switch to one first by right clicking over the model and selecting a component. Since Quad Draw is meant to build polygons out or fill in polygon gaps, if you are using Quad Draw with an object that has no holes in it, you will not see any pre selection feedback. If you do have holes in your mesh, and you hover over that area, you will see a blue polygon being drawn which will give you a preview of the polygon that can be created. Quad Draw will only try to create a quad polygon. That means a polygon with exactly 4 vertices. Quad Draw will try to find the 4 closest open vertices to your mouse in screen space. By default, it will not take any backface polygons into account. If you would like to take backface polygons into account, click off the "Ignore Backfaces" checkbox under the Quad Draw Properties section. This will take all vertices into account. Dependent on the rotation of the polygon and vertices you might need to do this to create a specific polygon.

LEFT CLICK:

By left clicking on the viewport or model, you will create a new Quad Draw point. This will be shown as a green dot in the viewport. There are a couple different positions the point can take in world space. Where the point is drawn is based off of the camera and where you clicked. If you do not have a polygon object highlited, which means you are creating a new object, or you do not have any open holes in your mesh, the point will be created half way between your near camera clipping plane and your far camera clipping plane. If you have an object highlited, and there are open points, the point will be drawn at the same distance as the open point lies between the camera and view. This makes it very easy to build off of an existing mesh.

As you can see from the gif above, the points are created at the same depth as the closest polygon points. As the camera turns and new points are drawn, you can see how they stay at the same depth.

If you drag while clicking down a point, the point will be placed where you let your mouse release.

The last way the Quad Draw point can be positioned is by hugging the surface of a mesh that has been loaded as a slide object. The following gif's will show Quad Draw used in this way. This is a common way to retopologize a mesh.

CTRL + LEFT CLICK + DRAG:

Holding down "Ctrl" and left clicking and dragging will select the closest Quad Draw point and allow you to reposition it in space. When you release the mouse button the new point will be drawn at that location.

SHIFT AND LEFT MOUSE CLICK:

Holding down the shift button and left clicking will create a polygon based off of the highlited polygon displayed.

NOTE: The first time you create a new polygon object, you will not get any highliting on the four Quad Points. Once you hit Shift and Left Mouse Button to create the first polygon, you will start to get pre highlilting.

LIMITATIONS:

If you are using Mirroring with Quad Draw, there are a couple problems which can occur.

If you create a polygon that stretches between both sides of symmetry axis, you might get a double polygon.

If you smooth the mesh with any of the other brushes, the points can get a little off between both sides. This small difference can make the mirrored side become non attached when creating points. Since Quad Draw creates the polygons on the other side with a tollerance, if the positions of the verts are not exactly the same, this will happen.

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