Merge edges tool
 

Hello, i am new here, and am going through some tutorials in Maya Character Animation by Jae Jin Choi. I am having troubles with figure out how this merge edges tool works. The tutorial does not give tips and tricks, and it seems to work randomly. It would appear the surface needs to be quite smooth, but i am just having trouble getting it to work smoothly in the extraction of edges, and then working with merging the edges.


thank you

Well whats happening is when i click on the edge i want to merge. The edge that i want to merge it with i am not able to click.

Different lines appear all over the place. I dont think the modeling is very clean so that is probably the problem.

there is an alternitive. Frankley I don't like the merge edge tool. So I just select 2 vertices on the same side, go to Edit Polygons>Merge Vertices> option box. Then just crank the settings up to 10 (I like it high), and click accept. then just select the other vertices, and press g (Repeat command). That should work. If not, I'll post a pic for you.

the normals of both faces of the edges your going to merge shoudl be pointing the same way. maybe a little view of what your doing there would help also.

but the merge works just as ok as the vertix. you still run in to problems with both if the geo has a fundamental problem though.