Problems extruding a subdivision shape
 

Hi,

For some reason, I am not able to do an extrude on subd shapes. I first tell it to show faces, then I click a face and then go to extrude, but instead of changing, the face is deselected and the manipulator disappears.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Right hand mouse click on your object, and select "Polygon" this will put you in polygon mode, and you can then select the face and extrude it.

Then simply right hand mouse click on the object and select "Standard" this will allow you edit the Sub-Ds again.

Oh, I guess I was trying to extrude from standard mode instead of polygon mode. Thanks for the help, Mayaniac.

Does this mean that on subdivs you can only extrude at the lowest level of the polygon? When I'm in polygon mode, the "display finer / coarser" options do not work.

Unfortunately, No you can't.

You can however Select the Sub-D face and Refine it (Add more divisions) and then use the new divisions to build up a new form, But i don't like doing this much as it really can dense your mesh up really fast, and consequently slow your machine down considerably.

You can (while in polygon mode) add more Geometry, by putting in new edge loops using the "Insert edge loop tool", and the "Split Polygon tool" though you have to be careful not to let your mesh get messy (no 3 sided or more than 4 sided faces, or holes) as Sub-Ds will soon get very, and irreversibly Buggy! But if you play your cards right and perform your operations smartly, you can practically rebuild your Poly mesh while in sub-Ds. Using such tools as the "Append to polygon tool" "poke face", " Wedge face" "Extrude" pretty much all the poly editing tools.

Anyhow, if (after you've converted to Sub-Ds) realize that your Poly mesh doesn't have enough Geometry to complete the task at hand, you can Smooth the poly mesh.
This should give you the ability do define enough surface detail to perform your operation.

Hope this help :beer:

Yes, that does help...thank you much!