Use Curves and Boundary to Fill a Hole in Maya Meshes

As part of the modeling process, you will inevitably have to fill a hole in a polygon mesh. Depending on your process and the model itself, this can be a quick, or a lengthy task.

about filling holes in polygonal modeling

Maya does have a “Fill Hole” command that will do just that. However, if you want a specific type of geometry – such as quads for smoothing let’s say… then the fill hole command will need some extra work. If you have a complex area to fill, this might not be the quickest or the best method.

Here, Alex shows how you can quickly fill a hole in Maya, by using some commands that are typically used for NURBS modeling. The idea is that you can easily convert a polygon edge selection to curves… and if you have 4 connecting curves, you can simply use the NURBS “Boundary” command, with its output set to polygons to quickly make a patch that will fit and fill the hole easily.

The one caveat is that you need to have an even number of edges in the hole that you are going to fill. This can easily be modified by adding or deleting an edge to make the total number of edges an even number.