Let's look at how we can affect an object's faces, edges and vertices. To do this let's start from scratch by choosing New Scene from the File menu. The object we'll play about with is a cylinder. Makes a change from a dull old cube. Typically when modelling game objects you'd use a cylinder with a small amount of faces around the axis to represent things like scopes on weapons or perhaps foregrips.
The cylinder we need is a polygon cylinder. Don't get it confused with a NURBS cylinder. We won't be using NURBS at all for our game development.
Earlier you saw the Shelf, a row of fairly large icons under the Status Line. The tenth icon from the left is the Poly Cylinder icon:
If you click that icon you'll get a cylinder with the default settings. To change the defaults you need to use the polygon cylinder menu item. Maya lets you add any menu item as an icon on the shelf. Go to the Create menu and hold down Control and Shift as you select the Polygon Cylinder Option Box under Polygon Primitives. The option box is the little box icon to the right of the word Cylinder. Maya dumps a new cylinder icon on the shelf.
You can play about with the shelf using the icons on the far left. The Shelf Editor, which you can access from the menu by holding down the left mouse button over the little black arrow, allows you to edit the shelf's contents directly. You can also create a New Shelf from the same menu, and select any of your configured shelves using the funny icon above the black arrow. I guess it's supposed to be a shelf. Looks more like a loaf of bread to me. Last word on the shelf: to remove an icon, just middle drag it to the trashcan on the far right.
Now click that new cylinder icon you just made.
Change Subdivisions Around Axis to 6 and press Create. Here's the "cylinder" Maya makes for us. In 3D Studio MAX this would be an NGon with 6 sides.
You already know how to move, rotate and scale the whole cylinder. To manipulate faces or vertices individually you must right click on the object and choose Edge, Vertex or Face from the context menu.
To select the whole object again, choose Select from the menu.
There are, of course, shortcut keys for each individual component:
Don't worry about Vertex/Face and UV at this point.
OK enough theory let's do something. Enter vertex selection mode and draw a selection box around the top vertices of the cylinder:
Now you can scale the vertices (hotkey: R) as usual:
Next, deselect three of the vertices:
We're going to merge the two remaining pairs of vertices together. To do it we'll use the Snap to points command (hotkey: V) to move the vertices into position and then merge them. You can find the Snap to points icon in the top toolbar of the Maya main window.
The Snap to points icon: 
You can click this icon to stay in snap mode but it's best to toggle it. Hold down V to enter snap mode and keep it held down as you enter move mode (hotkey: W) and drag the red manipulator towards the centre of the cylinder.
As soon as you click that manipulator, the vertices go haywire:
Don't panic! Don't release the mouse button just yet. Move the cursor to the centre of the cylinder. The vertices will snap into place eventually:
What's happening is Maya is aligning the selected vertices with the point closest to the mouse pointer. When you clicked the red manipulator, the mouse was close to the vertex on the right of the screenshot above. So the selected vertices jumped into line alongside it. Notice how there was a straight line connecting the selected vertices and that one point.
As soon as you dragged the manipulator towards the centre, the mouse pointer got closer to the centre vertex and so the selected points zapped into place.
Snapping to points is a very convenient way to line up edges and faces. You just have to get used to the way the selected points will warp from position to position as the mouse pointer passes near other points. You'll want to work at a high zoom level and be careful which axes you move your points along. It's easy to get a whole bunch of vertices stuck together if you don't watch what you're doing.
The next thing we'll do is merge the vertices. This is the same as collapsing them in 3D Studio MAX. To see that we've merged them, we need to show the scene's polygon count. Hold down space. Maya overlays the Hotbox, which is a floating menu containing the most commonly used tools for the mode you're in. From the hotbox you can access the Display menu and from there choose the Heads Up Display submenu. Check Poly Count.
Note that this is exactly the same as accessing the Display menu from the Maya main window but it's a lot more convenient, especially if you have separate viewport windows.
Now
select the Merge Vertices option box from the Edit Polygons
menu. If you don't see it either in the hotbox or the main window menu, it's
because you aren't in Modeling mode. Select that mode from the
Status Line as shown.
The default threshold for the merge vertices tool is zero. This isn't very convenient, as it means no vertices will ever be merged (doh!), so set it to some small number. Don't set it too high or you'll merge other vertices you didn't want.
After merging you should see the vertex count in the polygon count overlay decrease. Undo the action and redo it to check!
Next time we'll look at faces and edges.
| intro | part 1: Setting the layout | part 2: Editing basics | part 3: Vertex manipulation | part 4: Face manipulation | part 5: Materials, texturing and UVs - (i) | part 6: Materials, texturing and UVs - (ii) | part 7: Materials, texturing and UVs - (iii) | part 8: Final notes |