Smooth Mesh Preview

[jcoelho88]

Hello everyone,

I'm not sure if this will be useful for anyone but without using the Hydra plugin to get the scene complexity to work properly (its still in preview technology), not being able to get a smooth mesh preview is a bit of an issue when it comes to proper contact checks for animation.

What we have done as a work around is to use the "Edit As Maya Data" option to quickly convert the mesh in the stage to a Maya representation then turning on the smooth mesh preview to confirm the contact and then discarding the edits.

Its been working so far and there has not be an issue even when testing with animated mesh, just make sure that you are limiting it to the mesh you actually need to smooth to confirm contact, etc.

Here is an example using simple python code to take your prim selection and change the prims to Maya data for smooth mesh preview and a simple way to change it back after you confirm it.

# Allow for changing mesh prims to Maya data to preview smooth then change back to prims.

import maya.cmds as cmds

# Get selected prims from the Maya outliner with ufe paths.
selected_ufe_paths = cmds.ls(selection=True, ufeObjects=True, long=True, absoluteName=True)

# For each prim we set it to edit as maya data and sete the smooth preview level
for ufe_prim_path in selected_ufe_paths:
    
    try:
        cmds.mayaUsdEditAsMaya(ufe_prim_path)
    except:
        pass
    
    cmds.displaySmoothness(du=3, dv=3, pw=16, ps=4, po=3)
    
# Clear any selection
cmds.select(clear=True)

# Every maya node created is automatically added to  a set called usdEditAsMaya so its easy to track
# and then discard the edits as this is a temporary thing to view the mesh and we do not want any edits saved.
pulled_nodes = cmds.sets('usdEditAsMaya', query=True)

for maya_node in pulled_nodes:
    cmds.mayaUsdDiscardEdits(maya_node)

As a prim:

As Maya data with smooth mesh preivew:

I know that Maya 2026 has the hydra plugin available as a preview technology and maybe for this example it would be enough but I just thought I would share this quick workaround for getting a simple way to quickly check things like contact for mesh.

Cheers,

Jason Coelho