Hey did you guys notice that max calls faces polygons and polygons faces?  well that is from the point of view of me who prefers to use maya. more specifically a plane that is defined by 3 points in space which in maya is a polygon, max calls a face.  At least that is what it looked like in 3ds max 2009, and it calls a four sided polygon which is two 3 sided ones next to eachother a polygon, which maya calls a face.  anyhow they seem to be opposites of eathother, and since auto desk owns both now I hope that they make it consistent, and I vote for the maya way wich is polys have 3 verts and faces with 4 ( or more , if you roll like that, i don’t). Oh I just double checked and maya calls polys (what i was reffering to as poly’s) Tri’s, well I’ve confused myself so what is polygon count reffering too?  triangles or squares?  Im really confused now, so i’ll post this and hopefully get some help, I guess it doesn’t matter what you call them, unless you are trying to talk to someone about it.

In Max, what your saying is kind of true, but there are two different mesh types, and traditionally a Tri has 3 verts and a polygon has 4 in max talk...though the interface is inconsistant about this for sure....

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I have to admit that I’m not too familiar with Maya’s internal lingo, but I never had any problems understanding any of the Maya users, nor do I recall anyone that did not understand me.

So here is what I call them, and all I know do:

a point in space defining a 3d geometry- vertex
2 vertices – line… although I must say I use spline more often than not. I’m still not sure what the sp in front of the line mean.

3 verts connected form a tri
4 verts – quad.
5 or more- poly, or polygon.

Now face can be anything from tri up. Anything that forms a more/less 2d projection of a side of 3d object- is a face, as long as its not a (sp)line.

EoDEo

Ideas drift like petals on the wind. You have only to lift your face to the breeze.

Thanks Mike and eodeo for your input.
Im still in school and just learning maya and max.  so when talking about ‘poly count’ for like game models, I assume that they are talking about tri’s, is this correct?  I suppose that it is like adobe photoshop calling something an effect in one area and the same thing a style in another area. and I agree that there isn’t usually much confusion while working because, I normally don’t call them anything, i just use them.  So, the only time that it really comes up is if talking to someone about a model thinking in maya terms and talking about max, because the term face and poly are opposites in the 2 programs.  And I bring it up, because autodesk now owns both, and might or might not address this.  I have never used lightwave so dont know what they are called there.  But, there should be a common meaning of ‘poly count’ which, perhaps there is and I just dont know it.
maybe its just something in 3ds max 2009 where they call a tri a face and a quad a poly.
I think of a spline as having a posible curve associated with it as well as just a straight line, its been a while since i took a geometry class in highschool and they didnt mention splines then anyways.