I have only a couple of months worth of Maya knowledge, so I’m hoping someone can help me very easily with this problem.  I have a polygon, and whenever I try to do the “Append To Polygon” tool, I end up with a screwed up plane created by it.  I am guessing this is caused by messed up normals.  I have little or no experience with normals, so I need this help, and also, could someone explain what normals are, and how to adjust them?
Thank you.

22in Samsung T220 flatscreen and 17in. Dual Setup
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.7 Ghz
4gb DDR2
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
Wacom Intuos 3 Tablet and Pen
Windows Vista Home Premium
Maya 2008 Unlimited
Combustion 2008
Photoshop CS4 Extended
Cleaner XL

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thats not an issue with normals, normals dictate how light bounces off of a surface. If your normals were messed up your surface would have awkward shadows, be dark where they should be like, vice versa, etc etc.

what appears on you screen, I assume you are talking about the pink face? is simple the face that is going to appear on your object.

this is 100% a normals issue

surface normals dictate which way a polygon is facing. If you turn backface culling on it will show you exactly what surface normals do.

A polygon can only face one way at a time. If you have a polygon with a flipped normal it wil not always cause wierd shading and be obvious like xioin suggests, they can look totally normal uuntil you try and use modelign tools on them

Thats what is happening with the pink face. You have to get the normals of the surface all facing the right way (in this case outwards) before you use append polygon.

In the polygons menu set you can select faces and flip the normals the right way round

This is a bad geometry build issue, the append tool won’t work until you fix your planer issue.  First go through and clean up the geometry you have.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
~Walt Disney

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Okay, this is what it looks like with backface culling on.
Thanks for all the halp, I figured it out.
I’ll probably be back for more help, so watch out!
Thanks!

22in Samsung T220 flatscreen and 17in. Dual Setup
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.7 Ghz
4gb DDR2
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
Wacom Intuos 3 Tablet and Pen
Windows Vista Home Premium
Maya 2008 Unlimited
Combustion 2008
Photoshop CS4 Extended
Cleaner XL

	Attachment

This is what I got so far on this model.

22in Samsung T220 flatscreen and 17in. Dual Setup
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.7 Ghz
4gb DDR2
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
Wacom Intuos 3 Tablet and Pen
Windows Vista Home Premium
Maya 2008 Unlimited
Combustion 2008
Photoshop CS4 Extended
Cleaner XL

	Attachment