Complete Maya noob here, so bear with me..

As a component of a larger model, I’m trying to create a jagged edge look on a sphere. I’ve extruded the edge inwards for some depth. What I’d like to do is maintain the corner ‘hardness’ (like an eggshell) while not degrading the smoothness of the sphere. Every attempt to add anchor edges (and the subsequent follow through quad’ing) crumples my sphere surface. I’m sure there’s something obvious and noobish I’m missing but I could really use some advice.

	Attachment

Have you tried selecting your desired edges and hardening the normals?

n8skow [FA]

depends if you are using smoothmesh preview “3” if you are, than you dont have enough anchors or the outer edges to hold the shape, try extruding these border faces and adjust the “offset” value.

alternatively if you are not using smooth preview than hardening the edge normals should work as desc above.

CG Generalist / VFX student currently seeking a full-time position or internship within a VFX house or production house around the world.
http://www.vfxforge.com

A good rule of thumb when modeling using sub-div or smoothmesh is, for every edge where you need a direction change or a hard edge, you will need at least 3 edges to achieve this, from your example image it looks like you only have 2 or 1, which will be causing the problem you have described.

CG Generalist / VFX student currently seeking a full-time position or internship within a VFX house or production house around the world.
http://www.vfxforge.com