# Face Details

## Overview

A face is a polygon defined by connecting vertices in 3D space. In Maverick Model 3D, all polygons are triangles. Any geometric shape that is more complex than a triangle is composed of multiple triangles. Faces may be drawn as filled polygons or as wireframes, depending on settings in the View menu.

All faces are one-sided. When a triangle is drawn as a filled polygon, the side that faces the camera is drawn in a light gray color. The side that faces away from the camera is drawn as dark gray.

Some renderers do not draw polygons that face away from the camera (this is known as back-face culling). In Maverick Model 3D, you can enable or disable drawing of polygons that face away from the camera.

A face's "normal" is a line that is perpendicular to the plane of the polygon. This line defines how light reflects off of a polygon, and also helps the renderer determine if the polygon is facing the camera or not. If faces are connected to each other, the normals can be averaged to make the edges where they connect appear smooth. You cannot directly manipulate a face's normal, but you can influence the averaging calculations by assigning faces to a group and then changing the group properties. See the Group Window for details.

## Creating a Face

Faces are created implicitly when more complex geometric shapes are created. Select any tool that creates a geometric shape (such as a cube, sphere, or cylinder) and it will create new triangles which combine to form the desired shape.

## Other Face Details

To increase the level of detail, one face can be subdivided into four faces using the Subdivide Faces command.

## See Also

- Vertices
- Meshes
- Normals
- Groups
- Materials
- Texture Coordinates
- Texture Projections

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