A polygon is a three-four sided plane of geometry that makes a face on an object. Polygons are the most commonly used geometry type in 3D. While polygons are commonly used for all types of objects, in order to create very smooth surfaces with polygons means that you’d need to add a lot more geometry than you would with either NURBs or subdivision surfaces.

NURBS stands for non-uniform rational b-spline (NURBS). NURB splines are curves used to created smooth, minimal surfaces and geometry. NURBS are commonly used for very smooth objects because they don’t require as many points to create the same look as polygon geometry would. A NURBS surface always has four sides that are defined by control points.

Subdivision surfaces, which are sometimes referred to as NURMS (non-uniform rational mesh smooth), are closely related to polygonal geometry. Subdivision surfaces use an algorithm to take polygon geometry and smooth it automatically. For example, in the image above you can see the polygon cage around the smoothed subdivision surface. You can think of a subdivision surface as a mix of polygonal and NURBs geometry.

A triangle is the simplest polygon that is made up of three sides or edges connected by three vertices, making a three sided face. When modeling, triangles are typically a polygon type often avoided. When creating complex meshes, triangles tend to pose a problem when subdividing geometry to increase resolution, and when a mesh will be deformed or animated.

A quad is a polygon made up of four sides or edges that are connected by four vertices, making a four sided face. Quads are the polygon type that you’ll want to strive for when creating 3D models. Quads will ensure your mesh has clean topology, and that your model will deform properly when animated.

An n-gon is a polygon that is made up of five or more sides or edges connected by five or more vertices. It’s important to keep in mind an n-gon is typically related to a five sided polygon, but it’s not limited to just five sides. An n-gon should always be avoided, they often pose problems at render time, when texturing, and especially when deforming for animation.

An Edge Loop is a series of edges connected across a surface, with the last edge meeting the first edge, creating a ring or loop. Edge loops are especially important for maintaining hard edges in a mesh, and also for more organic models.

For example, in order for an arm to deform properly there will need to be edge loops on each side of the elbow joint so there is enough resolution.

Beveling is the process of chamfering, or creating rounded edges on a mesh. Beveling expands each vertex and edge into a new face. In the real world objects rarely have completely hard edges. Beveling helps to lose some of the computer generated look that comes with 3D modelling.

Extruding is one of the primary ways of creating additional geometry on a mesh. The extrude command allows you to pull out extra geometry from a face (“polygon” in 3ds Max), edge or vertex.

For instance, you can use the extrude command on the face of a simple cube to pull out the geometry needed to create fingers. These additional extrusions can be edited and manipulated just like any other area of the mesh.

The pivot point is the point on a 3D object where any rotation, scale, or moves that you do will occur from. This pivot point can be moved to any position on the model. For example, placing the pivot point on the hinges of a door will tell the computer where it should rotate from.

Surface normals are used by your 3D application to determine the direction that light will bounce off of geometry. This is very helpful to get control over how the light reacts to certain materials on your 3D objects.

When working with a 3D set you will often need to create duplicates of a single object, whether it’s hundreds of trees or fence posts. Doing this however can greatly increase render time, because the computer has to calculate all this new geometry. Instead of creating a duplicate of an object, you can create an instance. Instances are copies of objects that derive all their information from the original object; because of this the computer only has to calculate the geometry for the original object. It’s important to keep in mind that you can’t edit an instances shape on its own. If you edit the shape of the original object all of the instances update to reflect that change.