When making a 3d object, sometimes the goal is to make this object as realistic as possible. One of the feature which applies a certain realism to the clearcut geometry provided by Maya is to round the edge of our meshes.
This is normally fixed during the modelling stages of the workflow but what if something is missed and the due date is far to near to consider yet another render? Have no fear, Rounded corners are here.
Rounded corners are a texture feature in mental ray feature that, using normals, alters the bump map of said geometry. It can even blend two separate pieces of geometry together, provided they both have the rounded feature in their material.
Even more impressive is that this blending process can occur between different materials.
This is plugged into the overall bump of a mia material and the base layer of a mila material.
Bear in mind, this is a quick fix, not an ideal solution. Only use this when absolutely necessary to avoid reliance on a unreliable way of working.
Art and animation in the 3rd dimension 