Using Maya: Fixing objects with 5 or more sides.

When I made certain shapes, I began making silly mistakes. I thought if you I wasn't going to texture underkneath the object,  why subdivide it so much? So I ended up deleting faces that wouldn't affect the shape of the object. However, I did know that anything other than three or four sided shapes was BAD. I think I didn't notice it as much on this shape as it stayed square. However, wherever a vertex doesn't meet an edge, It needs to be deleted OR have an edge connecting it

So, to fix this particular base shape, I used the 'Split Polygon tool' which makes an edge between the odd vertexes. It also will subdivide the shape accurately.

To make the edges with the split poly tool, I just click on the two vertexes I wanted to add the poly too. In this case the edges on the side of the square above need to wrap around the base.

Here is the first edge I made.

Now that was sorted, I noticed the corners of the square had an edge that also didn't connect all the way around. To do this, I selected the 'edge' tool and deleted the affected edge.

I then selected the 'vertex' tool and deleted the unnecessary vertexes. Although the edge is gone, the shape still remains until they're deleted, so it is crucial that when deleting any edge, that the accompanying vertexes go with it.

I repeated this step around all the corners until I ended up with no wrong shapes or unused edges/vertexes.

Much better!