The conditions of meshing and contact in hypoid gear drives depend substantially on the machine-tool settings to be applied. Determination of gear geometry is the first step in the design process of a hypoid gear drive. An approach for determination of basic machine-tool settings for face-hobbed and face-milled hypoid gears is proposed, covering the cases when the gear is generated and nongenerated. Gear basic machine-tool settings are determined from the blank data that can be obtained from application of Standard ANSI/AGMA 2005-C96. Some machine-tool settings are determined analytically considering the imaginary generation of the gear by a crown gear. Some other machine-tool settings are obtained numerically in order to provide some given blank data as the normal chordal tooth thickness and the normal pressure angles of the gear teeth. The developed theory is illustrated with numerical examples.