Maya Extrude Along Curve Question

apollo580

Hello,

 

Im a relatively new Maya user and need some help. First issue is that for some reason when I try and move my wall model it twists and turns like crazy and destroys the model. I have no idea why its doing this.

 

The second thing I’m doing is creating a modular environment so I need all the different parts to connect perfectly. I have a corner piece and I need the wall to follow along the corner exactly so there aren’t any gaps. Between the wall and the floor. How can I extrude along the curve so it creates the wall along the 5 polygons of the curve? I need it to snap perfectly and be its on object. My picture is actually slightly off, the wall needs to be rotated so the side is the own that will be extruded along the curve. Thank you for any help!

throttlekitty

1) For curve extrusion, Moving both the curve and mesh that way gives you double transforms, hence the distortion. I'm not sure there is a straightforward fix for that. Typically you want to delete history to clear that extrusion when finished before placing (and copies) around the scene. But it looks more like you turned the twist value up in your picture. Select your cube, and view the extrude entry in the Channel Box to see all the attributes.

2) I think you're asking to extrude the "C" wall along the curve of the wedged shape? Extruding faces by curve doesn't work well here, since the path curve needs to be centered on the face selection. You'll also need to scale the curve out, and most likely lose more precision.  It would be nice to have a poly-only way of doing this stuff, the only thing I can think of is creative placement of profile planes and bridging them in series. ShellMod is also a good alternative, but you rely on setting the shape of the wall via a ramp editor, which isn't so bad either.

We also have the Birail tool, under curves/surfaces. Select the edges of a model and Modify>Convert>Polygon Edges to Curve, with the type set to Linear. For Birail you need a profile and path curve, and the points must meet between the two sets. In this picture, I used Birail-2 to also define where the profile starts and stops, since a simple extrude will fall short of 90 degrees because of the curve normals. It's four separate curves, but I chose to display the CVs. The tessellation is set to use those for generating polygons.

apollo580

throttlekitty said:

1) For curve extrusion, Moving both the curve and mesh that way gives you double transforms, hence the distortion. I'm not sure there is a straightforward fix for that. Typically you want to delete history to clear that extrusion when finished before placing (and copies) around the scene. But it looks more like you turned the twist value up in your picture. Select your cube, and view the extrude entry in the Channel Box to see all the attributes.

2) I think you're asking to extrude the "C" wall along the curve of the wedged shape? Extruding faces by curve doesn't work well here, since the path curve needs to be centered on the face selection. You'll also need to scale the curve out, and most likely lose more precision.  It would be nice to have a poly-only way of doing this stuff, the only thing I can think of is creative placement of profile planes and bridging them in series. ShellMod is also a good alternative, but you rely on setting the shape of the wall via a ramp editor, which isn't so bad either.

We also have the Birail tool, under curves/surfaces. Select the edges of a model and Modify>Convert>Polygon Edges to Curve, with the type set to Linear. For Birail you need a profile and path curve, and the points must meet between the two sets. In this picture, I used Birail-2 to also define where the profile starts and stops, since a simple extrude will fall short of 90 degrees because of the curve normals. It's four separate curves, but I chose to display the CVs. The tessellation is set to use those for generating polygons.

Thats perfect! You answered all my questions, I'll try out these methods and see what I get, thanks for the help.

Bartalon

For the first image, I'm not sure whether you are using Extrude with a curve, or the Bridge tool with a curve.  If you are using Bridge (and you just may want to for that specific example) you can adjust the Bridge Offset attribute until the polygon twisting is resolved.

For the second image, there is a tool call Wedge or Wedge Face.  To use it, you select a polygon and a edge (using Multi mode from your marking menu) and choose Mesh Tools > Wedge.  The polygon will hinge from the selected edge and create new polygons at whatever angle you need.  Wedge also works with multiple polygons and edges selected.

throttlekitty

Oh dang Bartalon, thanks! I forgot all about that one! (and I even thought to use the word wedge in my reply)