Maya 2012 bevel tool help

Dobbler

Hello,

I'm super new to modeling so hopefully this has an easy answer. I'm using the bevel tool to make little ridges on a cylinder. The first bevel worked perfectly, but the subsequent bevels after have inverted on one side and pushed into the object instead of out. I've checked the tool settings, and the good bevel and the weird one have the same values. Any ideas on how to fix this?



Thanks

s33th

Not sure if they changed the tool in 2012 - but did you delete your history / freeze transformations on your model in between bevels?

MadnessImport

Turn off 2 sided lighting and check the normals

Two sided lighting is under a few tabs but just hold space and click the lighting tab.

Did some testing and my guess is your normals are reversed.

Undo the bevel, turn on 2 sided lighting, The faces that appear to be black Select them and reverse the normals so that all the faces are one shade and redo the bevel

The normals MUST be reversed BEFORE the bevel or it wont work

Dobbler

Hmm, well I used the Vertex Normal Edit tool and it appeared that all normals were facing the correct direction. I've deleted the object history several times, and I ended up selecting the entire object, reversed the normals a few times, and was able to somehow apply a second bevel successfully. Now that I'm on the third bevel, things fell apart. When I'm not in high quality rendering the third bevel starts to remove shading and becomes see-through, although in wire frame the geometry is still there . Here's a render of attempt #3 with a Maya Software render.

s33th

I can't seem to recreate the problems you're having with your bevels... not to mean that it isn't possible, maya is a fickle thing.

Couple suggestions though - make sure maya is up to date and you have all the service packs and hotfixes installed.
Try selecting all the edge loops you want to bevel and bevel them at the same time.

or create one beveled section that you're happy with, duplicate it along your cylinder and merge it with the original section, repeat until you have all your desired beveled sections.

You could also just cut the edge loops by hand and then scale them by hand.

Good luck.