Maya EP Curve not working in Side View

Guilliow

Hi! I'm newbie in 3D and also in character modelling. I wanted to start a character I painted and model it in Maya. I took the painting and placed into the program's background, in Right View. I wanted to start it by making a plane with the EP Curve Tool (dunno if that's the correct way to start it). But when I'm in side view, I point with the Curve tool and nothing happens. I just want to draw and create a plane like in the image I attached (the plane is painted too, dont get confused).

The weird thing, is that if I move the camera in the normal view, I can create those points, in a non-locked view.

So, is that a perspective problem? Should I change some settings?

throttlekitty

By "Right view" do you mean the orthographic view, or perspective view aligned to the right?

Guilliow

I mean the view from the right, yes, the locked one

Scruples

It might be that your tool is working but you can't see it because it is being covered up by the reference image, you can edit the positioning of the image plane by selecting whichever camera it is attached to, side in this instance. selecting the tab imagePlaneShape1 scrolling down to Placement Extras and changing the Image Center. Right now they will all be 0,0,0 by default they correspond to XYZ right now you want to move it further away on the X axis so change it to -1,0,0.

I hope this helps and if it doesn't atleast it is something we can check off as not being an issue.

I recommend CVs (control vertices) for this as you have more...control.

Guilliow

Ow thanks! that was the key!!
1 more question:
How to close the curve? I mean, to fusion 2 curve vertex in 1.

After all, i dont know for sure if i'm doing right starting to model like this.
But thanks again!

Scruples

There is really no right way, just faster ways, I have seen people start a mesh the same way you are doing.

Personally I would model that using box modeling, basically create cube, place at 0,0,0 and if it is symmetrical (can't tell) I would cut cube down the middle and delete half, duplicate instance and change its X scale to -1 so it is mirrored version of the original. And then continue to use the 'interactive split tool' (worst name ever), extrude, insert edge loop, and collapse tools. along with just grabbing and deleting edges that I don't want that is all I really use 99.999% of the time, (I guess merge vertices and append polygons are the other 0.001%.

Just going around the net looking for a suitable video to link you but they all seem to be pedantically slow, I heard digital tutors is good (never watched any). Either way Goodluck!

Guilliow

I'm doing that way in fact!
thanks for helping!

onionhead_o

you can try using create polygon tool to do the same thing. then fix the ngon with split polygon tool