3dsmax's "Shape merge" equivalent for maya

Cathodeus

Hi,

Is there an equivalent to the 3dsmax's "shapemerge" function into maya. I founded "Project curve on mesh" but it don't cut the mesh with the curve ... And i don't know why the projected curve is smoothed (i don't want that !).

So after i tried the "SplitMeshWithProjectedCurve" but it don't just split the mesh with the curve ... Instead everything outside of the curve is deleted ...

I just want to split ! How can i do that ?

Any idea Maya friends ?

Thanks in advance.

BARDLER

Could you show what the tool does in max. I am not entirely sure what you mean.

BARDLER

Maya's project curve only works on Nurbs surfaces. So you could project the curve onto a Nurbs surface and then convert to polygons, but that is kind of an annoying workflow. Your other option is to make your mesh "live," and then any curve you draw will be snapped to the polygon surface.

Autarkis

Aside from what Bardler said, there's really no way in Maya to do a shapemerge in Maya. You could always do a split mesh with projected curves and then bridge those border edges... if you separate the polygons surrounding the area of the curves, you'd minimize the deleted face problem..

rebb

Maya 2012 ( and up ? ) has "Project Curve on Mesh" and "Cut Mesh by Projected Curve" inside the "Edit Mesh" Menu.
Are these the droids you were looking for ?

Autarkis

Rebb, project curve on mesh, just does that project the curve on the polymesh without doing anything cuts to it. Split mesh with curve does cut it but then deletes the faces adjacent to the cut when there's not enough edges on the mesh..

rebb

Yes, you have to apply one after the other to make the actual split.
Do you have an example that shows the face-deletion happening ?

I only did a quick test with a box and a nurbs circle which worked fine, but maybe it's too simple.

Autarkis

Its funny that you said that Rebb because when I first saw the post I thought split mesh with curve was exactly what he needed but said it wasn't working.

I tried it on maya 2012 with a simple cube and a quick star like shape projected onto a face of the cube. When you split project the mesh with it, that face gets deleted and what remains is the part of the face that is inside the nurbs curve..kind of like a boolean operation. However, as soon as you add edges running through that face so that it's able to "support" the cut, everything is fine.

rebb

Hm you're right, it seems to have problems with single faces here too.
My first test was projecting on 3.

Two are fine as well, maybe the curve split algorithm needs to touch at least 2 faces to work properly for some reason.

Wonder if they fixed this problem in 2013.

Cathodeus

Hey thanks dudes !

This is working !!! But it expect a few cut to support the shapemerge !

Better than nothing !

peanut™

Yeah shapemerge are pretty sweet under Max, hhmm but this made me realized that you have to actually project a Nurbs curve on a Nurbs surface in Maya for this to work.

With a ll the plugins coming for Maya is there not a way to achieve this in Maya using polygons only ?