Maya - How to model crown molding around a corner?

allengingrich

I always run into this issue with things like crown molding and gutters on a house. What's a good way to do this?

Thanks!

musashidan

All 3d packages have some sort of Sweep tool. Basically a profile extruded along a path. The path can just be a spline extracted from the edges of the mesh that the mouding/gutters/etc will be attached to.

allengingrich

musashidan said:

All 3d packages have some sort of Sweep tool. Basically a profile extruded along a path. The path can just be a spline extracted from the edges of the mesh that the mouding/gutters/etc will be attached to.

Thanks, Musa. What about if I want it to have a straight corner intersection?

caffeineadic

Make sure to setup your project to the grid, change the grid spacing to what you need throughout the project as you work.
For crown molding I would use Surfaces and Curves tools.  Make modualr pieces, general architecture is standardized, so make stock 90  deg, 45 deg, etc. modular pieces, then copy and combine with straight pieces as needed

m4dcow

As mentioned above keeping stuff on the grid is good. I have a method that I use often, but it only works on 90 degree corners, but could be useful.

Booleans are also a lot better in maya these days and could be used on different angles.

allengingrich

Thanks, guys. Worked great. I actually figured out M4dcow's method probably while you were typing it. Works great!

throttlekitty

I started using this script for setting up corners, works like a charm for 90 degree angles. What usually works best for me on these is to make little prototype chunks that have the vertical UVs laid out and duplicate those around, like caffeineadic mentions. Things like Straight, Bend90in, Bend45out, etc Then I can just stitch the flat stuff and unwrap horizontally once the room is laid out.
edit: another related trick; sometimes it's easier to get a good angle with a shrink wrap to a plane instead of cutting faces. I've always been annoyed that the cut tools can't align to a grid or vert before doing the slice. But that's just my nit-pickyness.

Really late edit because I couldn't remember if shrink wrap actually did work this way (spoiler below)