A few questions about Maya - Modeling and UV Mapping

Benja_3d

Hey everyone, 

I'm new here and in the 3D world in general... my questions are pretty basic I suppose, but any help will be appreciated!

After discovering and trying to model some stuff with Maya, I have a few questions. Thanks a lot for you help and your time!

- Is there any reason not to use the multicut tool? I found my self using it quite often to add vertexes where I needed more, to draw a shape on a face to then extrude it... Is this a bad idea?

- I see a lot of people deleting the history from time to time. Why?

- Is there any reason to only use one square of the UV space? (0 to 1) I see a lot of people trying to put everything on that same square when the software actually has more...

For the following questions, let's take an exemple: Modeling a "simple" house:

- Would you suggest having it empty or filled? By that I mean: Could the house be an empty cube (4 wall + a roof = 5 faces, you could actually "go inside it from the bottom because there's no wall there" or would you suggest having it "closed" = 6 faces for the cube).

- Would you suggest modeling a the "core" of the house" apart from the roof? Is there any reason to avoid having multiple objects while modeling?

- How can we have the same UV shell for multiple objects (if they're the same of course)?

- Can I suppress UV shells from faces I don't need to texture? Does it work and is there any reason not to do it? Let's say I did my house and have a face at the bottom, that will be in the ground: I don't want to texture it cause we won't see it: Can I suppress the UV shell so I get more space for the stuff I actually need on the UV?

Do you have any tips about anything in Maya? I'm able to model almost everything I want now, but I sometimes find myself losing a lot of time in micro adjustments. I still struggle with the UV Map when I get complex shapes (rounded stuff mostly).

Ghogiel

1: The multicut tool is there to be used. If it gets the result you want and you can't think of a better, quicker or easier way then it's working as intended for you at that moment. Cutting faces up and inserting loops accounts for decent amount of bespoke modelling operations depending on the object. You might be faffing about in a more drawn out process or there is a more simplier solution/workflow right in front of you, You can do is ask about very specific instances of solving a problem in an easier way in the sticky threads. As well as keep learning and watching modellers on youtube who are getting the results you want to be able to get, they probably have a different way to do something than what you would have done, and pick up tips that way. 

2: It's because it makes maya slow and it can cause weird issues at times. But yeah for some reason there is a clear history mantra a lot of people epose, it's a bit over the top. History is there for a reason, but saying that Maya's poly modelling paradigm isn't really designed to make a ton of use of it compared to say max's modifier stack, so you don't lose much by clearing it most of the time. But imo I just leave it unless there is a specificreason to delete it and not the other way round.

3: Depends. Do you need bottom faces? Can you see the bottom of the house?

4: There are reasons to keep things all connected, but it all depends. How simple is the object? Do you need airtight meshes for 3d printing? Does it help avoid light mapping errors/bleeding? Does it help your UV efficency by removing faces/larger areas you wouldn't see? Is there bad intersections where the separate parts meet? etc There can be trade offs too, like making it all connected could increase vert count. Does it make it easier to model as separate parts? Is the realworld object also made of separate parts? Is either way going to have better or worse results when baked?

5: You just stack the shells on top of each other, Maya has a stack similar function in it's UV editor. Even some things that aren't exactly the same can be stacked, like say differing lengths of timber beams all stack to use a tiling strip of beam texture. And then in a more extreme scenario you might just be texturing with color swatch atlas and gradients and smashing a bunch of UVs into the swatch squares for cell shaded assets.

6: Yes that can be done in circumstances similar to that. Just scale that shell way down and stick it somewhere sensible, but then again you should be asking yourself why do you need that geometry if you can't see it?

Benja_3d

@Ghogiel
 Thanks a lot for your detailed answers. You're right, I should've numbered my questions... ! You clarified a lot of stuff for my beginner's mind. Thanks a lot for your time!