Back to Maya

yeluis

Well I've used maya in the past and know how to do all the basic stuff in there. Im wondering right now one thing in specific though. In Max i can creat a spline and shape it to any form, then in the pullout menu i can tell it to enable in viewport and render which shows it like a "mesh" and i can still keep shaping t through the splines vertex. then i can adjust the amount of sides and itterations on the curve. I love this it gives me a lot of control over stuff like wires or similar stuff and saves me time. IS there anyway to do this in maya i cant seem to find a tutorial on it and havent been able to figure it out on my own

Snowfly

sidestepping a bit..create a NURBS curve and extrude it along the spline. convert the resulting surface into polygons, set the output to count/quads. now don't delete the history. just continue to edit the splines and the polygon surface should update in realtime.

so the controls aren't all in one place like in max's way of doing this, but that's maya for you.

Zergxes

Wow. Here is a really old tutorial, the fellow runs a loft between splines. I think its funny that Nurbs are making sort of a comeback. Nothing cracks me up more than when someone drops it like a buzzword.

http://www.3drender.com/jbirn/ea/HeadModel.html

yeluis

thanks guys ill try that nurbs one. what i was able to do is create a curve, then a circle shape and through surface do an extrude, i still cant get the control i want over this though. but im making progress i believe

malcolm

NURBS can eat a dick. Alternately if you don't care about poly count, just select a polygon face and a spline and extrude face along spline. Using NURBS yields a better result as it has more options for extrusions.

Snowfly

Yeah, in max setting the number of sides and segments you want on the resulting shape was one awesome feature. You don't have that control in maya, just a "oh i want this many polygons in it!"

malcolm

Actually you do. Open up the options box and set the number of sides.

Zergxes

Another Tutiorial with Nurbs:

http://www.polyextrude.com/tutorials/tutorials/modeling/character/CharacterModeling.html

Yeah, you can also change the number of spans in the channel box. There is also a rebuild surfaces option box.