Your best/most efficient methods of making curved poly pipes in Maya
There are of course, several ways to do this. I just wanted to get a read on what methods people use the most to create these (especially trying to take into account UV's). I've probably been using a very inefficient method of just making a straight pipe and then using a Bend deformer on it. Thanks!
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In Maya I always have to tweak it so the cylinder doesn't flip on complex curves.
What I do is create a spline to define my curve (I like using Bezier curves, sometimes I convert it or reconstruct it afterwards depending on the complexity), then I use a Paint Effects to attach a brush to it (Paint Effects > Curve Utilities > Attach Brush to Curves), then I tweak the settings to set it up how I like. What's tricky is to avoid flips in the mesh, to do this I mess around with the normal direction, or sometimes I actually activate the "Forward Twist" on the brush, this makes it be aligned to the camera, so you just have to align your camera right before converting to a mesh and deleting the history.
I'd still rather have a spline set up that I can have a mesh follow cleanly, without having to mess with conversion and such to avoid flips, but that just seems impossible in Maya on any curve remotely complex, would love to hear some solutions if someone has them.
hasnt failed me yet
Unless someone has found a good UV unwrapping method for curved pipes too
For unwrapping, I just use Roadkill pro, no matter how complex the curve, I just select a loop along the whole thing, split there, unfold with Roadkill Pro, then use the "straighten" command it has to make the whole unwrap straight, works perfectly and takes 2 seconds. Might me a free script somewhere that does it like that, would be nice.
there is a free script in maya bonus tools, that works almost as good as roadkill for shapes like this.
though for makeing the actualy pipes i tend to use a script called mopRenderableCurve, which makes pretty good UV's for the pipe also.
1) Use the Unitize function to separate each face in the mesh and have them squarely fill the 0-1 UV space.
2) Select the edges where you want your seam.
3) Convert the selection to UV's.
4) Invert the selection.
5) Use the Move and Sew function.
6) Go in the option box for Unfold and select Vertical as your unfold constraint (horizontal if your UV's are oriented that way.
7) Enjoy your nice UV's.
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http://www.bk3d.com/Ninja_Dojo/Dojo.htm
that was awesome, thanks
I find that Maya's UV tools are robust enough that I no longer need to rely on plugins like Roadkill or applications like Headus and Unfold3D. I do use 3DCoat's UV tools occasionally though, especially when I retopo as the tools are wonderfully integrated into the retopology process.