importing from Illustrator
 

Okay, I've used the pen tool to trace a logo that I wanted to bevel in Maya. I've tried saving as .ai format with older versions (3, 8, 9, 10) Ive also unchecked the compression option. Ive also tried saving and importing as an EPS and everytime it imports the curves a bit jaggy as you can see from the image. I've aslo tried going to "Create / Adobe Illustrator..." same jagged result.

The left side is how it imports, the right side is how it looks with smooth preview, which if I could get it to look like that than I'd be good. I've tried closing the curve, rebuilding the curve, inserting knots...all to no avail, if anyone can bail me out here I'd be forever grateful! Thanks!

Not quite following you? It imports. It smooths to how you want it to look. Is the problem that it is not beveling?

Thanks for the reply, the problem comes into play when beveling a smoothed object with letters with holes. The left side is unsmoothed again, right side is smoothed.

ah ic. I recall fiddling with this in the past. I will diddle around and see if I can get you a solution.

I put a video project together with my brother and I needed a funny intro so I took the Warner Brother logo and had it come forward until it appeared to hit the camera. The W teeters and then flips down so it becomes an M and the sash swirls in and around and read "Mulawa Bros. Production" then the whole thing falls apart and drops out of frame making lots of clanking noises. I could not find the avi but here is some of the test renders and configurations.

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x...on/th_mb01.jpghttp://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x...on/th_mb04.jpg

I made the letters and the frame using illustrator art and I believe the version of maya at the time was 8.5. I am looking at the files trying to remember the process. I'll post back soon.

those renders look good! Yeah if you could find out whatever you did to get that result I would be ecstatic! Please keep me posted thanks!!:attn:

okay heres the deal and this helped me solve a problem I have been having for a long time so I am glad you posted it.

1. You want to use surfaces>bevel plus

*** deleted a lot of rambling ***

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How to handle the bug that can come up when using bevel and bevel plus...

If you get this error

// Error: Value is out of range: 3 //

when trying to open surfaces>bevel plus options or you get all scrambled popup window for bevel options then go to create>text options and reset it and also go to create>adobe illustrator... options and reset it and things will work again.

I have been having this problem since Maya 8 and the only solutions were to delete my maya folder and let it get regenerated (losing all my custom settings in the process) or manually editing the user preferences file and deleting all lines with anything to do with bevel and bevel plus! What a pain!

Well when I went into maya and tried to import illustrator curves and run a bevel plus this came up again and in researching it I finally found the work around of just reseting those options.

This shows how focused autodesk and alias were on customer issues! This has been around since maya 8! and it's now maya 2010! When will this bug get fixed? Maya 2099? Which if autodesk does not get on the ball will be Modo 2099 and the problem will have never existed! lol

Anyway I hope this gets you back on track and if you still can't get it figured out just post a message and I will record an mp4 video for you.

Cheers

*** added

Bevel plus can generate both nurbs or polygon objects in a single step. The bottom is the letter curves.

The middle is the polygon version unsmoothed. You should never need to smooth objects created this way as you can control the tessellation of the model and ramp it up so it always appears smooth from what ever your camera distance is.

The top is the nurb version that gets generated and it is always smoothed. If you look closely it appears more tessellated then the poly version that is because with nurbs the default hardware tessellation is very low. That being said I usually have to play with the render tessellation to get nurbs looking correct. That is why I usually always generate polys. I rarely need to change the settings from default.

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x...02-46-18AM.png

Wow, Ill try this first chance tomorrow, you have no idea how much trouble you may have saved me lol thank you so much! I'll let you know how it goes, your generosity is beyond comprehension thank you!

Looks like to me the problem smoothing your model was that there most likely were NOT any edges connecting the in circle of the d to the outer edge.

I quickly did a model just by using your template and using the create poly tool to outline the outer part of the d. then again on the inner circle of the d. I extruded both. Then I made an edge connecting the top rounded edge of the d to the bottom rounded edge of the d. Then I used the boolean difference tool to subtrace the extruded circle from the d. Now my d has a hole in it and the hole is connected to the outer edge. I cleaned up the verts and did a bevel. Then I added a few anchor edgeloops and smoothed. It only took me about 5 minutes to do this. I'm pretty fast at modeling but it's a pretty easy way to do it I think.

Edit: I didn't spend time making it perfect but for your model, you should make it all quads before smoothing so you have a nice clean mesh.

check out my post above I added some stuff. Bevel plus is the way to go. It can generate both poly and nurbs objects in a single step. You can control the poly density so there is no need to smooth. If you want to smooth then the nurbs version is smoothed, but I find I often have to play with nurbs render tessellation to much so I tend to always go with the poly version and rarely have to modify the default mesh density settings.

I just tried out bevel plus on some curves ctbram...you're right. That's a really awesome tool. Gives really great control over the bevels and such and is really fast.

I must just be really slow lol, im not getting the smooth results you guys seem to be getting here...what exactly are the settings you are using for bevel plus?

I think the problem comes back to my curve being jagged to start with?

Heres the file im working with, maybe this will help...

to further illustrate what I'm working with here on the left is what it the traced path looks like in illustrator with just a few points and is very smooth. When I import that into maya is what I get which is shown on the right side. What am I missing here lol

here's the actual illustrator file...

It's all good.

Follow these easy steps using the .ma you attached....


1. delete the object you beveled leaving just the curves.

2. press the 3 key so see the curves smoothed (has no effect on the bevel)

3. open the bevel plus options

4. select reset settings

5. for your curves use:

bevel width .01
bevel height .01
extrude distance .1

these just happen to be good starting values for your curves so they are not all over lapping. You can extrude with the default settings then change bevel width, height, and extrude depth in the channel box. This is my preferred way to work. This way your settings stay at the default all the time.

6. this is the critical step....

open the output option tab and make sure polygon is selected. It should be the default and since you reset the settings it should be selected.

now here is the key step - change the tessellation method from sample to count and just leave the default setting of 200.

7. press apply....and bingo...

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x...07-16-46PM.png

and here is what you get upping the count to 400. Smooth enough?

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x...ender_1024.jpg