modeling a logo from Illustrator
 

Hi there

I trying to model a logo of "the glitterati" (http://www.theglitterati.com/)

I've got a Illustrator vector file of the logo and have taken it into Maya.

I'd like to create a 3D neon sign effect so need to model the logo as tubes.

The best way i can think of doing this is by using Bevel Plus set to "Convex In" which gives me half a tube type effect.

The problem I have is Bevel Plus seems to only do half the job so I need to go in and clean up the geometry as the Bevel doesn't join the point where the Convex meets.

It also seems to create errors in some letters which has bits flying out, so I got and really clean the objects up.

When I have the cleaned half tube, I duplicate in the negative and this gives me my other half which I then have to join to my first half.

The problem with this is it just seems to take forever cleaning things up and then having to "merge vertices" to get a seamless joined object.

Is this the correct way to do this?

When I finally have my completed object I find it has too many polys so use the "Reduce" function which cause my object to have loads of Triangle shaped polys when there where not when I started. I had a perfect object made up of 4 sided polys but "Reduce" seems to create Triangles.

I'm still getting to grips with modeling so any helpful tips would be very cool.
Thanks
Rory

Unable to see the link because of settings however a neon sign mught be made easier by crating a subd cube primitive. Using the polygone mode in subd to create the letters. Then make everyting how you like(it will look like tubes), then apply your textures.

Convert to polies if needed.

You could try maybe extruding a nurbs circle along some curves that make up the shape of the letters....I think that this is how I would go about this.

;)

Yeah that would be the best way to do it and much faster. Just grab a jpg of the logo and copy it using the curve tool then extrude a circle along that curve.