basic problems

# 1 08-09-2006 , 02:23 PM

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hi guys
i'm new to maya, but i worked 2 years with cinema 4d.
now i'm trying my best to get into the maya world, but there still be some problems...
i started modeling a fat man (i will show u some wips as soon as i discovered how to render a wireframe). some people may wonder why the hell i should start with a fat man. i'm just interested in the human anatomy, especially the structure of a fat body. anyway, i'm here to ask some questions about modeling techniques.
i managed to get loops into my mesh and extrude faces, that was a big step. but now i would like to cut some faces, but i did not find the right tool. my target is to cut a face from a vertex to an edge, so i need a cutter tool that snaps to a vertex point. this is the general cutter tool in cinema which i miss in maya....
and.. how do i get to a smoothed view of my nurbs mesh?

thanks for help,
onetoe

\\edit:
sorry for any spam. i know those questions can be answered by the maya help guide.
i will come back with some real questions soon...

may cg be with u

Last edited by OneToe; 08-09-2006 at 03:25 PM.

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# 2 08-09-2006 , 06:05 PM

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yeah, these are kinda basic questions. But understandable.
Umm, for seeing the nurbs mesh as smooth as possible, simply hit '3'. This shows both nurbs and subdivision as smooth, usually.
I'm not too sure about rendering a wireframe, but you can do standard screen captures of shaded wireframes pretty easily. In a standard viewport, click 'Shading -> Wireframe on shaded'. Kinda a poor-man's method, but it works.
As for the cutting tool... it sounds like the tool you're looking for is used for polygons, but some of the other stuff you mention makes it sound like maybe you need a nurbs tool. If its for polys, what you're looking for is the 'Split Poly tool'. It shows up on the 'Polygon' shelf, as well as under 'Edit polygons'. If its for nurbs... there either isn't quite that tool, or I just don't know about it (either is extremely possible).

That help?

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# 3 09-09-2006 , 02:42 AM

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hi xander
thank u for help, that saves much time googling around and searching in the help files.
i knew about the screenshot possibilty of getting a wireframe pic but in cinema there was a way to render in wireframe mode, i think i could work around with the toon shaders.. but that's too far for now. i think a screenshot wil do it.

i'm a bit confused about the different types of primitves like NURBS, polygons and subdivs, i have to find a theoretical explanation about those geometry races...

thx, onetoe

the jpg quality is quite low, but i think u will notice the quality of the displayed text and lines in the viewport. i think that depends on my graphic-card and the way it's supporting openGL. does anyone know how to fix those "display-difficulties" ? i had those problems in c4d, too...
i pocess a ATI 9600 mobility radeon

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may cg be with u

Last edited by OneToe; 09-09-2006 at 02:45 AM.

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# 4 09-09-2006 , 09:20 PM

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the text looks only slightly blurry to me. The rest is fine. ( and your jpeg is probably about where it should be). If you have a lot of visual blurriness and stuff, you might check your monitor. That's the problem I had...
As for the different geometry types -
Polygons are objects made up of faces created by the lines between points. Any node (what maya uses to keep track of data) that's a polygon object, regardless of how it looks otherwise, will always (by default) contain the prefix 'poly'. So, 'polyCube', 'polyPlane', 'polySurface', etc. In a basic sense polygons can be considered the easiet objects to work with. However, polygons by nature are hard-edged, with corners; they don't do smooth well or at all. Subdivision surfaces were an outgrowth of this. Subdivision surfaces are effectively another way to smooth polygons (although really its more than that). Often, subdivision surfaces can be at least partially edited with polygon tools. To at least some extent, SubD surfaces are interpolated between points - that is, things are averaged. It helps give a smoothed, more natural flow to the object, although by nature this makes the computation involved more intense. However, unlike polygons, subdivision surfaces are limited in how they may attempt corners and edges; for example, hard edges cubes are impossible to obtain with subdivison surfaces - and ones with only slightly rounded edges require a large amount of extra detailing to actually limit how rounded the object is. That stated, some sharpness to edgess and other abrupt flow changes may still be achieved.
NURBS, unlike polygons, are entirely interpolated. That is, a true nurbs is more likely to be generated by an equation than a simple collection of points. NURBS are also often created by creating surfaces between two or more curves (which are themselves interpolated). While this lends itself well to things which have natural surface flow and which have rounded instead of sharp edges, nurbs cannot truly do corners or true edges (there are slight cheats that can be used to partially get around this, but most mean that at least part of the object is not connected in the effected region). So, while things like cars and many domestic products might be created in nurbs for the surface flow, sharp and pointy objects (like knives) are usually created in polygons.

Ummm... does that help?

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# 5 09-09-2006 , 09:44 PM

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hi xander
thank u for the theory lesson, that helps a lot!
in c4d we have nearly the same geometry types, but in c4d every type will end in a polygon object. i also used NURBS for creating organic shapes with splines (curves) but, my modeling ended in a polygon shape, because the modeling tools are simply based on polygon modeling - i used to define the nurbs way as a raw material production to be detailed by polygon modeling.
in c4d there is a deformer called "HyperNurbs", this takes your polygon objekt and just smoothes it in a NURBS way, but it does not convert polygons to spliney / curves, in fact it stays a polygon objekt.
i never had a problem with c4d's affinity to polygon based working, in the last year i did lots of gamedesign.

i've got a question to SubD Surfaces: do they work like our HyperNurbs? I mean, do they just interpolate new polygons between the existing in a smooth way to give the object a smoother look?

oh, i just found out how to use the geometry sculpt tool, it's amazing... it's a bit like zbrush in the way of defining a shape, i think..

thanks for help. onetoe

may cg be with u

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# 6 10-09-2006 , 07:13 PM

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Yes, in a basic sense your 'hypernurbs' are similar to subdivision surfaces - subD's are mostly smoothing polygons. However, they can usually be considered their own geometry type - for example, in maya, they obey their own rules, which include differences in how they must be textured. Umm, near as I know, you can't export a straight subD model to a game platform (however, I've never really exported anything to a game engine, so...).

A couple quick things about normal NURBS....
FIrst, I'm pretty sure that all objects in maya are rendered as polygons - that is, during the render process, and nurb object is converted to be a polygon. This has no actual effect on the actual geometry, and in many cases will have no major effect whatsoever. Just something to keep in mind.
Second - although you can do pretty much the exact same type of work with nurbs that you previously described, nurbs are considered their own seperate entity, and have some rather idiosyncratic tools. Playing around with them is probably the best way to get a feel for these objects.

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