Hard Surface Modeling
 

Hello,

I was wondering if there was anyone here that could guide me on some techniques on hard surface modeling. Right now I am doing Kurt's mech tutorial and I have been using the split polygon tool to create the look of tight machined corners. Up until now that has been a labor intensive way to go about makeing corners sharp. I would think with the advanced nature of 3D modeling software there would be a simpiler way to do hard surface modeling for both increased speed and keeping the poly count low. For the mech using split polygon is fine but I work at CAT and I was thinking about trying to model one of our machines which is much more complex than the mech tutorial so I need to get pretty good at hard surface modeling if I want to finish by the time I retire :) Anyone have any suggestions? Just yesterday I found the "offest edge loop" command and that speed's up the process a little but I spend a lot of time deleteing the edges that Maya draws incorrectly, normally the edge at the end of the loop.

Here is a picture of my mech, the body is still in the initial stages and I was having a little fun with materials and rendering but its the most complete render I have right now.

hey you might be interested in trying the bevel tool keep the size of the bevel to lke .3 apply it to your shape and then smooth it. This gives you a great look as well . also in maya 8.5 there is the edge loop tool which could also help you hope this is useful.