inner bevel only?
 

Hello, I need help on this, I just can't solve it. What I want to do is create a figure of 8 in 3D made from a tube cross section so that when you look at it face on it has a rounded surface rather than a flat one. I've made the shape as I want in illustrator and imported it, then I've applied "bevel plus" from the "surface" menu but all the options create an outer bevel making my figure of 8 fatter, what I want is an inner bevel, like you can create in photoshop, that doesn't make the overall size of the figure of 8 any larger.

As you know there are many ways of completing a task in Maya. I'm not quite sure I understand if this is what your looking for. Have you gone to help in your Maya menue bar & looked for "bevel"? When bevel opens, In there try Surfaces > Bevel Plus.

Many would create an 8 in Create > Text opts, or create an 8 with a cv curve & extrude it with a circle or square. In the 1st you could select poly. The latter would be a nurb, but if your comfortable with polys just convert it into a poly. If I'm on the wrong track maybe re describe the problem or post a photo.

There are other ways also. A good exersize & learning experience for this site might be creating a simple agreed on object. People could post Not necessarily their way of creating it, but a WAY to build it. A different technique each time ( though it may not be the easiest ) Then all can learn different techniques or approaches to the same problem.

Not just a modeling post, but Dynamics, Animation . . . I noticed something similar with "post an expression", or "post your secret" . . . Have fun

Yes doctor : ) you've understood what I want fine. Someone gave me some parameters to try within "bevel plus" and it worked OK though I got strange anomalies when I shaded the object which I'm sure are fixable. Your idea of extruding the figure of 8 with a circle is interesting but I can't find any information about it. In the end I created two torus's / torii and positioned them to make a 3D figure of eight, boolean unioned them and smoothed the join with some teaking of the vertices with good results. Here's the flat logo and the torii which once I've rendered I'll mask within the flat logo.

http://www.behindyou.info/test/ldc/ldcFlat.gif
http://www.behindyou.info/test/ldc/ldcTorii.gif

Thanks, Edwin

If I understand you correctly, turning of the create Bevel at start button should give you what you're looking for.

Thanks Dan, that was amongst the parameters I was given and it seemed to work, also I found by testing that whether the bevel was applied in front or behind the surface when you switch on and off the "Create bevel at Start / Finish" buttons was dependent upon the curve direction. Reversing direction flipped the bevel in front of or behind the surface.