This course will look in the fundamentals of modeling in Maya with an emphasis on creating good topology. It's aimed at people that have some modeling experience in Maya but are having trouble with
complex objects.
Well, the way I'd go about it would be to firstly model the barbs using a poly helix. After I'd done that, I'd draw a curve that was going to be the coil of wire that the barbs are all stuck on. When I was happy with the shape that it took, I'd use the AttachToMotionPath command. If I hit play at this point, the barbs would appear to wind their way along the coil of wire. From there, you'd do an animation snapshot - setting it to take a 'snapshot' every so often, spacing the barbs out at pleasing intervals. Then, (finally) I'd make a circle and extrude that along the big coil, giving you the bit of wire that all the barbs are attached to.
Each barb is really just two coils, each ending with a straight bit that's sharp on the end. The gap between each turn of the helix is the same as the thickness of the wire. So, I'd make a helix that rotated 360+180 = 540degrees. Then I'd extrude the two faces on the ends, to give the the straight bits that stick out and jab you. After I was happy with that, I'd duplicate it and rotate by 180 degree and Presto! There you have 1 barb. (that needs a little tweaking, to make it sharp and not so perfect looking)
As for the big coil of wire that all the barbs sit on, I'd use the cv curve tool to draw the shape I wanted - I'd just draw a straight line with a vertex every grid line at least 13 times. Moving the right ones up, down left or right will give you a helix.
From there it's just a matter of adjusting the orientation of the two, so that when you AttachToMotion path, the barbs wind their way around the coil, keeping the hole in the middle of the barbs pointing in the same direction as the path curve.
Do an animation snapshot, and that's all the tricky stuff done. You'll now have a whole bunch of barbs that are floating in mid-air just waiting to have the wire pass through the middle of them.
Draw your circle, then extrude along the path curve..
by the way, i dont think they the army etc use barbed wire, they use razor wire which is 100x sharper. ived fell into barbed wire when i fell off a bike and its not a great site =\ luckily all my cuts have healed and you cannot notice it
what is it with us? we always stay up late lol... :p
Well i made the barb .. but can't understand the thing with the motion path ... i attach the Barb to motion path and it just animating and move over it ... can u explane more detail just that part ... coz im noob about 1 - 2 months maya ..
Alrighty then, looking good. It's a bit big in the middle, but not as bad as my first 6 goes :p
I've since found a way you might find easier than the animated snapshot.
Just go through the time-line frame by frame.
When it's at a position you like, hit Shift-D to duplicate it
From there, just keep stepping through and duplicating it each time it's in a position you like.
The advantage of doing it this way is that you can rotate the barb around its LOCAL y axis before you do each duplication to give it a bit more variety. Trying to rotate the parts after they've been put in place can prove to be a bit of a nightmare.
However, to answer your question.
*)Set the time back to 0
*)Select your barb, Open up the Animate->CreateAnimationSnapshot option box
*) Set the Time Range to "Time Slider"
Now, if your time range was set to 24 when you created the motion path, it will take 24 frames to go from one end of the path to the other, right?
So, each frame it will move 1/24th of the way along the path. The option called INCREMENT allows you to specify that a copy will be created every so many frames. If you set this to 1, there will be a new barb created at the same spot the barb is in, EVERY one of those 24 frames.
If you set this to 2, then a copy will be made only every second frame, to 3 every 3rd frame and so on.
To be honest, it had a bit of a bugger of a time remembering how to use the tool (dunno why - it's easy when you've got it) The option I mentioned first, while taking longer, gives you much better controll over spacing and orientation.
If you find that the step between each frame is too large, then just go back to the part where you AttachToMotionPath bit and set the number of frames in your time line to be bigger. i.e Bigger number of frames to get from one end to the other, smaller step per frame.
Just re-read your post, now I'm not so sure where you're getting stuck.
So here-you-go, here's the tute that I learned MotionPath and Animated Snapshot tricks from. Dunno where I got the tute from, so here's the whole thing.