The Maya Toolbelt - NURBS Surfaces

The Maya Toolbelt by Michael McKinley
In this video, we talk a bit more about NURBS Surfaces - what they are made of and how they work in general.
Product Links:
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Music is by Lino Rise - Channel Intro Hong Kong
www.free-intro-music.com

[@shizyninjarocks]

We started nurbs in my class and they've been a total mystery to me. Thanks for the foothold.

[@JhgguitarsNl]

Maybe worth mentioning the strength of Nurbs, which is Geometrically accuracy... Afaik that is hard with polygons (2 tri-angles forming a quad)... I am used to model with nurbs (Alias, back in the day when Maya and Alias were from Alias-Wavefront....) and polygons are a total mystery me ;-) (would love to be able to make nice renders (not necessarily geometrically accurate)....)

[@3dmodeltr]

many people are asking, could you please make a video .Hello, I downloaded student version of 2017, but I am having trouble saving the file can you help .problem (The file being saved was created by a Student Version of Maya intended for personal learning only. If you save the file, this message will always appear whenever the file is opened.)

[@mayatoolbelt]

I'm not certain what your question is. When you are using a Student version of Maya, this message will always appear. That is intended.

[@tabby842]

Hi, I've been watching your Surfaces series, and was wondering if you knew anything about using more than 2 curves to generate a NURB along a curve? Specifically, you're familiar with how you use 1 curve to indicate a direction, a second curve to indicate the profile shape; and so, what if I wanted to use a 3rd curve to taper or drive the shape of this extruded shape? For example, if I extruded a cylinder, if I wanted to taper this cylinder to a specific shape what could I use? I figured this workflow has to be possible in Maya since they have implemented the "Curve to Tube" function in the bonus tools menu, which lets you taper cylinders generated from curves. Except you can't control the shape.

[@mayatoolbelt]

It sounds like you might be referring to the Birail Tool? I do have a video talking about it. You essentially have 2 "rail" curves and then you can have several profile curves along the rails (think of it like struts on a train track) and the surfaces flows along the rails and conforms to these profile shapes along the way.

[@tabby842]

Yeah I was hoping that the Birail Tool was what I would be looking for, but it seemed like it was just the Loft function that supports more profile curves. And it only seems to generate planar nurbs. From the research I've been doing it doesn't look to be possible to do from native functions.

[@mayatoolbelt]

In the options for all of the main Surfaces commands, there is an Output setting that you can change to Polygon outputs. Perhaps a Loft would work? You could create a series of circular curves and loft them together. The main thing you'd need to be aware of for the cleanest result is to have all of the curves have their Seam in a similar place and all flowing in the same direction (or your resulting surface could become twisted). All of your curves would need the same number of spans as well, again for a "clean" result. If they are differing in spans, it'd still work, just with some extraneous geometry here and there that you may need to edit afterward.

[@tabby842]

Yeah that was suggested to me before, but with the workflow I'm trying to achieve, having several circular curves to manage would defeat the purpose - unless there's a way to control all the circle curves cvs as if they were all 1 curve. But anyway, what I'm trying to achieve is this kzbin.info/www/bejne/hJ-annyJq7utgM0m19s