Making a tire?

[malibu81x]

I was looking at a tire tutorial in 3D Max, so I thought I'd try it in Maya 7. I used polys to make it and I made it completely flat hoping to make it round after. It says in the tutorial to use the bend modifier. I found the bend modifier in Maya...but its for curves. Does anyone know how I could bend the tire? I'm kind of new to this software. This is a crutial step to my car and would be much appreciated if someone could guide me. Thanks!

[einollahia]

See this link:

Creative COW Maya Tutorials

[wild_coyote]

After you make the tire model, find the bend modifier in animation window and apply it to the tire. In channel box you will see that bend modifier is applied to the tire. Click on the letters and Maya will show you bend modifier options so you could adjust it. If it bends in the direction other than you want, pick the modifier in any window (modifier looks like a line), and rotate it.
I made my last tire using this technique. It's way better than using displacement tex. Render time is lot shorter.
As for Maya, it is a very complex program, way more complex than Max.
Anyway, try to model a car using nurbs geometry. It is a lot harder, but models look much better than poly's.
Good luck and keep working.

[Dennispls]

The way i make them is like this:

Create a segment that has the basic shape of a tire.
Use reference on how the tire tread is supposed to look like.
cut it out and extrude the tiretread.
Use the cut tool to make edges sharp after you applied a smooth modifier.
Now copy and paste this for example 32 times and weld the vertices in between.
(i usually snap the segments using the pivot that i snapped to a certain vertice)
Then as stated above me use the bend deformation tool to make it rotate in the shape of a tire.
Weld the vertices again and apply the smooth modifier with settings 2 or more for a smooth effect.
Note this is polyheavy so be patient