Maya - Polys

[Surfer]

hi,

does somebody know how i can set polys in maya?

or do you know a tutorial witch explains how to model a car without boxmodeling?

greetz

[Stea_demon]

Here you go.....

Tutorial.

This is a great car modeling tutorial using the "edge extrusion method" Not box modeling

Hope this helps!

Have fun!

Stea_Demon

[Surfer]

hi, thx but isn`t that also box modeling?

[Stea_demon]

NO! with box modeling you start with a Box/Cube and then refine it by adding/deleting and tweaking the cube until it's refined enough to take on the shape of an object.

The modeling used in the tutorial is "Edge Extrusion". You just take planes and or single Poly's and extrude along refs or predetermined curves.

If this is not what you are looking for then maybe you could be a bit more precise!

[greenvampire]

i usually start out by roughly sketching the car, and where I will need polys (on paper)... I then make a poly Plane with the desired amount of polys.... and then manipulate it. then I also use the edge extrusion method to get in details.


if you wanted, you could make a plane 1x1, and then start extruding edges from it to follow the shape of the car... I just stay away from that method in maya as it usually messes up the normals.

[Stea_demon]

Originally Posted by greenvampire

if you wanted, you could make a plane 1x1, and then start extruding edges from it to follow the shape of the car... I just stay away from that method in Maya as it usually messes up the normals.

Theres an easy way around that! when your modeling make sure that "Back face culling" is checked under the "View" menu in your view port. This will make the back faces of all the Poly's see through. Then if you have a face that is facing the wrong way, you can just select it and go to: Normals> Reverse Normals.

[greenvampire]

Originally Posted by Stea_demon

Theres an easy way around that! when your modeling make sure that "Back face culling" is checked under the "View" menu in your view port. This will make the back faces of all the Poly's see through. Then if you have a face that is facing the wrong way, you can just select it and go to: Normals> Reverse Normals.

its not really the back facing that I have a problem with, its the smoothing groups of the normals,
when using that method, everything appears to be totally un-smoothed, and when making a mesh that you dont intend to add a mesh smooth to, this means using the "Smooth Normals" tool....
it works to an extent, mainly I find that the 39, 50, 75 values are the best, but even still, I think it sometimes makes the mesh look bumpy, and the reflections can be weak using this method..... then again if there are methods around this it would be cool to know them lol

[scooter79rs]

@GreenVampire, setting the normals angle is a quick way of getting hard and soft edges but it doesn't usually. What I do depending what I'm modeling is either completely hard or soft. With cars or people select the whole object then soften normals the normals accross the whole mesh will be 100% soft and some areas will look like crap from the normals (they did around the arches of the mk2 Escort in the uploaded pictures) now select the edges that you want hard normals on (I.E. Body lines, wheels arches, etc...) basically anything where there is a hard edge on the car in real life, after they are selected go the normals menu and select Harden Edge. This for low poly, if you some where for an edge line to between 100% soft or 100% hard thats when you would use the set normals tool

On the escort model shown here I only used soften edges (across hole the whole car) then used harden edges on the body lines.

[greenvampire]

Originally Posted by scooter79rs

@GreenVampire, setting the normals angle is a quick way of getting hard and soft edges but it doesn't usually. What I do depending what I'm modeling is either completely hard or soft. With cars or people select the whole object then soften normals the normals accross the whole mesh will be 100% soft and some areas will look like crap from the normals (they did around the arches of the mk2 Escort in the uploaded pictures) now select the edges that you want hard normals on (I.E. Body lines, wheels arches, etc...) basically anything where there is a hard edge on the car in real life, after they are selected go the normals menu and select Harden Edge. This for low poly, if you some where for an edge line to between 100% soft or 100% hard thats when you would use the set normals tool

On the escort model shown here I only used soften edges (across hole the whole car) then used harden edges on the body lines.

I've been playing around with the normal smoothing method and to be honest I think that just using the full hard, and full soft method gives bad results.
I've found that if the mesh is built with the intention of using the smooth normals, it can be handled quite nicely....
for example on your escort, if you deleted some of the edges going over the bonnet, and then created another poly line running around the wheel arches (close to the line joining onto the body) if you then used the poly smooth at about 75, it would give a nice little smooth blend into the body, rather than the sharp edge you have by using the two extremes of the tool

*edit*
attached is an image of the buick I just finished making, I used the "Extrude Edge" method for some of this, as well as "Split Poly Tool", then used different values of normal smoothing, never lower than 39, never higher than 75....
its by no means low poly, (about 65,000 finished, although alot of that is in wheels and light / grill details), but it has no mesh smoothing... which I am canny proud of