Coffee Break Tutorial: NURBS in Maya Part 2

     Welcome back,person! For whatever your reason might be to actually come back here i might as well continue the NURBS tutorial. Cause,y'know,NURBS are a b*tch you probably need some help with it.
   
     Listen to me,human! You take these basics and knowledge to the extent of beginning a project... LISTEN I SAY! IGNORE THE TV!!! You might take these lessons here and put them to use for a modeling project or something. But remember, whati'm telling here only the basics,thanks to what you might be able to think your way through to a nice screeshot model. Not more. It won't be possible to animate a character made with these functions or techniques. Well,maybe it is possible if your character is a cube. Or a sphere. But otherwise,what i'm bestowing upon your brain meats is just basic modeling functions and maybe i'll later you show you a simple modeling session if i feel like it. That is all. Before you decide to run ahead of yourself like an imbecile on acid and try to rig the monstrosity you made, keep in mind that in 3D there's a thing called TOPOLOGY,which means there should be a proper way to adjust and create mesh and geometry so that the models would have a decent state for production. As in,there's a proper way of doing things that you'll need to keep in mind if you want to make it a big high-quality project. You can plan the topology in advance and then fix it later. You can also make horrible topology and try fixing it. But what you should know  is that i won't teach you to be a planned out tool or a lazy f*ck. My way of making things is that you think while you work and you fix while it doesn't annoy the f*ck out of you. So,in a sense, making,thinking and fixing is one process. There's always a clean up session that will make up for any minor mistakes. But what i'm trying to tell you,mortal,is that you need to think really hard during work and understand what you need to make. For example: You have make a character. In production houses there are always specific deadlines that won't be avoided even if you're too deep in it after making a minor mistake in the basic production. If you were hired as a modeler to make a character for a game. And let's say you either were to lazy to model proper topology for a model or you were hired as a rigger/animator and you were too lazy to skin the damn thing properly cause you were too busy waychin' Dr. Who on Youtube. The next guy that has to animate this monstrosity or put it in a game engine has to put up with this sh*t. They won't stop. If you have a few extra hours you might be asked to fix this. But if it's a huge production,no one will stop. Everybody will get payed for their work. But you will be fired. Here's an example of suck bullsh*t.

Yes,i was talking about you,2k Games. Your creepy ass elbows,the way people walk,how they are animated and don't get me f*ckin' started on the face expressions. You made a legendary game in to a big pile of human-worm babies.


Alright,that's enough of my rants. I'm pretty sure you get my point.


Now on to the tutorial.


In the last tutorial we went through how to edit the surface of the NURBS. Now we're gonna go through the process of how to edit the NURBS using the other NURBS geometry.

Let us continue,mortals.

Part 3


We will start with something funky called Booleans. You will find in the Edit Nurbs menu. It will have a drop down menu with other functions: Union tool, Difference tool, Intersection tool.

Part3.1 - Union tool


Let us start with a simple NURBS primitive box.

Now make another NURBS cube and position it inside the first one.

Now we will work with scene alone. You might as well save it cause you'll want to return to this state to test out other Boolean functions.

Now the thing is with NURBS Boolean function is that it works differently from the Polygon one. Deselect all objects. Choose any Boolean option. Choose an object that you to work as the main object,press ENTER,choose the second object,press ENTER again. This even allows you to work with several objects at the same time.

Let's start with the Union tool. That is pretty much self explanatory. By using this tool you combine two objects in to a single mesh. It makes dominant geometry depending on which cube you chose first and deletes all the inner geometry that was intersecting.

Next is the Difference tool. Again,by the domination of the first selected object or objects it deletes a part of the object that was the intersection with the other. In this situation the part where the cube was intersecting was destroyed together with the intersecting mesh.

And lastly the Intersection tool is basically i think you've guessed with your brain cell nerve connections. It generates the intersecting mesh between the selected objects and deletes the rest.

But do know that the objects you used are not deleted,they became invisible. Something like a control mesh for your new object.

Now the fact that you should keep in mind about Booleans is that as long as you do not delete the history,you can move the invisible the objects. That will affect the geometry created with Booleans.

By this point you might have guessed it for yourself. All that NURBS are are lines that make a simple,for say,a piece of "paper" mesh which is folded in to a form or consists of several "papers" to make an object. All that we made so far are just separate splines and planes. Too many objects and too many random objects on the scene. I'm not gonna go in to the system of how it works but you can attach the open splines together with Upper Menu>Edit Curves>Attach Curves. Or vice verse Detach Curves. Just remember to have selected the curves and remember to check where is the beginning and the end of a curve. Same with NURBS mesh. Select two trim edges and go Edit NURBS>Attach Surfaces or Detach Surfaces for the opposite.

I think you can understand how that works on your own,so i won't get too deep in to that.

Next,let us learn to blend several NURBS objects together with something called a Fillet. Edit NURBS > Surface Fillet.

This mostly is part of Advanced NURBS modeling. But we'll stay as easy as we can,ok?~<3

So hurry your butt up and make a NURBS plane primitive and a NURBS cone primitive.

Now push the Cone inside the Plane. Eh,ladies? Push the Cone inside?~ Eh? Eh?

Anyhow.

Select both of those objects and do the Circular Fillet option.

"Nothing happened" you say! "Well,who cares! Let us go have unprotected sex with prostitues!" says I. But then you all just beat me up and make me sit at the computer all day training my muscular tentacle arms by typing these lessons.

So anyways,the function is working if you are following every one of my commands in order to become victorious. But you need to pull up a bit more buttons than you might have thought. Open up the channel box.

What you're looking for is the Output Menu in the Shapes category.

Now change the secondary radius and THEN change primary radius both to about 0.2-0.1.

This what you should find on your screen boxes.

I think you understand where i was going with this.

I think should be enough for this part. Tommorow i will finish the whole tutorial with stitching your NURBS surfaces in to one single mesh and texturing whatever you have made.




"Think you got what it takes to be "creative"? Then welcome to the other side of sanity."