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mitralone
10-26-2004, 07:50 PM
Hello everyone,

I am a Max user for 3 years and I am learning Maya for a week now.

In max, I mostly do architectural building stuff, etc(laying marble on a floor, designing a table, etc). In Max, I usually start by a 2D technical drawing and then extrude it to 3D.

Now, can I do the same in Maya? If yes how because I can not find regular drawing tools anywhere. Say I want to draw a shape which is a combination of a semicircle and a rectangle. How do I do it? Or lets say I want to draw an irregular shape.

Please help on how to do it because I don't want to use Max for this and Maya for that and etc. I want to use one program for all my modeling.

Thanks for all help.

MitraloNe
maninflash
10-26-2004, 07:56 PM
You can use "create polygon tool" to draw in the top view, then use "extrude polygon" to extrude your shape.

Also, you can use EP or CV curve tool under Create Menu to create curves of any shape, then use the Loft to extrude or loft that through a motion path which may be a simple line in the Y axis or a curve in all directions.

hope that helps :)
boboroshi
10-26-2004, 11:29 PM
HAving done the same thing you are doing now, I basically went from a polygon workflow to a nurbs based workflow for a lot of the architectural stuff. DWGs and DXFs tend to come in wth an insane amout of CVs, so I began tracing them over with the EP or CV curve tool (generally for TOPOs). I do with Alias would work a bit on theirdwg importer, but it's close enough for government work.
mitralone
10-27-2004, 07:19 AM
Hi there,

Thanks for all the comments. They are really valuable to me as it showed me the way for many of the problems. One question though. Can you use the CV curve points to make hard edged shapes instead of curved ones?

Second, I started using the primitives like 8 sided cylinder instead of an octagon etc. The only problem is going to be with complex shapes I guess. Anyway, if you have any other suggestions, please post.

And, hwo do you trace y the way? A little detail or some insight please.

Mitra
NitroLiq
10-27-2004, 01:50 PM
Can you use the CV curve points to make hard edged shapes instead of curved ones? Yes, as you're drawing your curve and placing the point you want the hard corner at, click on that point 3 times and it will make it sharp. Read up on curve tool settings also if you're unfamiliar...using linear as opposed to cubic...ep vs cv...etc.

how do you trace by the way? A little detail or some insight please. Lock the curves you imported from the other program be it CAD, Illustrator, or whatever on a layer (set to reference or template), then in one of the view ports start tracing over it with the curve tools.

DWGs and DXFs tend to come in wth an insane amout of CVs, so I began tracing them over with the EP or CV curve tool (generally for TOPOs). You can always rebuild curves and add/delete CVs as need be.
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