please help with nurbs

[Mananetwork]

i would show you an example, but i'm rendering heavy frames..
To close off a nurbs surface, you have to make a full loft. The best way to control nurbs is to make alot of controlled curves.
It's hard for me to explain without showing pictures.
First start off with a simple curve, then duplicated 2 more and set one a bit above and one below this will give you a nice round curve as it comes across. Make a 3rd dup and put it farther back away from the 3 that you have close together. The great thing about lofts is you can select as much curves as you want to bind together. Individually select each curve in the order you want and hit loft. If it doesn't look the way you want, add some more curves to round out a corner or sharpen it. Once I'm finished my render i'll make some small jpegs

[Scott212]

super super big thanks

[luminis]

There are two approaches you could take to get an easy result. They both involve a common first step:

-- Select the isoparm that wraps around the cylinder located on the end where you want the tip of the wing.

Now, two options:

1.) Go to 'Surfaces/Planar'. This will create a plane that caps the cylinder flatly.

- or -

2.) Go to 'Edit Curves/Duplicate Surface Curves'. A standalone curve will be created. Set the scale of the duplicate to 0, 0, 0 on all directions making it practically a dot. Now select this 0 sized curve (try using the outliner to select it) and the same isoparm as before and go to 'Surfaces/Loft'. You can then delete the 0 sized curve to clean things up.

Of course, whenever there is a longer alternative, it means that it has certain advantages. In this case, using method 2 will give you a surface with a better setup so that it tessellates better when rendering, and you can adjust it several ways to create tangency between the surfaces.

Let me know if it works, or if you have some trouble with it. :)


EDIT: While I was writing this up, Mananetwork gave a different suggestion which is completely different to the two methods I explained. Depending on the complexity of what you're doing, using control cuves for lofting can be good as well. It is a good technique you should get acquainted with. Try that as well.

[Mananetwork]

Ok first off I took that cylider and made it into the thing you described. Then i took some of isoparms (select the cylinder and right click to get a menu pop up. Click on isoparm and just pick a isoparm off the cylinder) and did a curve/duplicate curve. Then moved it to the side and put at a point. I did this 3 times to get a good surface going. Ignore the bottom one :hmm:
http://www.cdis.org/~mana/1.jpg

[Scott212]

thanks for your explanations man - but pic didn't show up
:bounce:

[Mananetwork]

Then i selected the curves IN ORDER and hit loft and got this. You can see i'm lacking the number of isoparms in the wing. You can see by the big gap it's left :annoyed:
http://www.cdis.org/~mana/2.jpg

[Mananetwork]

So then i added 2 more isoparms just like the cylinder
http://www.cdis.org/~mana/3.jpg

[Mananetwork]

When i loft that it give me a much smoother surface
http://www.cdis.org/~mana/4.jpg

[Mananetwork]

It's hard to match it. BUT you can murge it. Click on the cylinder and pick the edge isoparm. Then hold shift click the lofted wing and pick it's edge isoparm. When you've done that go to surfaces/merge surfaces
http://www.cdis.org/~mana/5.jpg

This will make one nice surface. All you need to do now is duplicate it, mirror it onto the -1y axis and merge them again :thumbsup:

NURBS are VERY strong i Maya. When modeling I start off with nurbs all the time before converting to a final poly surface. Make sure you always save your curves before hitting your history bottom. They might come in handy 10 hours down the road when you wanna move 1 cv! :love:

[Mananetwork]

Sorry for the multi-posts. But they wouldn't let me put all the pictures into one reply

[Scott212]

that's awesome, I hadn't thought of that method. I'm using it now and it seems to be working! I'll give ya a peek when I get through it. Thanks again! :thumbsup:

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