Help making planar shape out of multiple curves

#1

What is the best way to use these Bezier curves to create a planar polygon?
Have tried using bevel plus, planar,and loft tools/actions. Have also tried to project curves on a mesh plane and then split mesh with projected curve.
Unfortunately, am doing something wrong because I keep getting crazy results and the mesh doesn’t resemble these curves at all.

The attached image shows the curves making the shape I want to create into a polygon primitive. The center pieces of the shape will be cut out/hollow/negative space.

#2

first maya sucks with curves
Now just decompose your thing and use booleans.

#3

Onouris is correct - Maya’s NURBS are pretty much just for simple modeling and animation. They are what they are, and haven’t been updated or worked on in over a decade, as far as I know.

So here’s how you’d do it in Rhino - and I’ll send you the mesh if it will help, just message me your email if you are still stuck on this.

  1. Create curves
  2. Select curves, then type “PlanarSurf”
  3. Bam! Planar Surface
  4. Select surface, type “Mesh”
  5. Bam! Meshed surface (triangles, in this case)

I don’t mind sending you this one of course, but if you plan on using NURBS to model a lot in the future, you should definitely check out Rhino 3D. I actually do 98% of my arch/viz modeling in Rhino, and only a few weird organic surfaces (such as funky, stylized sink faucets or light fixtures) in Maya with polygons. Of course, sometimes polys are better and/or faster too, so it just depends on what you need to do.

Hope this helps or something. I know suggesting yet another piece of software isn’t ideal, but Maya’s NURBS are severely limited and you might get stuck a lot trying to make them work for modeling.

#4

Also, notice how much smoother and cleaner the curves are in the Rhino screenshot? Your Maya screenshot shows “flat” areas where the circular shapes meet the curvature of the teardrop. I think you’ll find Maya’s NURBS lack the precision you’d get from a dedicated NURBS package, and nowhere near the control. It took me about two minutes to set that shape up, mesh it, and screenshot it for you, so it’s much faster and easier to use something else in these situations.

#5

Bevel Plus is working here.
Be shure to select outer curve first than the rest

#6

most of the time the issue is that the curves cvs are not aligned, they all have to be on the same plane.

#7

Sent you an .obj file of that mesh. Hope that helps.

There’s no Rhino forum here to speak of so if you do end up taking up learning Rhino and need help, shoot me a message. I’ve been using it since version 1.

#8

Thanks so much for everyone’s time and help thus far. :slight_smile:

Have snapped the curves and tried to ensure aligned CVs–via the scale tool. As suggested, I selected the outside curve first and then the inside curves when using bevelplus.
Unfortunately, the bevel plus tool created a nodein the outliner but did not show any primitives. Any ideas what I did wrong?

Am trying out the suggested Rhino application. Does anyone know what applications do well with curves and nurbs and converting to poly mesh primitives?

A,

#9

it would be easier if you just upload your file here, rather than guessing every single possible scenario

#10

But if you make planar the circle.
Project curves to nurbs
using trim tool to select what you want to preserve.
What the problem is?.

After I usually convert to poly