A guide to Maya for Sculpties?

Can anyone direct me to somewhere I can find more focused tutorials on the tools I need in Maya for creating sculpties?

I'm having a very difficult time finding any real documentation on NURBs, working with surfaces, and the Curve tools. I'm wanting to pull off some tricks like what you can do with polys with edge loops and extruding, but I have no clue how to make any of that work or aquire similar results with NURBs.

The Poly tools seem way more advanced than the NURBs and thus it seems everyone seems to favor them and completely ignore NURBs in Maya, thus making it very hard for people like me who are trying to learn Maya for a specific purpose.

Any help here would be very much appreciated, thank you very much. I'm open to any documentation that will help with Maya 2009 and working with NURBs.

Have you gone through the NURBS tutorials in the help file? That's really the best place to start.

As for the poly tools being more advanced, that's really not the case. They're just different, not any more or less sophisticated. NURBS and polys operate on different principles. The tools and techniques that apply to one aren't necessarily pertinent to the other.

The things you mentioned, edge loops and extrusions, are perfect examples. They have no place in NURBS modeling. Those things have no place with sculpties either, by the way. Sculpties are basically origami, the bending and folding of 2D rectangular surfaces in 3D space, which is exactly what NURBS modeling is.

Don't let the number of tools and options fool you. Just because the poly tools occupy more screen space doesn't mean they're more advanced. A paint brush has hundreds of bristles, while a pencil only has a single point, but is a brush more advanced than a pencil? Of course not. The two simply work differently, so they have to be designed differently. They're equal in their sophistication, even though one's got more stuff in it than the other.

Anyway, don't worry about things like curves right now. For sculpties, you're far better off deforming existing primitives (spheres, cylinders, toruses, and planes) than trying to loft from curves. If you start with a NURBS primitive, the geometry is pretty much guaranteed to to be sculpty-compatible. Once you start lofting, things can start to get wacky very quickly, especially if you're inexperienced with NURBS and sculpties.



By the way, The reason poly modeling is so much more common than NURBS modeling is not because one tool set is any better or worse than the other. It's basically for two reasons.

First, polygons are way, way older than NURBS. So they're kind of the default mindset, purely due to history. Second, polys are applicable to a wider range of purposes. Literally anything and everything in 3D can be done with polys (not that everything should). NURBS are more narrowly purposed. NURBS math is too inefficient for realtime environments like video games and virtual worlds, so polys will always rule there. Poly math is simple and fast. NURBS are primarily used for things like industrial design and film, in which computing efficiency is all but irrelevant, and in which infinite resolution is crucial. (NURBS in film isn't as common anymore these days, though, since the advent of subdivs.)

For an industrial design example, chances are the mold for the dashboard in your car was printed out from a NURBS model. Can you imagine how many polys it would take to create a smooth, curvy shape like that, to exist in the real world, without you being able to tell it's made of triangles? The number would probably be in the trillions. The tris would practically need to be molecule-sized. But since NURBS are by definition curvy, they work perfectly. This is an example of where, even though NURBS math itself is less efficient, the actual application of it is far more efficient than poly math could ever be.

Think of polys vs. NURBS as the 3D equivalent of rasters vs. vectors in 2D graphics. Rasters have the advantage that they're easy to understand, and they CAN be used for everything. Vectors, just like NURBS, are more narrowly purposed. Vectors can't be used for everything, but for the things they are meant for, they beat the pants off of rasters. Again, just like NURBS, their infinite resolution gives them tremendous advantage for the uses they do have.

If you can draw or paint, and you have even the most rudimentary understanding of how to use a computer, then you already know 90% of what you need to know to create a raster image, just as if you've got even the most basic understanding of 3D as it exists in a computer, then you know 90% of what you need to know in order to begin polygonal modeling. Everyone who's ever owned a PC has played around with MS Paint, and experienced nearly instant results, just as everyone who's ever wanted to dabble in 3D has been able to pick up a simple poly-modeling program like Sketchup or something, and get results there too. Vectors, on the other hand, require a bit of a different mindset, just like NURBS do. They're not quite as intuitive. Some initial discovery or training of the principles behind them is necessary before anyone can use them.

Illustrator (Adobe's vector program) is every bit as sophisticated as Photoshop (Adobe's raster program), but Photoshop always has been and always will be the more popular of the two. And Maya's NURBS modeling tools are just as sophisticated as its poly modeling tools, but polygons will always be more commonly used than NURBS.

Make sense?



P.S. I've been doing some Googling for the past 20 minutes or so, and it seems you're absolutely right; there's little if any good introductory material for NURBS modeling freely available. When I get a little time, I'll write up a solid article on the subject. I'll probably do it on one of my own websites, rather than as a forum post, since there would be more pictures required than the forum would allow, but I'll certainly post a summary here including a link to the full article, so the Building Tips community can discuss it right here.

I am not sure about this, but have you tried YOUTUBE? There are a lot of tutorials there for various things. But i have never checked regarding Maya.

YAY! You know, one thing I'd really love would be a discussion of NURBS that discussed the particulars of how to work in SL. I've studied NURBS in school, but the focus there was heavy on creating curves then extruding and lofting (mind you, it was simply an introduction). The SL workflow is quite different, it seems.

The other thing I'm curious about is the details about what sorts of surfaces work. I understand that starting with a primitive is safe enough, and I've revolved surfaces with success. But you alluded to the notion that some lofts work. What sort of lofts would those be?

First post on the Second Life forums, and I wanted to tip my hat to Chosen Few for writing such an extensive, informative post. Very beautiful, and I would love to read a tutorial (series?) from you on the subject of NURBS.

I do have something I would like to share on the subject of NURBS and Maya, though! I am in the same boat as the original poster. I've purchased the following video courses from Digital-Tutors, http://www.digitaltutors.com/store/product.php?productid=3632

They've done a pretty good job with covering everything Maya has to offer.

Along with the digital-tutors package, I picked up the Maya 2009 training courses from Lynda.com; http://www.lynda.com/home/ViewCourses.aspx?lpk0=112

The Lynda.com courses explain a bit more of the tools rather than techniques, whereas the Digital-Tutors is a bit more practical with more 'advanced' methods of creation. Either way, both courses should be a great way to get your feet wet with Maya and a lot of the basic principles behind modeling (especially with NURBS), which would definitely help with Sculpties!