Smoothing in Maya?

I cant really find anything in maya to smooth objects?
Am I looking over it ?

Would be great to know if there would be a option

thanks

How are you defining "smooth"? There are a number of tools that could fit that word, from Sculpt Geometry, to Rebuild Surfaces, to Mesh -> Smooth, to any number of other possible options. What exactly are you looking to do?

Hey

Well I've used the advanced sculptie import to import my whole shoe but some of the straps are really rough and not smooth at all.
Plus smoothing the model in general for exporting.

I used to load the tga files into sculptypaint or blender to smooth.
So was wondering if it was also possible in Maya to save some time.

Thanks

If your sculpties are coming out rougher than your source model, the most likely cause is you didn't clear out history and transformations before you exported. You MUST do the following every time:

1. Select the surface(s) you want to export.

2. Edit -> Delete by type -> History

3. Modify -> Freeze Transformations

4. Modify -> Reset Transformations

5. Edit -> Delte by type -> History

If you forget to do any or all of those steps before export, your sculpties will come out messed up.

Also, if your source models are polygons, then don't expect very good replication. The Maya sculpty exporter is optimized for NURBS. It doesn't do very well with polygons. If you want to use Maya, make your sculpties out of NURBS. If you want to use polygons, use another program, such as Blender or Max.


If you were already doing all that, and it's still not right, can you post some screenshots of what you're talking about?


As for comparisons with SculptyPaint, I've never used that program, so I don't know exactly what kind of smoothing it's doing. I suspect you'd get a similar result using Rebuild Surfaces with the right settings, but that's just a guess.

Yeah I did all those steps so those are fine, I'll try post some screenshots when I can but ofocurse just uploading from Maya is 'smooth' but not as smooth as I usually get my sculpts when I smooth it in blender or sculptypaint.

Rebuilding ? don't think I've ever come across that , where abouts is it ?
What kind of settings would I need?
or is it trial and error?


Edit - Ah i found the rebuild surfaces, so this doesnt add any vertices ? I remmeber seeing that somewhere once.

Rebuild Surfaces can add or not add vertices, depending on the settings. If you want to know what all the settings do, click Help at the top of the options box.

As for recommendations on settings, I can't give you any, since as I said, I have no idea what you were doing in SculptyPaint. Settings would vary anyway, form model to model, depending on the original geometry you're starting with, and the target geometry you've got in mind.

Also, keep in mind I'm not even sure that Rebuild Surfaces is the right thing to be using. I'm not at all sure what you're trying to do. It was just a guess.

I think SculptyPaint has a smoothing tool like Zbrush does. The smooth deformation (and brush) in Zbrush averages the vertices to get rid of some of that polygon lumpiness.

Maya's average vertices tool works the same way, although since it's for polygons that might not be all that useful. The Sculpt Geometry tool also has some smoothing functions, so if you want to try smoothing some areas, you could start there.

thanks for the reply guys!!

Well i dont sculpt with polygons Only nurbs , hmm I'll check the sculpt geom tool.

I tried the rebuild surfaces chosen but I dont see much difference anyway,

Oh is there a way for me to select the whole 'shoe' and mirror it so i have the right foot also?

:/

thanks

I actually managed it by myself wooho LOL

If anyone wants to know , how to duplicate a object so its flipped..u just edit..duplicate special and set the axis to -1.0 on the axis you want.

Lets hope it loads in sl this way haha!

I usually use rebuild surfaces, it should work.

FYI: After negative duplication, you may need to reverse the surface direction on one axis. Otherwise, the sureface(s) could be inside out. To check, display the normals, and observe which way they're pointing.

Hmmm all seems to be fine, just had to flip the textures around abit but as i do the flat baking in Maya and the main parts in photoshop it should be fine.

I'll try to remember the rebuild surfaces for next time

It depends how the model is built, and on which axis you flip it across. Sometimes you'll need to reverse the surface direction, sometimes you won't. It's just something to keep an eye on.

One more quick tip: If you've got a lot of surfaces to check, it can be quicker just to run a test render (not a bake, a scene render) than to turn normals on and off for each object. If a surface is inside out, you'll see it in the rendering.

well I always work with back face culling turned on so I know which way the normal is facing. Also be sure that after scaling in the negative and freezing transforms you open the attribute editor and under the "nameofobjectShape1" tab expand the render stats roll out then check to see if the opposite option has a check mark next to it if it does then you will need to click the double sided box then it will let you click the opposite check box then click the double sided again. so in the end you will have double sided with a check mark next to it and opposite with no mark next to it. after doing this your object will be inside out so you will have to flip the normals.

Backface Culling is not applicable to NURBS. It only works for polygons. Unchecking Opposite in Render Stats, as you later suggested, will yield the equivalent effect on a selected object, though.

The reason I don't usually recommend that approach is simply because it can take forever to apply it or unapply it to multiple surfaces. You have to do them each one at a time, which can be maddening. But displaying normals and reversing surface directions can be applied to as many objects as you want, all at the same time.