Beveling my LEGO Head

# 1 04-01-2009 , 11:42 PM

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Dear Forum members,

I'm a beginner to Maya and I'm working on a LEGO figure. I started with the head. I made a Poly cilynder and extrudet it and played with faces to make it like the head of a LEGO figure. Looks pretty good, but the edges are to sharp. For that I wanted to use bevel to round up those edges. My problem: Sometimes bevel works, sometimes not. Most times not, and if it works, it will crash after some retries of beveling (didn't get the best result 1st time)!

I'm using Maya 2008 with an ATI HD4850 graphics card. Is it the graphics card???

Best greets, Michi

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# 2 04-01-2009 , 11:50 PM

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I would go back to the step prior to bevel and convert the object to Sub D.. Then go in and do a hard edge on it until you get the right effect... Then convert back to poly if need be.

Chris (formerly R@nSiD)
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# 3 04-01-2009 , 11:52 PM

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ok!

and what could it be, that beveling crashes?

greets, Michi

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# 4 04-01-2009 , 11:53 PM

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For Bevel to work correctly your geometery needs to be spot on and then u need to get the settings right... You can modify them slightly within the inputs section of maya to get the look correct, but as its polys it may not be smooth enough... I find SubD's work better...

Chris (formerly R@nSiD)
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# 5 04-01-2009 , 11:59 PM

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you are right! I don't get it smooth enough! Too bad, that I have never worked with SubDs. user added image

Have to wait till I am at the Lesson in my book user added image

In conclusion: Is it normal, that Maya crashes when beveling is made wrong?

Greets, Michi

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# 6 05-01-2009 , 12:17 AM

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I have not seen Maya crash due to a bad bevel, but it can happen. Are you using a PC, Linux or Mac version?

Chris (formerly R@nSiD)
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When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will truely know peace - Jimmy Hendrix

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# 7 05-01-2009 , 12:20 AM

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i've never seen maya crash from a bevel, but as r@nsid said, it's possible. i'm guessing you have a problem with your geometry - possibly some unmerged vertices on the edge or some non-manifold geometry.

try using clean up and also post a pic of your problem so we can see what you're trying to do.

arran3D

arran3D blog

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# 8 05-01-2009 , 02:39 AM

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most likely its your geo....if its not correct, you might have beveling problems...in your viewport, make sure you have backfaceculling checked so you can make sure all of the geos face are facing the same direction. when extruding, sometimes you might extrude the wrong way causeing mismatch faces and bevel wont work......as far as working in sub d..ur best bet is to get the bevel to work. One you commit to sub d, you cant go back and you also dont have as much control over your mesh as you would with a bevel....

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Last edited by 99GsTurbo; 05-01-2009 at 03:24 AM.

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# 9 05-01-2009 , 03:22 AM

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One thing I haven't noticed is deleting history from time to time.
after a while objects can collect lots of inputs which might cause various tools not to work correctly.

Also Arran's and Turbo's advice are essential to keep a clean mash.

Hope this helps,
Benny

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# 10 05-01-2009 , 09:40 AM

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I have been using maya for quite some time and I have never had my system crash as a result of beveling.

As others have suggested it is most likely your geometry.

Perhaps you could post some wire frames?

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# 11 05-01-2009 , 09:57 AM

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Hi!

Thank you for your great help!

I will post you a wireframe tomorrow, because since it crashed (and haven't saved) I was too lazy to rebuild, but tomorrow I'll give it another try!

See you tomorrow! Good night.

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Beveling my LEGO Head

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