Modelling map w bevel - newbie questions - Simply Maya User Community

# 1 11-01-2012 , 11:59 PM

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Modelling map w bevel - newbie questions

Hi, relatively new to 3D modelling in general and am currently working on a 3D map of sorts. I started by drawing an outline in AI of a map, then i made a AI object with bevel in Maya for this, so far so good. However i have a few issues with this technique:

1. It didn't add anything in the middle! All i have is a gargantuantly big face for the map itself. I need to create topography and such but i have no idea how i am to make edges inside this huge thing as i drew it with rivers and everything straight of the bat, any ideas?

Ideally i would like to duplicate the edge that i have, scale it down and then i can start extruding topography but duplicating an edge doesnt seem to work. Neither does insert edge loop, it only goes on the sides.

How it currently looks: https://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/69/mapuq.jpg/

2. What would be the best way to bend this huge thing? It's supposed to be on the inside of a sphere hence i need to bend this somehow. Huge soft select and simply move pieces of it?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

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# 2 27-02-2012 , 07:18 PM

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If the map is supposed to be on a sphere then I would create a sphere and then texture the map onto the sphere. Then I would trace the outline of the map with the split polygon tool on the sphere, then you could extrude the faces that you want out and still keep all faces four sided.

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# 3 27-02-2012 , 11:15 PM

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To be honest with you this is not the way I model but you could try the quadrangulate to in meshes, then use the sculpt geo tool..............dave

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# 4 28-02-2012 , 02:54 AM

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you could do as dave suggested.....or try 'add divisions' is another method. Maya is not designed for topo creation.....it is very poor for this kind of thing. Sculpt geo is about as good as it gets UNLESS you use a height map generated plane. This also is limited but does work WHEN Maya decides to let it work.

This is one method but I couldnt get the damn thing to work properly

https://www.creativecrash.com/tutoria...placement#tabs

This is another which did work

Maya Terrain Displacement Map Tutorial by Stuart Christensen - YouTube

If you can get either to work..cool.

You could take your landscape into PS and generate a height map out of that and play with the displacement values...I think stwert or paldav had a thread in here somewhere?? might have been paldav and his Star Wars terrain.

cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

Last edited by bullet1968; 28-02-2012 at 03:19 AM.

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# 5 28-02-2012 , 03:23 AM

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here you go andre...thank paldav for this one....really easy

cheers bullet, i found this hieght map on the net, then..
create a lambert - show connections ( so you can see the shading group node)
create a displacement node and drag it onto the group
connect the image to displacement
tick alpha is luminence then go daft with the alpha gain +150 offsett -80 : render in mental
when happy convert-displacement to polys.
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cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

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