Curved letter

Maya for 3D Printing - Rapid Prototyping

In this course we're going to look at something a little different, creating technically accurate 3D printed parts.

# 1 16-10-2003 , 09:10 AM

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hi, all

i'm trying to create an extruded letter X, that has the front face overall curve, so that it is fatter in the middle than at the edges

anyone got any suggestions for this

cheers,
tony

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# 2 16-10-2003 , 11:57 AM

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You could try using the bevelplus tool. That has preset styles in it, some experimentation and you might get the result you want.

All you do is create text as a curve (create >text []) and then use surfaces >bevelplus []

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# 3 16-10-2003 , 04:06 PM

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thanks, iarus

but it wasn't the bevel i was tring to curve, but the front face of the letter

i sussed it by projecting the letter curve onto a sphere, and then using bevel plus

see attachment

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# 4 16-10-2003 , 04:10 PM

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here's another angle

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# 5 16-10-2003 , 05:43 PM

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Yea, if you create a curve, with the curve selected use the bevelplus tool (not bevel) then with some tweaking you get the result you got. But youve done it now, and might I say it looks great.

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# 6 16-10-2003 , 06:50 PM

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Under the Animation menu set, you have a Bend deformer under Deform > Create NonLinear > Bend

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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# 7 16-10-2003 , 07:09 PM

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thanks mike, icarus

ideally i would like the front to be curved, and the back to be straight

tried the lattice deformer earlier, but ran into al sorts of problems

i'll give the bend deformer a shot - but would it allow me to keep the kack straight?

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# 8 16-10-2003 , 07:10 PM

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sorry - 'kack' should read 'back'

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# 9 17-10-2003 , 01:58 AM

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this is what i meant, mike

the bend deformer did not bend in the way i wanted, so i projected curve on surface and did a bevel plus as before, and then used boolean to square off the back

if you can think of a better way, would like to know

cheers,
tony

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# 10 17-10-2003 , 02:00 AM

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side view

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# 11 17-10-2003 , 02:05 AM

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ah, I see. Well, you can apply a bend to only certain vertices if you wanted, so you could leave the vertices flat on the back, and just bend the rest.

In any case, your method works, too.

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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