Lofting in Maya vs. 3DSMax

# 1 11-03-2011 , 01:18 PM

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Join Date: Mar 2011

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Hi

Coming from 3DSMax I'm having a hard time adapting some basic concepts to Maya. I'm especially stuck trying to translate Max's "Create -> Compound Object -> Loft" workflow to Maya where you could create a spline circle and a nurbs curve and loft the circle along the curve resulting in a solid object with no holes.

When I try to replicate that in Maya I always end up with holes on both sides of the resulting object. Is there really no way to fix this without using "Mesh -> Fill hole" which seems to (correct me if I'm wrong) add a new surface without reusing the the existing vertices of the border edges - resulting in visible seams.

Any help would be greatly appreciated user added image

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# 2 11-03-2011 , 03:15 PM

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The tool your describing sounds like the extrude tool. which will extrude a profile along a path. Loft in maya will bridge 2+ profiles in order of selection.

I presume you are outputting polygons since you are using the fill hole command, this will just make a single polygon at each hole.

No new meshes are added to do this, it is not the same as using the planar opperation in NURBS (surfaces) which would create a new surface. All the planar tool does is create a polygon using existing verticies so no fusing is required.

You would only get 'visible seams' if your output was NURBS since commands that fill the hole such as planar do create new geometry (thats just how NURBS work) however as long as your tesselation settings are correct the seam will not be visible at render time.
The out put however will often be an n-gon so you will need to use split polygon to go in and make a tidy result.

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# 3 11-03-2011 , 05:12 PM

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Oliverw if you select edge then double click on the edge that goes around the top then extrude then merge to centre that will fix the hole.................dave

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Last edited by daverave; 11-03-2011 at 05:31 PM.

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# 4 11-03-2011 , 07:33 PM

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The tool your describing sounds like the extrude tool. which will extrude a profile along a path. Loft in maya will bridge 2+ profiles in order of selection.

Originally Posted by LauriePriest

Yes, you are right. Sorry user added image

No new meshes are added to do this, it is not the same as using the planar opperation in NURBS (surfaces) which would create a new surface. All the planar tool does is create a polygon using existing verticies so no fusing is required.

You would only get 'visible seams' if your output was NURBS since commands that fill the hole such as planar do create new geometry (thats just how NURBS work) however as long as your tesselation settings are correct the seam will not be visible at render time.

Originally Posted by LauriePriest

I had converted the NURBS surface resulting from the extrude operation to a Polygon Mesh and the seam I was seeing was simply the extruded source shape - which as NURBS curve had a slightly diifferent outline than its polygon replacement. So I made the mistake to misinterpret that.

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Lofting in Maya vs. 3DSMax

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