nurbs body to arms attachment troubles

# 1 25-02-2003 , 06:23 AM

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Location: Austin, Texas

Posts: 81

I am following Mike's tutorial for Stitching a NURBS character
Arms to Body. It seems very easy to understand but I am not getting the results that Mike did.

It was easy to detach the horizontal and then the vertical isoparms to deleate the geometry I wish to use to attach the arm.
However as soon as I make the horizontal detachment, I start to have troubles. the shape of my torso changes. and seams no longer meet up. I can also not stitch the pieces back together. I tried the global stitch as well as stitching two pieces together at a time.
So I can tell that I am lost but do not understand where I got lost.
I am wondering if my model itself is the problem.
Any advice? user added image

-Chris

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Chris
essahc@sbcglobal.net

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# 2 25-02-2003 , 06:31 AM

The Maya Mountain
Join Date: Aug 2002

Location: Seattle, WA

Posts: 8,245

To simplify things, you might want to split the model down the middle and delete the half you won't be working on. Once you get the arm all stitched, you can mirror it for the other side.

Make sure that when you detach and such, that you press the "3" key to put everything back in hi-res mode, as some pieces usually revert to '1' - low res setting.

You'll more than likely want to add a few isoparms in that neck area.

This takes a bit of practice... you'll probably need to go through the process a couple of times to get the hang of it.

Also, you might find the VIP video version of this tutorial here at SM helpful. The scene file of my muscle man is included.

Also, I would recomend that you totally "finish" the form of the arm and torso before stitching, as continuing the model afterwards can be a little difficult.

Good luck!

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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# 3 25-02-2003 , 06:36 AM

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Join Date: Dec 2002

Location: Austin, Texas

Posts: 81

Thanks Mike.
I will go for the vip tut as soon as I can afford membership. I am pretty broke right now so Im relying of tuts like your for lessons.
I assume that I should cut my model in half using the same detach method as in your tut. I will do so.
I also totally missed the resolution controls, I will read up in the maya library. Thanks again, I will post my results.
Chris

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Chris
essahc@sbcglobal.net

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# 4 01-03-2003 , 08:22 AM

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Location: Austin, Texas

Posts: 81

I've been following Mike's advice to finish my torso before stiching the arm and staying in high res.
Ive started over compleately on the model as I wanted the model to be simpler (i guess easier to work with).
Im still haveing results I cannot find an solution for.

everything goes along just as it is in the tut, until I do the global stitch. At this point I get the arm to look correct, no problem, however it does not attach to the body and none of the other parts of the body recombine. see first picture:

Then If I try to duplicate the arm does not duplicate with the body pieces.
Any advice?

¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤øø¤
Chris
essahc@sbcglobal.net

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# 5 01-03-2003 , 07:37 PM

The Maya Mountain
Join Date: Aug 2002

Location: Seattle, WA

Posts: 8,245

The parts WILL stay seperate. The stitch merely aligns them together. It's impossible for a Nurbs character to be entirely 1 mesh, because of the mathematics involved. That's why it's called "patch" modeling. If you want only 1 mesh, you'll have to convert to Polys or SubDs, and merge all the pieces together.

One thing you're going to want to try to keep control of is making sure your spans match. You don't want to have isoparms "deadend" such as the one your arrow is pointing to in the lower image. You want to try to keep everything flowing throughout all the patches. The only viable "deadend" isoparms would be the 4 in the corners of the arm. Another thing I might suggest is to make the hole for the arm to stitch into extend further into the mesh of the torso.

This is a fairly difficult procedure to get the hang of, so don't get down. I had to do it dozens of times over and over before grasping it. user added image