Bevel plugin for maya similar to max baevel???? - Page 2

# 16 16-06-2012 , 10:37 PM

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I did not say the modo bevel was good. I simply showed that of the three packages - maya, max, and modo - modo does make the best effort at producing the proper looking bevel for the given poor starting topology.

The issue is the starting topology is poor for creating bevels at the selected edges. There is no modeling sw that I know of that can resolve this kind of a bevel (given the starting topology). Therfore, to get a proper bevel you need to think about your starting topology and in this case start with a mitered corner geometry.

Or do as Jay suggests and simply add support edge loops and sub-divide although this will produce heavier geometry in the end.

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Last edited by ctbram; 17-06-2012 at 01:34 AM.

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# 17 16-06-2012 , 11:04 PM

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Ctbram, I didn't say you did matey, read my post again. I pointed out that its not very attractive and am fully aware of what was being shown.

Your handy hints are always welcome pointing out the good and bad, the last thing I would do is put you down....

Jay

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# 18 16-06-2012 , 11:14 PM

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No worries Jay, I just wanted to clarify that I was not advocating the modo bevel. I was just trying to demonstrate for that starting topology that all three apps (maya, max, and modo) struggle to produce a proper looking bevel, and none of them produces a clean bevel.

The first programmer that does come up with a universally good bevel tool should win the noble prize! It's a very difficult problem.

One other helpful point I'd like to toss out there is that although going the bevel route can save on poly count vs. smoothing - it is very difficult to change or undo after the fact. So if you do not save your original object before beveling and you delete history then you have no easy way to change the bevel tightness without remodeling the base shape. I have painted myself in that corner many many times!

Whereas, with poly subd smoothing you simply need to adjust the support edges. Which is much easier and does not alter the base shape as beveling does.

I struggle with this all the time as I model in polygons - when to bevel vs when to smooth?

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 16-06-2012 at 11:25 PM.

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# 19 17-06-2012 , 09:27 AM

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mitre Rick LOL....yes goggles you will; always need to clean up. Depending on the amount of bevel edges you require this will have to be done. If you can do as Jay has suggested I would go with him. In the end of the day the short cut minus heavy edit is preferable to lots of work. Maya will try to interpolate between edges...hence the traingles and ngons it will create. Painful stuff

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# 20 17-06-2012 , 03:12 PM

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Here's what Wings3d generated:

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# 21 17-06-2012 , 04:32 PM

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I think if poly beveling is of the requirement for some people as opposed to poly smooth, I personally would do it by hand, as much of an arse it may sound, you will get what you want in return.

As always its swings and roundabouts depending on what you are actually wanting for the final result.

Jay

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# 22 17-06-2012 , 09:46 PM

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I bevel all the time and if you set the topology up correctly at the start it is much faster the beveling by hand. For complex mechanical objects hand beveling every edge would be prohibitively time consuming.

Seriously, for most objects a single chamfer is all that is needed and it's very fast and has few issues. If you need a round then I suggest a 3-seg bevel and this will require proper topology before you bevel to minimize cleanup. I rarely have to cleanup my bevels beyond softening and hardening edges afterwards.

If you intend to smooth then go with a 2-seg bevel. This has the advantage over simply adding control edges in that the pre-smoothed object will have visible beveling and can be used in renders where as the part with just control edges will not be usable in renders.

I bevel most of the hard surface parts I make as the poly savings over smoothing is extreme. Take the simple shape below. The poly smoothed version of the 56 poly shape went to 8064 polys!

While the chamfered version (maya bevel 1-segment) went to 226 polys, the 3-segment beveled version plus the hole details is only 1106 polygons that's over 7 times fewer polys then the smoothed version without the holes. Without the hole details the beveled version has over 10 times fewer polys.

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Last edited by ctbram; 17-06-2012 at 09:52 PM.

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# 23 17-06-2012 , 10:36 PM

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Well common sense would have told me not to do something complex by hand anyway, chances are you'd get shot if you were on a deadline LOL.

When I mean poly smooth, I should have written modelling for subds not poly smooth as in add more polys to smooth LOL, Most of the time my output would be with a low res with a MR Approx node or Vray Subd and so on, so my geo will always be the lowest I can get away with.

Of course as well if you set the geo up right in the first place you're payback is gonna always be better, regardless of it being a bevel or edgeloops for a humanoid character....its horses for course.

I know this model is basic and for example purposes to explain bevels etc, but if that was a hero model for close up though I can guarantee the mesh would be pretty high in some cases...and the mesh smooth x2 would be fine

anyway nice diagram...should show the wires too if you have it

Jay

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# 24 17-06-2012 , 10:50 PM

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good points Jay. I agree.

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Last edited by ctbram; 17-06-2012 at 11:05 PM.

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# 25 17-06-2012 , 11:08 PM

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Hey, sorry i coulndt find time to reply on this thread. I am still looking for a house to rent to sttle down. The animation studio i work for is a Company working for national TV in Turkey. Named Animax... They have some cool projects coming up soon...

I am the only Maya user in the company, the rest is using max+mental ray... The scene we are working on is huge, so we prefer poly and bevels mostly. I still can't figure out the render times between smooth and bevel and how it will result in this comapny with their render farm... Still trying to get the result in most optimal way.

Found this for max btw, it has some other features that are not shown on the video;

https://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/quad-chamfer

There is also one bevel plugin for maya, but very old. called ByronsPolyTools... Does anyone know what changed since the release of this plugin?

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# 26 18-06-2012 , 02:18 AM

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Byron stopped supporting BPT around maya 8.5ish. It was resurrected as an open source project for what looks like maya 2010. The link I found is here https://bpt.sourceforge.net/ as far as I could tell it's kind of half baked. It does not say for what version of maya it was compiled although the name would indicate maya 2010x64.

I tried it with maya 2012 and 2013 and it does not load. I am downloading the source for it now to see if it is worth trying to compile for maya 2012 and 2013.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 27 18-06-2012 , 02:28 AM

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UPDATE: under the source link all I found was pre-compiled versions for x32, x64, windows and linux versions of may up to maya 2011.

I tried the maya 2011 version and it does not load for maya 2012 or 2013. So unless I can find the source to compile the .mll file this plugin is dead beyond maya 2011 until the owner compiles a newer version.

I found this link https://sourceforge.net/projects/bpt/develop but I still cannot find the source. I found some visual studio project and solution files that I could look at but there is no code that I can see. I have not used source forge before so maybe there is something special that needs to be done to actually check the code out.

It looks like the last update was maya 2011 and that was over two years ago.

Maybe NextDesign might have the time to look into finding the actual source code for us and I can have a look at it.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 18-06-2012 at 02:37 AM.

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# 28 18-06-2012 , 02:43 AM

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The one feature I see as useful in both BPT and the max script is the chamfer and leave original edges. This has the affect of adding support edges for smoothing without changing the original geometry.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 29 22-10-2012 , 07:02 PM

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This thread got so off topic...

I too am looking for equal footing with 3DS Max bevel options in Maya. It just doesn't have it. I'm talking about complex bevel profiles, and please don't cop out and tell me to hand do it, or extrude, or whatever you people that have been using Maya, and no other software for years have been doing. Max can bevel edges with a separate, and complex profile as it's input. Anyone need any proof of what I'm asking it's here https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/particle_shadows/. Google sketchup can do it after a fashion as well. Nurbs isn't really a viable solution for a model with holes in it. I was wonder if anyone could actually answer the question. It seems the answer is "no" Maya doesn't have this seemingly simple useability. How that's possible I will never know.

P.S. I shouldn't have to bring a model into Zaxwerks Proanimator to get this done, but I suppose I'll have to for now.

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# 30 22-10-2012 , 08:18 PM

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There is no shell modifier in Maya and by extension no bevel to profile parameter. You have a couple options.

1. Adapt and use the tools Maya provides
2. Write a plugin yourself
3. Have someone write a plugin for you
4. Hope Autodesk adds all the Max features you like to Maya
5. Buy Maya from Autodesk and command your slaves (oops I mean programmers) to add whatever Max features you like into Maya
6. Use Max

Sorry if none of these are to your liking but it is what it is.

Companies add features to differentiate their products from others. That is why there is a Max, Maya, Modo, Blender, Cinama4D, Lightwave, Houdini, Silo, Zbrush, Mudbox, Inventor, Solid Works, and so on. If they all did exactly the same thing and provided exactly the same tools there would hardly be a reason for more then one of them to exist now would there?

Even Autodesk who owns both max and maya realize that each has it's own advantages and so they keep both around. If it was a simple matter to combine the two into one package that does it all then I am sure they would have done it. But they have not figured out how to do it.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 22-10-2012 at 11:07 PM.

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