My first real model - Page 4 - Simply Maya User Community

# 46 06-03-2010 , 07:45 AM

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No mate, I realised that I had merged the small borders after I posted the vid, I went back and changed that. Im having trouble with my duplicate special though, I cant seem to duplicate the barrel upwards as quick as you?? and when I do they dont seem to line up across the cylinder top. I have tried moving the pivot point etc but it still wont do it. I thought I had reflection on again but its not. Hmmmmm more thinking I reckon. @ 7.22 in the vid you seem to make 1 copy then suddenly 3 more right on top of each other without having to manually manipulate them into position. I try it in D Special but it doesnt seem to acheive it (close but no cigar).

Cheers bullet

P.S I just did it the long way, by observing the 'Y' translation measurement and applying it in D special x 3

bullet1968

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

Last edited by bullet1968; 06-03-2010 at 07:58 AM.

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# 47 06-03-2010 , 08:13 AM

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yeah I hardly ever use "duplicate special". In the tut I use shift-d (duplicate with transform).

For the individual faces...

shift-D the face, then rotate 90 deg, then press shift-D two more times.

For extending the cooler...

Shift-D the bottom section, Y-translate up and line up the bottom edge by eye, then press shift-d 3 more times.

Give that a try I think you will like it.

As a note I should probably spend more time explaining what I am pressing and doing in my tutorial but I slap them together so fast that I sometimes just assume folks can see what I am doing since I use the marking menu system for almost everything. But for things like using shift-D duplicate there is no visual feedback to give folks a clue to what I am doing unless they already know it. I will keep that in mind for future stuff I record.

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

Last edited by ctbram; 06-03-2010 at 08:18 AM.

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# 48 06-03-2010 , 09:46 AM

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Thanks mate,

I have got a habit of watching you and freezing the frame then going back and doing it about 10 times, ha ha ha ha I do get it usually in the end. Sorry for being such a pianful student, I find it all so interesting that I ask lots of questions. I should have used up my 6 month quota now??

Its taken me all day for this one BUT I reckon I will be able to do it all from memeory tonight in less than 45 mins. I will time myself and keep doing it until I get it right.

I DID notice that when I extruded the inner face to give the first cylinder thickness didnt work on the lateral ixis, it sort of tapered the more I did it. By accident I spotted you moving the pivot to a face, I tried it ( a few times of course) but got it and it worked!!! Yyyyeeehhaaaaaaaa

bullet1968

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

Last edited by bullet1968; 06-03-2010 at 09:57 AM.

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# 49 06-03-2010 , 10:15 AM

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rifling

I notice you used extrude then scale to give the grooves a taper. I did the same thing by inputting an offset fot the extrude to 0.02. I did it, is this ok ctbram? It worked.

bullet1968

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

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# 50 06-03-2010 , 10:50 AM

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yeah offset would work for the grooves. remember offset works proportionately around all the faces.

I used scale because I tapered the front and back edges in a bit more then the taper on the sides so I just used individual scales on the appropriate axes.

I tend to use offset when I want to take all the faces and apply an uniform inset on all edges.

when extruding an entire surface to add thickness the z-axis is usually the one that will do that. The z-axis extrudes all face along their normals. On a cylinder this means as you extrude inward all the faces will narrow inward toward a central axis running the length of the cylinder.

This should only become an issue if you are trying to add a lot of thickness. For thin walls of something like the heat shield / radiator / heat sync it should not really be noticeable.

Don't worry about asking questions that is the point of these forums and sites. I am sure everyone here is more then happy to lend a hand. As you watch the videos if you have time send me an email if you have any suggestions on how I can improve them or if there are any bits that really confused or confounded you so I can make them better.

Cheers!

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

Last edited by ctbram; 06-03-2010 at 10:58 AM.

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# 51 06-03-2010 , 10:54 AM

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Ok ctbram,

after a lot of fumbling, learning, using the OUTLINER a lot more etc I have finished. It took a whole day BUT I had to watch the vid a few times, now its in the memory bank guys, 45 mins for my next one.

Thanks for the tutorial mate, excellent!!! These will look good on the Lanc!!!

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bullet1968

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

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# 52 06-03-2010 , 11:08 AM

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Looks good.

That is a good technique to learn putting holes in curved surfaces and keeping the edges tight comes up a lot and having a technique that can produce consistent results should come in handy.

I have seen a lot of tutorials where they just create really dense meshes for both the surface to be cut and the cutting surface and boolean them together which creates really messy geometry that cannot be smoothed.

I hope the tutorial got across some of the key things that will make using booleans more comfortable and rewarding.

The big take aways should be.

- Try to think about the geometry you are going to boolean so that the cleanup is not to difficult. For instance cutting through a 4-sided face use 4-sided geometry, cutting through two 4-sided faces then use 6-sided geometry, etc.

- Make some simple tests. As in the tutorial starting with the 8-sided cylinder and then trying the 16-sided to maintain the curvature.

- Take advantage of symmetry as much as possible.

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

Last edited by ctbram; 06-03-2010 at 11:11 AM.

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# 53 06-03-2010 , 11:32 AM

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Yeh man I understand what you mean by mesh messiness. When I did it with the spheres it was a bit like that, though it did smooth ok. This is definitely a better and easier way.

Thanks again mate

p.s LOVE and I mean LOVE the tip with dup transform dude, bloody hell yeh that AND you ROOOCCCKKKK.

bullet1968

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

Last edited by bullet1968; 06-03-2010 at 11:36 AM.

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# 54 06-03-2010 , 11:44 AM

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This is one of my first models I did in lightwave, to the layman this might look good but in fact this is a bad mesh full of 5 side plus polygons, booleans used but mesh not cleaned up and no bevels, a first I could not understand why it would not render well, im showing you this so you can see what not to do..........dave

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# 55 06-03-2010 , 11:46 AM

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sorry pic

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# 56 06-03-2010 , 12:03 PM

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Thanks dave,

yeh I see what you both mean now, its similar to Topography DTM's in civilcad, (though based on triangles not quads). We have had people price work and the 'model' was incorrect because of the same thing. I think 1 job was 100 000 m3 out on the price!!! So I do understand, I just have to adjust my mind when working with Maya.

bullet1968

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

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# 57 07-03-2010 , 02:38 AM

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progress

Ok guys,

I made the barrel as per ctbram's tutorial, couldnt sleep so did some more. I cleared the pentagons and snapped vertices together, merged etc on the nose blister. I also started the cockpit using a lot of what I learnt yesterday from ctbram. I also smoothed the model and realised that I hadnt used edge loops to constrain areas!! again learnt from ctbram and his barrel tutorial. I dont know how to post multiple pics as the site gives the option but it didnt work last time so 1 by 1.

A big thanks to ctbram and his guidance!!!! and Dave for his input as well. Thanks a million guys.

P.S I think my missus might divorce me now?? Maya is a rival, bahahahaha

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bullet1968

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

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# 58 07-03-2010 , 02:41 AM

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lanc_WIP_100307

full model and yes I spelt cockpit incorrectly. errly mawning lait nite.

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bullet1968

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

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# 59 07-03-2010 , 03:14 AM

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and a quick smooth

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bullet1968

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

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# 60 07-03-2010 , 04:23 AM

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Coming along nicely bullet.

To post multiple images create a photobucket.com account. Then upload the pics to an album on that account. Then you can select multiple images from you album(s) and automatically generate the IMG code to insert the images into your posts.

The syntax for the IMG code is

"{URL} code for a link to the thumbnail img, link to the full size img {/URL}" - where the curly braces are replaced with the square brackets.

You can create a strip of thumbnails by simply deleting the [cr] between the {url}... {/url} pairs. I find three to four per row is about the max.

It is also nice because you can add text between image thumbnails.

This has the added benefit of reducing the storage load on the SM site and you can add links to larger renders. I like 1024x768 images over 640x480 but that used to much memory to embed them directly in my SM forum posts. Since I switched to photobucket.com I use the 1024 resolution all the time now.

And for you it creates a nice centralized place to store all image posts and have backups and a history of all your works.

I have had two instances where I tried striping disk drives and had one drive go bad and lost all my work. I just recently lost a stripe that was mirrored and had the hardware raid controller lose its mind and it corrupted the metadata on the backup stripe and I lost the last 5 years of my work!

So having some of my renders on the SM site and in my photobucket.com account at least preserved the evidence of some of my labor.

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

Last edited by ctbram; 07-03-2010 at 04:35 AM.

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