Hi.

I have searched this forum for an answer, but can not find it. So please help me here.

I am sitting here trying to learn maya with the 2008PLE and just did a nurbs object of a rounded table. I drew a curve of the outline. Duplicated it two times, resized two curves and moved them apart. Then I did a loft between my three curves and made a flat surface on the upper and lower curves to fill the holes. It looks ok.

So I grouped my curves and surfaces in the outliner. And...

when I select my group and try to move it in the scene i splits apart. The surfaces seem to stick together and move where I want them, but the curves does not follow. The curves don't show up in the render, but I would like them to stick to the object. What have I done wrong here?

Its to do with your construction history, the curves where used to build your surfaces. When construction history is present the objects you used in an operation such as a loft are still influencing the result.

This is why your getting a weird result when you group your surfaces and the curves togeather. To fix this you could delete construction history by going edit > delete by type (for selected node/ object) or delete all by type (for entire scene)> construction history. You are then free to group the surfaces and the curves togeather and move them freely.

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FX supervisor - double negative

however, if you delete your construction history after lofting the curves will no longer have any effect on the lofted surface.
in otherwords, before you delete your construction history make sure you're happy with the lofted surface the curves made

i don't understand the purpose of grouping the curves with the surface
while you still have construction history the surface moves with the curves
in otherwords if you move one curve it alters the lofted surface
if you group all the curves (and not the lofted surface) while you haven't deleted construction history, then the lofted sorface will follow the group of curves.



tip: for selecting groups you can either use the outliner, hypergraph, or just select a child of the group (object directly inside the group) and push up on the keyboard.

my tip would make sense if you're familiar with trees

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D

Thank you guys. I guess this is it. I just bought a book and followed a tutorial so it surpriced me to see that even the tutorial example split up. I almost thought it was a flaw in the program. If I delete the history. Can I delete the curves also. I mean after all the will not be of any actual use anyway, right?

yes.

by deleting history you delete all connectiong between the mesh and the things that made the mesh, so you can safely delete the curves used in your lofting

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D