Hello All,

I've started learning Maya a month a go through tutorials...Jet bike and others...and I felt I made good progress...but now I tried my own model, and stuck at a very begining.

I started the model with Poly Plane extrude, and got a good start, but ended up with a bumpy model and my mesh all messed up....refer to the pictures below...so I have a few questions:

1. Is there a way to reduce my polygons and get them sorted with some tool?
2. Is there a way (notice the pattern )to iron out my polygon surface, at the moment, it is all bumpy and uneven...

Also, if you could tell me, how would you start modeling this specific model? I mainly used plane extrusion, so maybe I was totally off....thanks for your feedback..

pics:

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mesh (even I can see this is horror, but more I try to fix, worse it gets):

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render:

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reference pic:

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bumpy surface (and sorry if I overdid it with the pics) also I dont know how to embed more pics in one post...:

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you need to select wireframe on shaded and screenshot that. its too difficult to see whats going on with the mesh otherwise.

oops...here is wireframe with shaded

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and bottom view.....I remember people saying having triangles is bad...now I notice my whole model is triangles :headbang:

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did you first model in nurbs, then converted to polygons? how did you get so many triangles

i agree with to la bomb
how on earth did you get any triangles if you did what you said (extrude from a polygon plane), extrusions never make triangles

to fix that bumpy surface you could try the smooth brush in the sculpt geometry tool, it might actually be due to funny topology and a mix of soft and hard edges

come to think of it, you probably have those triangles because we you went mesh > cleanup and told it to make everything as triangles...

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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

that's completely correct been trying to convert Polys to subDs, and had to cleanup the mesh before.... I moved this project to W.I.P. area under USS Voyager...made some progress since then, and model again from scratch....