Coping with NURBS Modelling

The exercise this week is to create objects with NURBS and curves, with several methods such as Revolve, Duplicate special, Birail, Loft and Extrude following a certain-shaped path.

Revolve is in my opinion the most simple of them but could be an easy short cut to creating an inorganic symmetrical object, for instance a wine glass. The trick is to get the curve right as you want it, because in Maya we form the curve by laying down vertices around it. It took me several attempts to get the desired curve shape.

The images below, the ones of a strap sandal and salt shaker,  are the result of these operations: Duplicate special, Birail and Loft. Duplicate command, such as in other graphic software, will duplicate the selected image immediately without specific alterations or rule. By using Duplicate special, we are provided with several attributes that can be changed to meet our goal. For example we could duplicate the objects certain amounts of time while gradually getting smaller in size. Or duplicate it in the negative axis (or in other word, flipped).

I found another attribute we did not covered in class, which was duplicate Instance. Apparently, as I eventually found out, this method of duplication gives us an ‘active’ duplicate, which means that whatever adjustment we do to the original will be automatically updated to the copy. Very cool to create 2 symmetrical halves of an object.

The most complicated exercise here is the one with the pipe.

To create a convoluted pipeline, we used Extrude tool following a previously drawn path. (This path was made using Curve). Then with a series of adjustment and detail specification, we extrude a circle along the length of the path.

For me the most difficult thing here is to make sure we select the correct path to follow. Because apparently after trimming and re-attaching the curves, I ended up with A LOT of curves which are not immediately apparent in the monitor. But if we go to Dynamic Relationship Editor, there shows a bunch of curves as the results of my previous operations. So I have to choose the circle first, and then thelatest version of my curve and Extrude them.