3D Modeling Tips for Maya

hey what is going on guys I'm Mario and in this video I would like to cover a few things that we're going to go over the course itself even though the course is very workflow oriented I'm not going to talk about too much about the very basic operations and I would like to mostly focus on some general tips and tricks that we are using in the video or in the workflow itself in general so if you feel a bit lost here I just want to also remind give a small reminder that I do have introduction to Maya video tutorial series I think there are four videos so you can check that as well in case you just feel that you're struggling here so that being said I would just like to quickly introduce you to my general workflow and what are we gonna do and this course so basically I'll just always begin with a cube in this case we begin with a cube and in terms how I add edge loops so for example here and it ends up in the middle so I'm gonna use multi cuts and once you control middle mouse click its going to always snap and in the middle additionally with multi color we can do is shift control and then you will see that it's snapping on specific let's say percentage and that you can change in the multi cut settings and you can also open this tab with control a go to modeling toolkit multi cut and then increase maybe this to let's say something like 20 and then if you go to shift control this on again hit M for multi cut shift control you can see that now that is increased also if you're creating let's say new edge loops so for example if you're creating edge loops manual you need to be more precise you can always shift shift and left click hold and then that will snap to the same same amount so just one thing may be worth mentioning all right all so what are we gonna do a lot are we gonna work in a symmetry so for now if I try to enable symmetry we're going to be in the world X meaning whatever is highlighted in blue it's going to be on the x axis so basically whatever axis is looking to your left or right and that is the axis you want to set your symmetry to in but if by an in case you do not see this blue highlights you need to make sure that in your select options you have a preselection highlight on because if that is off you will not see that highlight so just one I can thing worth mentioning so I was talking about symmetry for now we are in symmetry world X if I would move this object a bit aside and try to work on a symmetry here it would not work simply because if you now notice that the axis of the subject is not aligned with the world any longer so for that reason we would need to go to object symmetry and then we could work as we as we used to end the world axis also what are we gonna do a lot is we're gonna do a lot of mirroring meaning that for example whatever is happening on this side I would like to have the same thing on the other side of the world axis so for that we're gonna use mirror and as you notice for me it directly snaps to proper settings if by any chance you did not we'll just reset maybe you had something like this as a result so let me just hit G to repeat it make sure cut geometry is off and then in this case we would like to have the x position in the world because if it would set it to object it will actually look at the object axis if I hit D for so hit Q to confirm if I had let me just actually go back if I select my cube and head to D that will actually allow me to read enable access modification let's say and hits B again to confirm and now go to mirror and go to object now you will see that it will look at that axes where we put on before and based on that it will create a mirror so again something that will use quite a lot so let me just go few steps back in case also one other thing in case you would like to have your axes back so for example now our axis is here and whatever we do either rotation or scaling it is going to scale from this point if you'd like to bring it back you just think I need to hit the right click reset pivot and D again and that will bring your axes back so also what we can do is go to modify reset transformations and that will bring our cube back to very very starts so that's one thing let's talk about selections real quick so if you want to select the full edge loops you just need to double click on the edge if you want to select specific selections so let me just add a bit more geometry here turn the grid off then you just need to click on one edge and then double click shift double click on the other so one and then shift double click on the other and that will create selection same thing goes to phases one and then shift I will click on the other and if you want a whole loop now the penny direction which you collect so if you want to have all this then you will need to click here and then click double shift click here now as for the leading edges which you can do if you just delete the edge the vertices will still be there so what you can do is undo and then control the leads to delete all vertices if by any chance you just deleted them and you cannot undo any longer because you progress through your model further you don't have to go manually now try to delete versi by vertice what you can do is select all of them but just make sure that your selection is set to camera by selection off because if it's on and you try to select something you will see that you will not be selecting everything so selection camera base selection select all and then delete and that will delete everywhere to see that is currently floating and not attached to everywhere to any nearby edge also the shin which you can do is click on one versi and then double click again basically you don't have to double click on reverse you can just double click but double click on your right click so left click on one versi and then that will right-click somewhere else that will select all and then it can just hit delete and that will delete all vertices as well so let me just go a few steps back alright so let's look a few other operations that we're gonna do so what are we gonna do is a lot of cloning so annals what we're gonna do is a lot of extrusion like something so in order for that to work just make sure that you have smart extrude and smart duplicate active and you can access this menu by simply shift control right click and it's gonna be right right here one other thing i would like to mention is that once we start let's say playing with our objects and if we would like to let's say fine-tune that they fit to a specific position we're gonna also use a wireframe mode which is for in my case and now in many situations you will see during the videos that i will have let me just go here different settings for my wireframe so meaning sometimes it's going to be lighter to see and something is going to be darker to see which you can adjust right here so sometimes depending on a situation i'm going to leave it add as a lighter value just so that i can see where it fits better basically here roll the contrasts between between the two so I think were so in so yeah just lost for a sec so here basically I would just like to control the contrast between the two so that wants when we're starting to lets a match two pieces together that I see where that contrast is is a bit a bit better and I'm gonna 5rk just to bring it bring it all back additional thing I would like to talk about is let's add again a bit more variation here a couple of other interesting options that we're gonna use so for example let's say I will select all of this make against your camera base selection as on and select all so what you can do is use tab to paint the selection which you want and I'm gonna use extrude keep face together off and create small offset so now for example if you would like to select these parts you don't have to go into into them manually what you can do is go to click on one right click select similar analogous reset the settings and hit apply and basically on the similarity tolerance you will be able to select polygons or any selection that you think that is very similar so you don't have to go one by one you just need to select once looks similar and then everything is gonna be selected for example if now you would like to rescale and this selection if you hit T for scale you will see that it will scale very differently if you try to slide so shift ctrl and slide it will slide very differently so if you hold ctrl + middle mouse click scale then that will scale along their normals so again something that we're gonna use and it's very very useful let's now take a look into various ways who can create tubes or cables so you can now go to create let's say curve tool CV curve tool I'm gonna just start and create let's say a curve like so and that will do and let's go back to perspective I can also turn the gorilla the same thing you can create from here so curve tools curve tool and also we will need a circle so there are a couple of ways and that we can create our tubes or cables so this is only one way and actually I'm gonna show you a couple so basically this is going to be our profile and this is going to be our path let me just put this here and it doesn't have to match so we will now extrude either along this profile this curve or we going to extrude this curve and using this as a profile so depending on what you select first so if you select first the path and then the profile and go to surfaces extrude let me just reset and hit apply you will get this as a result I will go a few steps back so this time we're gonna select the profile first and then the path and then if you select the cursor versus extrude apply you will then get something like this so it is going to try to extrude in this path along the profile as it's set here so we're gonna use some different settings again I'm gonna select profile first and then the path go to extrude so then this is different extrude then the extrude that we have in edit mesh' so this is surfaces extrude and let's choose path I'll leave everything else I will choose polygons instead of nerves and I will use quads so basically I think by default is triangles so I'm going to use quads and count and simply hit apply so as you can notice now we'll get a different result again if by any chance you get reversed normals you just need to double click on it and go to mesh to display and then reverse normals additionally now you can edit the settings of this curve so I'm going to hit ctrl a to enable this window and if we go into the extrude we have a couple of settings here so you can use fixed on and off profile normal on and off and also we have here a couple of settings that we can play with and again all of them will give us different result depending on what you need so let's see we can also change it maybe to this and like I mention you it will take some time until we get used to what's what each with us and what you need so if we go into tessellation and go into advance cessation and general options we also need polygon count options you can now change polygon type to triangles or if you had triangles you can change it to quads here and if you remember we had surfaces extrude we had quads and count active and this is basically it you can now change also the count number here to something higher and can also change let's say to general and then play with the settings here so let's say we put it to maybe like 50 divisions and then ten and give it a bit more refined result what you can do now here is you can still manipulate the path so if you go to control vertices and I will just isolate it so for example actually I can scale this a bit down so let me just scale this a bit and then select this path and go to control vertex you can now control how this looks and you also notice that the curve itself actually the geometry on the curve will deform you can fix that by clicking on the curve and going to curves rebuild and this little checkbox and I'll just reset settings and hit apply and this will rebuild the curve again you will still see it will have some variation in the size and if we check the Union and the wireframe you will see how it's gonna look so you can fix that if you go to curvature and hit apply and then it will get more uniform distribution the only thing is that if you know that will click here and go to control words you'll see that you have more verses to control and you can rebuild it back to let's say uniform head apply and bring back that number so this is one way let me just now delete all of this I also delete the history so that we have only in the curve so let's take a look what else you can do so what we can do is now let's just click away and add cube let's say and actually let's add a cylinder I'm gonna hit the t4 scale and now what you can do is either you can wrap the cylinder around the curve or in some cases you maybe need only a profile to extrude along the curve additionally what also you can do is select the edges and let's say that you need exactly the same let's say you need a curve that is starting exactly around this edges so what you can do is go to modify convert polygon edges to curve and then you will get let me just be reset but then you will get this curve same thing like we had before and then you can actually now use this as a profile to wrap up the curve but here I would like to show you how to use only this as a profile so let's just go to right click in word selection and then I'm going to okay so selection of this and then invert selection delete so I can now select this and then shift-click on the curve and then what I can do is go to actually this time we're not using this extrude we are using our regular extrude so you can also use hotkey for that and you're gonna get this and the only thing now that you need to do is increase the number of segments but as you can notice now is for this to work it would be better let me just second reset pivot that we have server matching matching areas where we can extrude this so if I now go and select this and shift click on this and go to extrude increase these divisions then you're gonna get better-looking let's say tube or cable whatever you would need alright and one other way that you can do so for example if you want to wrap the complete cylinder around and even for example you can do multiple details on the same thing that we did in original course that we created very detailed profile and then wrapped it around so basically this is the same process so again I just make sure that we have enough segments so I'm just gonna create a couple here in the middle like so and one important thing that you need to do here is freeze transformations in order for this to work so this values by freezing them not reset but freeze will go back to their default and I can also just play the history and now we can select both the curve and then this cylinder and go to deform and then set to curve wrap and then you will get something like this and then curve wrap has additional options that you can play with here so I keep length on and off and depending what you need you this envelope basically means that it will bring it back to its original state playing with the scale you can do here so if keep length is all scale then we'll work mass scale depending on the thickness and interesting thing you can do here okay so maybe this was a bad example body you can also play let's say with the tweaking and rotation maybe we'll still see it in the wireframe but if I now select one face and you'll see what I mean by rotation so actually this one maybe here up so this is what I mean by tweaking and rotation maybe it was a bad example maybe we should use the cube or something but yeah and all you know this is how we can approach creating a cylinders like this or tubing like this if by any chance you delete the history so now we'll delete the history you will lose that modification so you won't be able to edit and anything longer so for example if you have this as a sounder old saying as a tube and if you would like to change the size basically if you now hit the scale and if you try to scale it it will scale as a so it will scale all but if you would select all the faces and go to move and hit hold ctrl + middle mouse then that will scale let's say the thickness but it is not going to be as precise for example as you would have it before so again just something something useful to have alright ok so last I would like to talk about some ways that I would approach fixing topology and fixing areas so for example when we have areas where were C's are bit outside and if you would like to even this all out the couple of ways that I would approach this so I wouldn't typically use and try to let's say eyeball it but what I would use is let's say if I want to equalize this to into a straight line whatever use is then scale and I would hit the D and then orient it to orient it to this area and position it and then scale again and then I would scale it until they they match and then also what you can do is maybe if you want to rotate it on a specific angle so I would then that would be my approach second approach for the vertices let's say like this be that I would delete all of this basically in many situations deleting parts and then recreating them can be much of an easier solution than just trying to find hewn specific ways and so to equalize this and what I would do is just use a multi cut and connect two points depending are they are lining so I would just then hold left click until I would have a straight line and then I would delete this remaining things to get in that straight line same thing if you want to do it here you can just connect two points to get a straight line and then delete the loop that it's in the middle or additionally what you can do is select the loop hit scale and let me just reset the pivot and you can shift control slide and then that will scale it to the right position and then what I would do is just delete the part of it and then like I mentioned before just mirror it let's say this time in object mode and to the z axis in this case and as you can see we have pivot that it's not matching so if it's that case let me just go to resets the pivot and if it's resetting and wrong you can also orient it to actually position it to the place where you want just for this purpose and then you can mirror and now we can use an object and you can we can use Z and in this case we need to merge vertices with a bit lower tolerance let's say 0.1 and hit Q to confirm and then I would have an object like like this which is a bit more cleaner and once I have that then I would do thickness and bring back the original additional thing what we will do is for example we have let me just to couple four examples here let's say we have here our supporting edges so and let me just remove this and this maybe we can actually let me do like so and the little history symmetry so in many situations we will need to avoid situations avoid positions let's say where we have very condensed edges so basically what I would do then is just use ok let me just delete this so that I have to do it on the back side as well I would use wealth tool so I would just weld these vertices and then what I would do is just delete this hand and delete this part and then I would have a bit more cleaner topology meaning that this area wouldn't be so much condensed with the part with all the edges and polygons and here we would have a bit morph even even distribution so this is also something that we're gonna use quite a lot alright so let me just show you one more example of something that we are going to encounter later on but I think it's gonna be maybe interesting to mention so let me just increase the number of subdivisions here and what I'm gonna do is just take this a small part and you battle so this is how we can increase the geometry so basically from one edge we can create two or if we turn this on we can create even three the only thing is that we now need to solve the general edges so if we delete this one here we can now create a point up to here and then we'll get quads so let me just turn symmetry off now so we'll get quad here quad here and this is also going to be quad so let me just show so basically this is going to be the result on the other hand here if you would work with all of the edges then we would adjust turn symmetry back on and then we would just get this again so again we would have quads here and quads here and now what we would do with this then in the end we would just do let's say enough that I will hit G to repeat the operation and then I'm going to push this inside I put G again offset and again if I didn't mention I'm not sure at this point but once you're using this values you can also shift control and control the values by shifting control left mouse click instead of going here and checking this little box so I'm doing that basically and then just adding a bit more thickness G again add a bit more thickness G again and add more of an asset so now we'd have this as a result so now asks you how you can tighten this up so you can technically use let me just turn symmetry again you can slide this up and this will tighten it up but then there are more elegant ways out you can solve it so for example even here if you wish you can connect these two points and add an edge loop and you would technically have quads here so even if we would scale this so you would have quads on each side and you would get technically sharper results so this would be one way let me now show you one other way again go back there's also a way where you can just add one edge loop but if there is a more elegant way than you can just avoid that now you can add some additional edges starting from here but again I will just turn the symmetry on but if you do then you will have that complex pole so you'll have one two three four five six edges here five usually being okay six maybe a bit over so what we can do is me be added here and again let me just quickly turn symmetry on and try to do something here so we would add this and then again I'll just turn some tree off and connected these two points and then we would have more or less similar result it just depends on a way how you want to approach them what do you think it's best for the current situation and then just finally we can add more bevel here let's go to uniform and add supporting edges and yeah so this is how we would approach situations like this I do believe that I mentioned most of the things that we are going to use if not I maybe recreate or do another video on top if this video was unclear so feel free to comment and leave a comment down below if you think something is missing or something could be added but in general yeah I think that this is more or less covering what we're going to do and the original course so yeah I would like to just thank you for watching and I'll see you then in the next video Cheers

Channel: Elementza

Views: 42,467

Rating: 4.9699249 out of 5

Keywords: 3d modeling, 3d in maya, modeling in maya

Id: bjusU3eQ1ok

Length: 29min 31sec (1771 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 26 2019