DART 104 Intro To Maya: The Bridge Tool Part 1

all right so let's talk about the modeling tool kits bridge and we will find that in the modeling toolkit icon right here on the top right hand side of our UI and the bridge is found towards the bottom right here now what is bridging well let me hide the grid real quick let me go over here I have two polygon planes right here one is made out of three faces by three faces and this means that I have nine faces right here the other one is made out of two faces by two faces so we have four now in order to bridge something we're gonna have to combine this into a single piece and next we are going to bridge our edges from one piece to the next one remember by combining them they will become one piece so we can bridge they are not combined Bridge will not work as you can see if I select both of them and I go to my edges and I select my edges and I try to bridge nothing is going to happen I'm gonna get an error does not work with multiple objects selected so what we have to do is we have to combine these two pieces together combine is found inside of the modeling toolkit at the very top of our meshes icons or we can go in the modeling menu set we go to mesh combined so let's select both of the pieces let's go to combine and I want you to notice that when you combine these two objects were here you're gonna create these two empty nodes which are the history of the combination so what I'd like to do as soon as I create a combination I like to delete my history when you do that the history that this piece had and the history that this piece had disappear now if we were to combine these edges by going to right mouse button edge and with the selection tool and holding the shift key I'm going to click and drag this edge this edge and this edge and I'm going to do the same thing on the opposite side notice that we're gonna go from three edges 1 2 & 3 2 to some when we click on bridge we're also gonna get another problem so you have to bridge from one side to the other one with the same amount of edges now if I select this edge right here shift select this edge and then I select this edge right here and shift select this edge I'm gonna get a bridge I went from 1 to 2 1 2 now let's look at the next example now here we have 2 cubes as you can see one is made out of six planes in each plane has four polygons so if I was to select this cube right here and I went to its history by going to my channels polycube you will notice that on the subdivision with subdivision height subdivision depth I have two if I select this and I type in one I'm gonna get a plain and simple cube but if I select my subdivisions and I type in two I've split each one of these planes in half now this cube break here does not have any subdivisions so how can we use the bridge tool to bridge this object to this object well again first select the two objects I'm gonna delete the history and I'm gonna go to the my modeling toolkit and I'm going to combine them immediately delete the history again and there you have it now there one single object I'm gonna go to right mouse button select my faces and I'm gonna select while holding the shift key these four faces were here and then while holding the shift key select this face I'm gonna hit delete and now I have two cubes with two open holes right here with these two planes where now we are gonna run into the same problem again if I select these edges and in this case I'm going to go to edges and to select this edge loop all you have to do is double click on that edge and it will go around and I hold shift and do this notice that when I try to bridge it's going to give me the same error it cannot go from 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 2 1 2 3 & 4 so what we have to do with phases were here we have to cut them in half I'm going to use my multi cut tool so select this object select the multi cut tool and I'm gonna start cutting these faces in the middle and remember we have a video on using the multi cut tool we are gonna hold shift and when we do so notice that we get this little black dot right here this will tell us that this is the halfway point if I click in here notice that it says 50% so this right here is my 10 20 30 40 50 and on and on up to a hundred so I'm gonna go from this 50 percent right here I'm gonna hold my shift key and go up to this edge and click on it I'm gonna go right here to this edge hold shift click here hold shift click here and I'm going to hit Y and Y is a shortcut for select the last tool used which is this icon right here so let's do the sides I'm gonna hold shift click on this side right here I'm holding shift I have not let go of shift and I'm gonna click on this edge right here and now I'm gonna hit Q for the selection tool now notice that here we have 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 & 8 faces which will give me 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 edges and again 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 8 faces with 8 edges now we can select these edges right here by doing a double click and I'm gonna do the same double-click from in this corner but on the opposite side hold shift double click and now when I generate a bridge operation there you have it we have created a bridge from an open hole to the next one now every time you create a bridge you're gonna get this little UI right here this UI will allow you to create additional division so all you have to just click on the word division and slide it and notice that now we have two divisions and you can go all the way to whatever you want let me bring this down again to a manageable number we're gonna skip taper because this model it's hard to demonstrate what we can do now we're gonna talk about twist if I click on the word twist and with my left mouse button I drag this notice that is going to twist our bridge on the curve type notice that we have linear blend and curve we are gonna do another demo following this one where I will demonstrate what these guys do right here I'm gonna hit Q also gonna show you how to modify this once you get out of the bridge tool all you have to do is go to your channels and there you have it poly bridge I can type in 0 for my twist for divisions I can click select divisions and with my middle mouse button I can add more or less perfect so let's continue with the last example where we're gonna bridge multiple objects now in this example we have three objects or here have a sphere a cylinder and a cube I have not deleted their history because I want to show you how to alter the amount of edges that we have if I select my cylinder and I go to in my history under channels input you will see poly sphere every time you create a police fear you will get this input right here this was my very first operation now under subdivision axis I typed in 16 I won 16 edges going in this direction right here so that it matches 16 edges on the cylinder right here so that it matches my 16 edges on my cube and I'll show you how to do this as soon as you create a sphere under poly sphere you're gonna type in subdivisions on you X is 16 now I typed in 16 before for my subdivisions on the height but I notice that my polygons were more rectangular and remember we don't want rectangular polygons always aim for perfect squares if you can so I'm going to change this to 10 much better so for the cylinder very first thing that we have in our history is poly cylinder 1 and for the subdivision on my X's I typed in 16 if I want more subdivisions on my height I will go to my subdivisions on the height selected with your left mouse button hold the middle mouse button and then drag it left and right so I'm creating support edges then for the cube it's interesting if I go to polycube I have a subdivision with subdivision height subdivision depth and I want to type in 4 why is that because if I typed in 16 you will notice that this is 16 by 16 by 16 by 16 so in order to have 16 all the way around we need to type in 4 and now notice that I have 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 that's 8 1 2 3 4 that's 12 1 2 3 4 16 excellent so let's combine these three I'm gonna select all of them and I'm gonna go and delete my history freeze my transformation and Center the pivot these are shortcuts I do this on every single major operation a combine a bridge and so and so on I have these guys here so I can use do click click click excellent so time to combine these guys I'm gonna go to my modeling toolkit I'm gonna go to combine so another one piece but remember we have history left behind the history of our sphere of our cube of our cylinder select everything delete history and notice that those nodes will disappear and there you have it so let's close this right here now they're combined however we cannot bridge we don't have open holes so I'm gonna select all this faces right here by going right mouse button faces and I'm gonna do a click and drag all the way to the bottom of the cylinder so I've selected the top and the bottom which I wanted to lead and now I'm gonna deselect the middle parts by holding ctrl notice that the icon now has a negative sign so it will subtract these faces and I always double check check the top check the bottom those 3 are not selected so hold the shift key and add those three faces go around make sure that nothing else got selected and hit delete let's do the same thing for our sphere I'm going to delete these faces right here that was easier and for the cube we are gonna delete only the top we're gonna leave the bottom the way it is so I'm gonna move my camera I'm gonna click and drag so I can select all these faces and then I'm gonna hold ctrl and do a drag and the faces on the edges will be unselected hit delete and now we're ready to bridge notice that this edge right here could be our center line mimics this edge right here which makes this edge right here so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna double click to the right of that Center double click I'm gonna hold the shift key and I'm gonna do the same thing here shift double click so now I'm gonna bridge from here to here and then double click this edge loop shift double click this Auto edge loop and do another bridge so as you can see I have two bridge operations if I go to my channels hit queue I have this bridge operation here and the second bridge operation here if you happen to run into this problem where the bridge does not go from this one edge right here to this one right here play around with the bridge offset I'm gonna offset it by one so I'm gonna click and drag to the right and there it is it fixed this issue right here offset is gonna offset the bridge by the amount that you select in here notice how the offset works when I move this slider from left to right now once this is done we can add more subdivisions like so but again careful with the bridging corrected with the offset like so and there you have it so now notice that our curve type is linear if I go for example to a front view of this connection notice that my line is not straight anymore it's gonna try to blend following this line right here and then this line right here so the higher the subdivision the nicer you will see this curvature if I switch for example to curve now a curve is doing it is also trying to blame this using a curvature so you're gonna have three types of curve types from linear to blend to curve and it'll be more dramatic based on the actual geometry that you're using so I'm gonna bring my subdivisions down to something manageable and again this is how we use the bridge tool to connect different pieces that have been combined into one single piece enclosing the holes as long as they have same amount of edges around the border edge you

Channel: Fullerton College Digital Arts

Views: 32,538

Keywords: Maya, Autodesk Maya, Maya Tutorial, Image Planes, Marking Menus, Menus, Contextual Menus, Extrude Edges, Viewports, Colors, Cameras, Background, Extrude Curves, Curves, Camera, Hotbox, Quad Draw, Make Live, Lattice Deformer, Pivot, Mirror Geometry, Fencing, Extrude, Modeling Toolkit, Bridge

Id: t3j-h3RBkro

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 09 2016