Introducing Autodesk Maya 2013 Chapter 5: Patch Modeling A Locomotive Detail

Project Overview

The book goes into explaining how often times as a modeler one will need to attach  surfaces so the model doesn't split at the seams. So in order to avoid this splitting I went through a process of aligning and attaching NURBS patches by stitching the pieces together, which is called patch modeling. Because I'm so inexperienced, patch modeling was a major pain in my butt. 

The Locomotive Detail

Starting the NURBS Pump

So to create this piece I learned the benefits of Freeze Transformations. Basically if you make any adjustments to the size, location, or rotation of the object the values in the channel box will change. By freezing the transformations it sets all of the values back to the default. Definitely something I wanted to know.

I created a NURBS cylinder, duplicated it twice, and shrunk down the sphere to make up the two 'end caps' of the cylinder. The end caps are what I had to freeze the transformation of since I had to scale them down and move them over. Now any adjustments I would potentially have to make to them would be incredibly easy through the use of the channel box. The three rings were then duplicated to make the smaller cylinder and end caps.

Learning to use Detach Surfaces. It was a little annoying, even though the book warned me about it, when I'd first go in to detach the surface it just wouldn't work and I'd have to go in and do it again. It doesn't add all that much time to the workflow but I was angry that I couldn't get it at first and kept 'undoing' when I really just needed to do it again with the history still intact.

Adding Endcaps

To achieve this effect I had to add isoparms and use the hulls the scale the isoparms down to almost close off then end caps. Then I connecting the endcaps to the main cylinder using lofts.

Stitching and Tangency

So in this section I went through and attacted the loft piece the end cap and cylinder, this process helped to smooth it all out. I then had to detach the cylinder from the end cap for a later step.

I actually made some mistakes in creating my lofts. My cylinder wasn't close enough to my two end caps so the  loft wasn't horizontal like it should have been. The attaching NURBS tool mostly smoothed it out though.

Next I created a loft between the two larger cylinders on both sides and made it so that the loft would curve around the cylinders a bit better.

The next step really started to confuse me. A good sign it's time for bed. Hopefully it will all make sense when I finish this project tomorrow.