…and it was terrible. A lot of the basic functionality was missing (including viewing things in higher quality). It ran horrendously slow, and worst of all there was lag even when I went to drag select something.

So yeah, I don’t recommend trying to do anything in Maya without a graphics card.

Wow that was a useless blog entry…

Here’s an excellent article by CGSociety contest winner Fabricio Moraes.

In it he discusses his workflow for creating the 3d scene within 3ds max, Zbrush and Photoshop.

I made this as a test to see how quickly I could make a 3d scene. The total time it ended up taking is 4 hours.

Go to CGSociety!

Link: http://www.3dcreativemag.com/

Today I’ll be teaching you how to create a rope/pipe the easiest way I know how!

I like this method because it’s easy, and lets you control how the rope looks.

(Since this can work for both ropes and pipes, these terms are pretty much interchangeable in this tut)

1) First, create two cubes, where you want your rope to start and end.

Creating 2 Boxes. Setting up the rope.

2) Then, select both cubes and go to Edit Mesh > Combine. This will combine these to cubes into one object. If you don’t do this, the next step won’t work.

3) Select one face on each cube (where you want the rope to span), then go to Edit Mesh > Bridge, but click on the tiny box to the right of the text. This will open the options for that tool.

Selecting the faces and bridge options.

4) In the Bridge Options, under Bridge Type, select “Smooth path + curve”. Under “Divisions”, set it higher for longer ropes, or lower for shorter ones.

Okay, this does two things. 1, it bridges the gap between the boxes, and 2, it creates a spline-curve to control how the bridge looks.

This part might be a bit confusing, since we never dealt with curves in our 3d classes, but there is now a curve located inside the bridged cube.

5)Select the curve, then right click on it and pick “Control Vertex”. These can be moved like regular vertexes, but will actually effect the shape of your object! Experiment for a bit, then once you have the rope looking the way you want it, select the cube-turned-rope object and to to Edit>Delete by Type>History. This will finalize the shape of the rope, and now you can delete the curve if you want (to keep things uncluttered).

Selecting control vertexes.

And lastly, just smooth the rope by selecting it and pressing 3. This will make it rounded, instead of boxy.

Hope that helps!

But first, a bit about myself and what programs I use!

I’ve been interested in 3d for about 4 years now, and started to seriously get into it around 2 years ago. The first program I used was Cinema4d, then when I started to take 3d seriously I switched over to Maya and haven’t looked back. Other 3d programs I know are 3ds Max, Modo, Houdini, Bodypaint 3d, Realflow, and Zbrush, although I use Maya and Zbrush MUCH more than the rest.

So I guess that’s it for now, I’ve started working on several models, so hopefully the next update will focus on those.