How do I cut out Eye Holes?

[pandemic]

Hi. I'm just learning Maya 4 on my PC.

I'm sure I will discover this in a tutuorial eventually, but if anyone could help me, that would be great. I'm making a mask/helmet and wanted to cut out holes for the eyes and mouth. I can't figure this out. I'm working on 2. One is an adapted polygon cylinder, the other is a revolved NURBS curve.

Please help, thanks!

[gmask]

As long as what you are modelling is not going to have animated deformations then you can use a trim. Fromt he front view you draw the eyes holes using curves and then you project the curve sontot he the helmet mask. Then use trim to "delete" the holes.

If you were modelling a head for aniamtion I would not reccomend using this process.

[pandemic]

Thanks for the reply. What if you did want to use the model for animation? How would you go about making a mask with eyeholes?

TIA - Tajiomax

[andy-davis]

If you want to animate a NURBS surface with structures such as holes in, you would have to make your model a patch model. There are tutorials on NURBS patch modelling on this site. Warning: patch modelling is tough, it took me months to get the hang of. Maintaining smooth seams across patches is tough, but Maya's Global Stitch function simplifies. things

[gmask]

You can animate it without problems as long as you are not deforming or skinning a trimmed surface. Either way delete history on the object before you start moving it around.

[joojaa]

This will however impact performance abit + other problems

[gmask]

This will however impact performance abit + other problems

I got off my mission and now it's biting me in the butt.. Als long as the object is not skinend of being deformed the perfomance impact should not be noticeable for a couple of trims. Depeniding on how you texture map it you may have problems there.

[joojaa]

Yeah i know but its still not recomended. you know 2 eye sockets soon turn intoa a huge amount of trims (naah, ok, its mostly the history thats problematic)

[gmask]

I read the OP's question as relating to a mask or helmet ..something with hard geometry rather than organic like a face but I'm not too sure. From everything I've read you prettymuch need to delete history as you model or it will cause problems. I have also gottent he impression that Industrial designers do use trims alot and that is where the function originated from ...

I'm working on a wheel hub right now that has holes in it. I'm doing it without trims and it is a pain. I can't use global stitch because it ruins the surrounding surfaces so I end up rebuilding and nudging. It pays to start out with a very dense well organized mesh but getting all the seams to fit and line up orderly is more a matter trial and error than anything else. It is definately easier to patch model organic shapes than ones with perfectly curved surfaces where any imperfection looks bad.

[joojaa]

In reply to:
I have also gottent he impression that Industrial designers do use trims alot and that is where the function originated from ...

Yes, and eingeneers, in fact its the only way they moddel nowdays. and since theese apps do tesselate properly over the seams its no problem... its a bit slower but thenagain they arent afeter 20 fps feedback either. I suggest that you take a look on some eingeneering CSG apps or ID surfacers then youll undrstand why (ahh for the sesselation go to http://www.hut.fi/~joojala2/tesselate for some imagery, sorry no explanations)

[gmask]

Yes, and eingeneers, in fact its the only way they moddel nowdays. and since theese apps do tesselate properly over the seams its no problem...

But Maya does or doesn't tesselate properly over trims???

[joojaa]

no maya tesselates each surface separately while eingeneering apps tesselate the shell in one go wich means that the boundary points will always concide with eachother no matter how low tesselation values you use (part of the csg paradigm). Hence making much more efficent surfaces.