Poly face won't extrude

[steves]

Hi I have a rookie question. I have not been able to get a poly face to extrude alnog the X axis. I have checked and checked and can't figure out what is wrong. I have tried new drawings and set everything I can think of to defaults. I chose a face on with the normal facing the X axis and chose Polygons>Extrude and the face multiplies but does not extrude down the path I want. Any Ideas are appreciated. I have Maya 2.5 Japanese on Win 2KJ. I am using Mastering Maya complete In English but all the other documentation is In Japanese which I still struggle reading therefore progress has been slow. Also the software and computere are shared at school. I don't have my own copy(someday).thanks

[geoffcrowther]

extrude along a path?

hello?

extrude just duplicates the face, you haveto move it along the path, rotate it, scale it, whatever.

if i'm misunderstanding your question, what do you mean extrude along a path? let say your poly is facing the z axis, what would it mean to extrude along the x axis? wouldnt it just extrude 'sideways' as if you moved it along the x axis yet still face the z axis?

or are you looking to extrude and edge? if so thats not in 2.5 (i think, not sure anymore), but it is in 3.0.

[steves]

well I am used to CAD software. When I say Extrude I mean to take a 2D face or surface and give it a 3rd dimension or height. Is that different? I never even thought it mgiht be different. Maybe my conceptual thinking is wrong but then the Tut illustration shows the face doing what I expected that is gaining height in the direction of the normal of the face. Which in this case is facing X so it essentially is like adding another cube facing the X axis. Am I way off or not making sense. Maybe the CAD background is screwing me up. thanks for the feedback.
Steve

[pgo]

No youre right it is the same principle as in CAD. I've never really encountered too many problems with extrudes in Maya. When you've told it which face to extrude, Maya expects you to either move/scale/rotate the extruded face using the manipulator (like the guy above said). Just click drag on the colour of manipulator which corresponds to the axis you want to move it. Hope you get the results youre after.

[geoffcrowther]

hi steve. first my apologies if i sounded arrogant.

okay, so what you are saying is that when you open up the options dialogue box for plygon/extrude face and use settings in there the extruded polygon wont translate in the x direction? will it scale? or rotate? do any of the other transforms work?.

pls let me know as offhand i dont know what could be overriding these setting unfortunately. i'd like to help.

[steves]

I should have been more detailed, this is what happens. I put in a default Poly Cube > Pick a face facing the X axis go Poly>extrude and the face divides in quarters an X appears in the center of the face. This in fact happens with any of the cubes faces so it is not just in x. I can use the Manipulator to move or scale or rotate any face. But I cannot get what I consider an extrude. Mr Bean said the face just duplicates. How is this an extrude? I don't understand. I expect a new face to offset from the original face and essentially form a new attached cube. That's what I consider an extrude and it is what is shown in the book Mastering Maya. This is the tut on polygon modeling Ch. 7 (the hand). Also I have Unchecked all the options in the tool options under the Polygon menu. And I have tried various offsets for the extrude. They all seem to extrude inward instead of out so I suspect there is some simple thing I just don't understand. Thanks again.
Steve

[mrsballchucker]

You should be able to rmb over the poly obj and select faces from the pop up menu. Then select the blue dot in the middle of the face. Then go to the modeling menu-polygon-extrude face (maya 3-I think it's just extrude for maya 2.5) This should work. Try making a fresh poly cube and doing it on that first. By the way, you are exactly right what an extrude is...

[steves]

I did what you said before, I tried again and played with the offset and other values. Now the best I could get is the point on the face to extrude but not the whole face, which again would be as is you were attaching a new cube/ So when the point extrudes I end up with a triangular new object. Getting warmer! THANKS.