Polygon stripe from a curve?

[Anonymous]

Hello there, as a maya newbie i got what i believe to be quite a stupid issue, hope you can help me..
I can't manage to obtain a polygon stripe from a curve. I could achieve something like that using PaintEffects (attachment) but i actually need a way to create it from a curve, more precise..

Anyone can help me? TIA

[n8skow]

Not sure what you mean by 'polygon stripe' exactly... could you explain it a bit more?

[Anonymous]

To start, thanks for answering.
Then.. i'd like to create a 3d track with the kind of tessellation as whatiwant.jpg i attached because i need its vertexes to be used as a motion guide in unity3d.

The problem with that is that it's hand-drawn using PaintEffects and everything but precise.

I'm wondering how to get that result starting from a curve.

The only way i found to do something like that is creating an offset curve and then a planar surface, but obviously i can't achieve the tessellation i need (notwhatiwant.jpg) 😞

I'm experimenting extrusions but I just can't find a way to do that..

Any suggestion?

[Anonymous]

Yeah, you could just extrude an edge along the curve. (For example, an edge from a 1x1 poly plane)
Or a face, if you want thickness as well...

[Anonymous]

I spend most of my life making strips along a line - I model roads and bridges for an engineering firm. I get the best results by extruding out a nurbs surface and converting it to polys once I get everything where I want it. I've read that you can extrude a poly edge along a path, but I haven't gotten good results from that. Another advantage to this route, is I can rebuild the nurbs surface to match to lanes which gives me guidance when I am painting the marking lines textures. I also require very accurate elevations and angling of roads for drainage, so the nurbs surfaces seem easier to work with for me. Its also handy to be able to up the tesselation just in areas where the road curves sharply, and lower the tesselation where the roads are straight.

[Anonymous]

many ways to do this correctly

i got simmilar tessealtion as your model image by lofting 2 surface curves as you wanted. there are many options in the teselations settings to make more simple. easiest way is to specify by a count and set to triangle.

here are some images of lofted curve tesselation
<a href="http://s245.photobucket.com/albums/gg54/bradonwebb/?action=view&current=Picture1-1.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg54/bradonwebb/Picture1-1.png" border="0" alt="Photobucket" ></a>



here are some where i took one center curve and one flat plane. then i extrude along a curve. the way to do this is to line up your extruding edge to the start vert of the curve. then select that edge then shift select the curve. then hit extruede in the poly mesh menu. you can specify the devisions right off the bat because you know your going to need many to get something like this. i did 30 divisions. if its too much or not enough you can always go into the history stack to edit the division number more or less.
<a href="http://s245.photobucket.com/albums/gg54/bradonwebb/?action=view&current=Picture2-2.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg54/bradonwebb/Picture2-2.png" border="0" alt="Photobucket" ></a>

both these methods have there plus and minus. i would say lofting is the easier as you can explicitly control the geometry tessalation a bit easier.
hope these help.