Curves and Nurbs in Maya

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This post is to clear up a few of the lessons I gave over the past week. It seems a few of you are not familiar with curves and nurbs. As I have previously stated (not on this blog but in lessons), a curve is a line that is made up of a collection of points.  Yes, this is an overly simplified definition, but it works for what you will be doing with curves. You cannot really see it in a render so you have to add some sort of surface to it, either by adding more curves and making nurbs or by putting an actual mesh with it. That is where the lessons came in. Curves were used to make either the outline of the model or the whole model itself, then converted to mesh. This is perfect for things that are cord-like, hard surface with sharp edges, that have clearly a define profile, or that can be created by revolving a profile around a pivot point or axis. The end result in all the lessons was the same. To export an obj file to import into Second Life. Because of this, the curves and/or nurbs needed to be converted into a mesh, since SL doesn't let us upload curves. Below are some videos that explain this is in more detail. If you have any questions you can leave them below or message me in discord.

This video will help explain more about the difference between mesh and nurbs.



This video gives you the basics of curves in Maya. Even though the video is old the directions are the same in Maya 2019. One quick note, since this was a stumbling block for some of you. Make sure to change your Menu Set to Modeling, that will change the options in the menu at the top of the screen.









This video shows you more of what curves and nurbs can do inside of Maya. Think of it as a good alternative to using mesh when you start you models if they fall into any of the categories I mentioned at the beginning of this post.




If you want to know more about curves and nurbs check out the links below.


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