- ALIGNED IMAGE PLANES
- ALPHA ONION SKINS
- MAYA CARD TRICKS
- MAPPING VERSUS MODELING
- INSERT HERE WHILE DRAWING CURVES
- EXPLICIT, R-RATED NURB TESSELLATION
- TESSELLATION VERSUS CVs
- LINEAR VERSUS CUBIC HEROICS
- CONSTRAIN THOSE UNRULY CURVES
- THE REVOLUTIONS WILL NOT BE TELEVISED
- BI-RAILING THE MISSING GLASS SLIPPER
- SLIPPER REBUILDING
- SHADY, UNDESIRABLE ELEMENTS IN MAYA
- RANDOMIZE THOSE CVs
- JUNKYARD DUMPING SIMULATION
- USE OF PHOTOSHOP AS A MODELING TOOL
- AUTOTRACING FOR FUN AND PROFIT
- PHOTOSHOP PATHS TO MAYA CURVES
- WRESTLING WITH DISPLACEMENT
- ANIMATE YOUR MODELING
- SET SUBTLETIES
- TRANSFORM TOOLS SHORTCUT
- INTERROGATING POINTS AS TO WHERE THEY LIVE
- FACE PROPOGATION VIA SHELL IN POLY SELECTION CONSTRAINTS
LINEAR VERSUS CUBIC HEROICS
If you envy superhero antics and would like to get similar admiration and respect, try this tip. NURBS models can get notoriously unmanageable in size, often for no good reason at all. In the effort to reduce CV count, a major efficiency step is to use Degree 1 Linear modeling operations over Degree 3 Cubic for flats. The default and often-used setting of Degree 3 creates a minimum of 16 CVs in order to be able to deform a surface freely. Degree 1 restricts the CV count to 4 for a flat planar surface. If the surface never needs deformation and will remain planar (the bulk of architectural scenes or hard models, for example), model with the Degree 1 option. A many-fold savings will result in the weight of your model, creating room for further detail elsewhere. File size will be held down, RAM use will plummet, you will be hoisted up as a true hero, and world peace will ensue (we all hope).