Interactive Curve Tools
Last updated
Last updated
The Maya Interactive Curve Tools can be coupled with many other tools in the Groomer's Tool (Such as Curves To Cards/Twist/Curls/Braids) * Before using, please make sure:
Maya's work unit is in 'centimeter'. Preferences -> Settings: Working Units
A marking menu is also available for this tool. Please visit this page for installation:
When a geometry is set in this field, the Sculpt, Add, and the Draw tools will ‘only’ use this geometry as reference, and will ignore operations on other geometries.
There are two initial states: 1. Curves selected:
When there are curves selected, all sculpting operations will only be applied to the selected curves.
2. No curves selected:
When there are no curves selected, only the curve that is 'closest' to the first cursor click will be sculpted.
Click on Sculpt to enter sculpting tool
CTRL + LMB: Set sculpting radius
LMB: Sculpt
MMB: Smooth
SHIFT + LMB: Move the root and automatically snap to the defined base mesh (a geometry is required to be set in the 'base mesh' box). Here are the steps:
Make sure you have a base mesh tagged.
Hold down Ctrl + LMB and drag to adjust the radius of the soft selection size.
Hold down Shift + LMB and drag to any position you like.
Upon mouse release, the root of the curve will be automatically snapped to the base mesh.
G key (Default Maya repeat last step hotkey): Toggle the sculpting tool.
Lock Length: locking curve length during sculpt.
Lock Root: locking the root of the curve so the root would always stay in position.
Smooth Strength: Intensity of the Smooth operation (MMB). If your curves are going wild at an angle, it could be due to low amount of CVs on your curves. Try rebuilding your curves to increase the CV counts.
Normalize: space out curve CVs along the curve.
Add curve by clicking on a mesh, the tool uses nearby curves as reference to create an in-between curve. Click on Add to enter sculpting tool
LMB: Add an interpolated curve on click-point on the mesh.
MMB: Create a straight curve on click-point on the mesh.
Search Distance: If you get an warning: # Warning: Can't find nearby curves to sample from, try increasing search distance’, this means that the point position you clicked on does not have any nearby curves within the interpolation range. Simply increase the ‘Interpolation Distance’ (defaulted to 5) to include more curves for interpolation.
Use Average: You can also choose to use the ‘Use Average’ option, which will create a curve using the average of all the nearby curves within the Search Distance. If you are using this option, make sure that the surrounding curves have the same CV for best results. This can be a better option to use if you wish to retain the ‘tip’ for a group of clumped curves.
A drag method curve cut tool. With curve(s) selected:
LMC + drag: to see yellow dots appear on each curve selected. The yellow dot on the top will be the cut point.
Radius Influence: Turning this option on will tell the tool to take in the 'radius' of the tool into account. If you have this turned on, only the selected curves that falls within the radius will be cut.
Slide Sensitivity: How fast the the indicator (yellow dot) moves.
To draw a curve, you will need a geometry as the base. Click on the geometry and start drawing:
LMC + drag: draws curve.
MMC + drag: with curve(s) selected, the tool will attach the drawn curve to the selected curve(s).
Rebuild when Drawn: Curves will be rebuild based on the number entered in the 'Rebuild CV Count" slider.
Rebuild CV Count: Number of CVs to apply onto the drawn curves. When drawing a longer or a more complicated curve, set this higher to retain the shape of the drawn curve.
Smooth Factor: When drawing a curve, a smooth factor is applied. Set this to 0 if you do not want any smoothing effect.
To draw a curve, you will need a geometry as the base. Click on the geometry and start drawing:
LMC + drag: a yellow dot will appear on each curve selected. This is the point at which the tool will cut and, then attach, to the tip of your selected curves.
Slide Sensitivity: How fast the the indicator (yellow dot) moves.
This is the same function as Maya's Extend Curve. However, you will have the ability to 'rebuild' curves after extension.
LMC: extend the selected curves.
CTRL + LMB: Set radius.
Radius Influence: Turning this option on will tell the tool to take in the 'radius' of the tool into account. If you have this turned on, only the selected curves that falls within the radius will be extended. I personally find leaving this off and manually selecting curves yields best behavior.
Extend Type: Choose between Linear, Circular or Extrapolate extension types. Linear will make a straight line, but can sometimes cause issues if you have a curve with CVs too close to each other on towards the tip. In this case you can use the Circular or the Extrapolate type, which will make the extension more 'rounded' or smoothed.
Extend Multiplier: This is the multiplier from the selected curve's length. Default of 1.01 means it will extend the curve by 1% on each click/drag operation.
Rebuild CVs after Extend: As this tool is built around Maya's default curve extend function. As a result, there will be a lot of CVs on the extension. Turn this on to rebuild the curve on each extend operation for cleaner/smoother CVs.
Moves curves and maintain the root of selected curves on the geometry.
LMC: Move curves
Orient: Applies normal differences on curves when moving.
With the Maya Curve Color Tool, you can now sculpt on Maya curves and feel like XGen!
Also check out how to utilize the sculpting tool with the Braid Tool
If you are sculpting on Braids or Curls, please make sure your current frame is at 1. Otherwise, the curve will not move the braid!
