Creating pipes in Maya

[Stevincent]

I got asked how I created pipes for my SLS models that Im working on for an upcoming mod so I wrote this quick tutorial describing my methods.

First off the tips Im going to give you are related to what I know which is Maya though the concepts should work in other applications.

So they're two ways I made the pipes. The method I liked most is the simple extrusion method. Id take a pipe extrude it. Where I would want to put a bend in the pipe Id put 4 edge loops, so I'd have 5 including the edge loop on the end of the pipe. Id grab the last 4, thats including the one on the end,

and Id rotate it just about 10 degrees and adjust position,

then Id deselect one edge and rotate the 3 remaining and adjust position,

and deselect another and rotate the 2 remaining and adjust position, and the final one should be end in the direction I want to pipe to go and then I'd extrude again and repeat the steps till I was done with the pipe.

The second method is using curves. I dont know how to do this in other programs but if they deal in nurb surfaces this should be possible in those applications. Essentially what I do is draw a CV curve in an orthographic view to the shape I want the pipe. Once I have that, I create a circle curve and scale it to the diameter I want the pipe.

Next select the circle and than the curve. And go to your surfaces menu set and and got to Surfaces>Extrude Options Box and setup the settings like the ones I have and hit extrude.

Now you can adjust how many divisions in the pipe after you have extruded you can even adjust the shape of your pipe by manipilating the the control vertexes on the curve.

Imn the channel box you can adjust the settings under the inputs Nurbs Tesselate you want to adjust the U and V numbers to change the division ammounts till you get the pipe profile you want, dont make it too high more polys isnt always the best.

U Number

V Number

Once you get the pipe the way you want you can delete history and the curve will no longer be attached to the geometry.

Edited August 4, 2013 by Stevincent