3ds Max® 2012 Bible

BONUS CHAPTER 5

Working with NURBS

IN THIS CHAPTER

Lofting a NURBS surface

Creating a UV Loft surface

Lathing a NURBS surface

Creating a 1-rail and 2-rail sweep surface

Sculpting a rectangular NURBS surface

You learn many details of working with NURBS as you dive in and start building NURBS objects. This bonus chapter includes several tutorials that can help as you try to grasp the power and flexibility of modeling with NURBS.

Lofting a NURBS Surface

U Loft is one of the most versatile NURBS surface tools: You can use it to create simple or very complex surfaces. In the following tutorial, you create a spoon by lofting a NURBS surface over a series of point curve cross sections using the U Loft tool. This tool requires sections in the horizontal (U) direction.

Tutorial: Creating a U Loft NURBS Spoon

Lofting a skin over a series of cross-section curves can create NURBS surfaces. In this tutorial, you create the point curves necessary for modeling a NURBS spoon. Then you use the U Loft tool to skin the surface and create the finished spoon.

To create a NURBS spoon using the U Loft feature, follow these steps:

1. Open the U-Loft spoon.max file from the Bonus Chapter 5 directory on the CD.

   This file includes 10 cross-section NURBS point curves that are correctly positioned to form a spoon.

2. Select one of the curves, and open the Modify panel. In the General rollout, click the Attach Multiple button to open the Attach Multiple dialog box, click the All button to select all the curves, ...