Introducing Maya® 2008

Building a Teakettle

Now that you have experienced the mechanics of subdivision surface modeling and edit-

ing, you’re ready to work on another model. The next subdivision exercise asks you to cre-

ate a teakettle. You’ll fashion the kettle from simple polygon shapes and then refine it

using subdivisions.

Creating the Base Polygon Model

To create the base poly mesh for the kettle, follow these steps:

1. The main body of the kettle will begin as a poly cylinder. Choose Create

➔

Polygon

Primitives

➔

Cylinder

➔

❒ to open the Options box. Set Subdivisions Around Axis to

8, and set Subdivisions Along Height to 4.

2. To create the lid, create another poly cylinder with eight subdivisions around the axis

and 2 for the height. Scale it to fit as a lid on the first cylinder.

3. Select the upper row of poly edges on the lid and scale them all in to create a bevel, as

shown in Figure 6.34. Then select every other edge on the top surface and delete

them, as shown in Figure 6.35.

Figure 6.35

Delete every other edge of the top surface.

Figure 6.34

Scale the outer edges inward.

You can use these same techniques to re-create the polygon hand from Chapter 4 with sub-

division surfaces.

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4. Select the poly edges of the main cylinder, and scale them out increasingly larger as

you work your way down. Delete every other edge of the top surface as you did with

the lid. Your kettle should look like the one in Figure 6.36.

5. You are going to create a simple handle for the lid. Select the lid’s top four faces. You

will create the handle by extruding these faces and scaling them in. First, make sure

the option Edit Mesh

➔

Keep Faces Together is enabled. This option lets you extrude

these faces properly by keeping the poly faces together during the extrude operation.

Now select the four faces again and choose Edit Mesh

➔

Extrude

➔

❒. Choose Edit

➔

Reset Settings to make sure the settings are correct, and click Extrude. Use the scale

handles to scale the extruded faces in, as shown in Figure 6.37.

6. With those four faces still selected, extrude the faces again, but this time pull them up

and scale them in a bit as shown in Figure 6.39.

7. Select the side faces of the lid’s new handle, and extrude the faces inward using the

scale handle to create detail on the handle.

Figure 6.37

By default, faces will extrude separately.

Figure 6.36

Creating the overall shape

If instead of following these directions you choose Edit Mesh

➔

Extrude and use the special

scale handles shown in Figure 6.38, your faces may all separate.

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8. Select the edges that make up the lid handle, and move them to round out the handle,

as shown in Figure 6.40.

9. Select the four faces on the top of the kettle and extrude them. Scale the faces in and

pull them up to round the top of the kettle, as shown in Figure 6.41.

Figure 6.41

Round off the top of the kettle.

Figure 6.40

Round out the handle by moving the edges.

Figure 6.39

Pulling up the lid’s handle

Figure 6.38

The Keep Faces Together command allows you to

extrude the faces together.

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