Extruding a Bezier curve into a triangle mesh in maya

Alec Jacobson

October 17, 2014

weblog/

Today I struggled to convince Maya to let me extrude a Bezier Curve into a solid shape (sweep a closed curve and finish with planar end caps). I could used the Surface > Extrude tool to extrude the curve and then select the boundary edges and use the Surface > Planar tool to close the endcaps, but this just creates a group of 3 surfaces which are not topologically connected.

My end goal today was to create something to send to the 3D printer. So in this case I eventually wanted a triangle mesh. Here're the steps I took to convert a bezier curve to a polygonal mesh:

  1. draw bezier curves maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  2. find the Polygons > Plane tool maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  3. draw a plane behind the curves maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  4. Select one of the curves and the plane maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  5. Choose Edit Mesh > Project curve onto mesh maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  6. Select the new projected curve and the plane maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  7. Choose Edit Mesh > Split Mesh with projected curve maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  8. Right click and hold and drag to select "Face" selection mode maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  9. Mouse over the plane until just the filled curve appears (there seem to be many overlapping faces. maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  10. Choose Edit > Invert Selection maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  11. Then choose Edit > Delete maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  12. Select just the original Bezier curve and delete it. maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  13. Repeat steps 2-12 for the other curves (why can't we do all curves at once?) maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  14. Select both filled curves and choose the Polygons > Extrude tool maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  15. Pull down on the widget's arrow to extrude. maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  16. Select both extruded surfaces and choose Mesh > Cleanup... maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  17. Make sure 4-sided faces is unchecked maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  18. Make sure Faces with zero geometry area is checked with very small Area tolerance (e.g. 0.00001) maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  19. Hit Cleanup maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  20. The choose Mesh > Triangulate maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  21. The surface is now triangulated. Select everything. maya bezier curve to polygon mesh
  22. File > Export Selection and save as an obj maya bezier curve to polygon mesh

Wow. So 21 steps. Not particularly easy for a task I thought would be dead simple. I must be missing some faster way to do this.