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Maya Help

Discussion in 'Formats & External Tools' started by yellowlabrador, Jun 18, 2006.

  1. yellowlabrador

    yellowlabrador

    Joined:
    Oct 20, 2005
    Posts:
    562
    Hello All,

    Trying to learn Maya.

    I imported object to Unity, but somehow not rendering correctly.

    Attached are images and I will try to explain how I did it in Maya.

    Scene 4: (2nd Post top Image)
    -How it looks on Maya.

    -Created poly cube

    - Made duplicate of cube, each duplicate named as base pyramid(bottom), base2 pyramid(2nd level) base3pyramid (3rd level) etc.

    -Extruded faces(top) of each cube, put on top of each other, deleted faces of cubes(bottom face) and used boolean join the cubes.

    -Created another cube named as door frame, move the cube to one of the sides of the pyramid, used boolean difference (to create opening/hole), extrude the edge of the door frame to create a hall way.

    -Created another cube and named it entrance door and moved to hallway

    -Created cube, extrude to make stairs in entrance.

    -Created cube, extruded to create some path (walkway) inside pyramid

    - Created cube for platform open elevator.

    Now in Unity

    Scene 5:(2n post bottom image)
    - From the outside, the face where I added the door frame for entrance does not show up (render) in unity properly. If I rotate the camera it shows up.

    Scene 1:(top Image)
    - Inside the pyramid, the only thing that's showing are the door, stairs and the path(walkway), so I flip the normals in Maya and everything looks okay in Unity Except the entrance hallway, the other side is not showing if your inside the hallway and FPS will go thru that wall but if FPS is outside the hallway, wall shows and collision are okay.

    - With the normals flip, If I go outside the pyramid everything is see thru, no outside walls.

    Scene 3:(Middle Image)
    -entrance hallway, outside wall shows but not from inside (normals flip)

    Scene 2:(Bottom image)
    - Objects from Maya that I did some boolean operations have a transform, Am I suppose to delete this in Maya before I import to Unity.

    1 of the many Q's I'll have is,
    -What's the best way to create scenes in Maya where you have an out door and indoor environment, like the pyramid scene I have.

    What I'm trying to do is character coming from outside then enters the pyramid

    Outside the pyramid will be something like a village and inside the pyramid are walk ways and other objects.

    But I want the outside and inside of the pyramid walls to show when I'm outside or inside.


    Sory for the long post and images.
    attached images are scenes 1,3,2

    Thanks,
    Ray
     

    Attached Files:

  2. yellowlabrador

    yellowlabrador

    Joined:
    Oct 20, 2005
    Posts:
    562
    Here's more image

    attached images are scenes 4 , 5

    Thanks again,
    Ray
     

    Attached Files:

  3. antenna-tree

    antenna-tree

    Joined:
    Oct 30, 2005
    Posts:
    5,324
    Hi Ray,

    Hope you're having fun learning Maya... takes a while but well worth it :wink:
    First, it's always a good idea to delete history in Maya before importing to Unity. I'm not sure if it affects the FBX file, but unless you need to go back to a certain modification in the pipeline, the History just gums up the works. I have "Delete History" assigned to a hot key because I use it so much. Freezing Transformations is a good practice too.

    Booleans will screw up any geometry no matter how clean you do it. After any Boolean function (especially Difference) you need to go in and clean up the faces. Booleans will create some wierd faces (holes especially) that will only render properly in the program they were done in. And instead of using Booleans for joining geometry it's best to just use Combine and merge vertices where applicable, especially for games where clean low-poly geometry is the goal.

    For the walls of your pyramid I'd create an actual inner and outer mesh for each... just like a real wall it should have some depth and the normals need to be flipped the proper direction. Either duplicate the outer Pyramid mesh and shrink it down a smidge to become the inner walls and flip the normals. Or the better way is to extrude all the faces of the mesh inwards while turning on "Keep Faces Together" in the Channel Box. This insures that all the curvature ratios are maintained.

    Hope some of this helps, any questions I'll be more than happy to try and answer.
     
  4. yellowlabrador

    yellowlabrador

    Joined:
    Oct 20, 2005
    Posts:
    562
    Maya interface was intimidating at first, but so far I'm having fun playing with it. :D

    Cool, will do that.

    How do you do that? Is that on the channel box?

    Can you combine and merge vertices of two objects to create an opening, like a door frame?

    When you extrude inwards, as long as "Keep Faces Together" is on,
    will keep the face of the objects on both sides, like creating a tunnel, outside wall then inside wall or still need to create an inner mesh for it


    I'm trying to understand Maya using the tutorials from alias learning center, I have Introducing Maya 7 3D for beginners and learning Maya 7 Foundation. I also just ordered some videos from Gnome.. Head, Body Modeling for games(low Poly) as well as UV mapping.

    I like Maya, It's different, just need to get used to where things are at.

    Thanks for all the help, appreciate it.
    Ray
     
  5. yellowlabrador

    yellowlabrador

    Joined:
    Oct 20, 2005
    Posts:
    562
    Tried it and work like a tunnel. Yay!

    Will be playing with it next

    Ray
     
  6. yellowlabrador

    yellowlabrador

    Joined:
    Oct 20, 2005
    Posts:
    562
    Got the freezing transformation.

    Now I still have the same problem with making a hole / opening.

    Tried combine then make hole, works okay on maya but when object is in Unity, I still get some areas not rendering correctly.

    Attached an image(1 the new pyramid and the other one just a box)

    Thanks again,
    Ray
     

    Attached Files:

  7. antenna-tree

    antenna-tree

    Joined:
    Oct 30, 2005
    Posts:
    5,324
    To be honest I never use Booleans for anything anymore unless it's required for some shape that's too hard to do manually. The 5 tools I use the to create 75% of the stuff I do are Split/Cut Polygon, Extrude Face/Edge, Merge Vertices, Loft, and Extrude/Birail.

    I think the reason you're seeing these faces missing is because when Unity imports the file it has to triangulate the mesh and inadvertently flips some of the faces.

    In #1 and #2 I'm doing a Difference Boolean to create a "doorway" through the cube. In #2 you can see the selected face created by the Boolean has 8 sides and is concave possibly making it hard for the FBX exporter to triangulate properly. In #3 and #4 I use the Split Polygon Tool to cut out the door. Then in #5 I delete the faces to create the doorway and then I use the Fill Hole tool to fill in the faces inside the doorway. You then need to use the Split Polygon Tool again to split the face at the corners of the inside of the doorway. You could also manually split up the face in #2 created by the Boolean, but honestly I think it's better practice to just create these sort of shapes manually, you'll end up with cleaner geometry and have a much better fundamental understanding of how your objects are built up.
     

    Attached Files:

  8. yellowlabrador

    yellowlabrador

    Joined:
    Oct 20, 2005
    Posts:
    562
    I got it, I used extrude face, resize the area to match the door tunnel and delete face.

    But I like your approach better, much cleaner. 8)

    Just learned another way of modeling in Maya :D

    Thanks so much,
    Ray
     

    Attached Files:

  9. joacoerazo_legacy

    joacoerazo_legacy

    Joined:
    Apr 5, 2006
    Posts:
    214
    Hi,

    You are able to edit almost all elements (Vertex, edges, ect..) within Maya. Try the different Poligon tools that Maya has.

    In Maya you always have more than one way to make something, and you always be able to fix almost all the poligon/normal Issues.

    An usefull tools is EditPoligons/Normals/Reverse, and try to check the nodes within the hypergraph.

    Good luck