Maya tutorial: Modelling a polygonal gear

Maya tutorial: Modelling a polygonal gear In this tutorial I will show you, how to create a polygonal gear. We will begin with a polygonal cylinder and than we will pull a few vertices to match the shape of the gear.

 

 

Maya Tutorial: Modelling a polygonal gear

Step 1

Create a polygon primitive cylinder.

Use inputs:
Radius 1; Height 2; Subd Axis 40; Subd Height 1; Subd Caps 1;
also change Scale Y to 0.3

Step 2

Go into a top view, press F8 to enter the component mode and select two vertices by draw mark square using the mouse over the vertices. Make sure you will use this selection method, because you need to select at the same time CVs on the other side of the cylinder. Then press Shift and draw other mark square over next two CVs and select them. You need to select every second pair of CVs with this method. That means you will always skip two of them like in our picture. Repeat this all the way around the circle and make sure you are holding Shift.

Step 3

Once you have the selected CVs on both sides of the cylinder, select the Scale tool and then click and drag on the middle of the scale manipulator to scale in all directions.

Step 4

Now you can delete your history on the gear. With your gear selected go and select Edit>Delete by type>History. This is very important, because if you do not delete the history on the object, you could end up later on when we will harden the edges of the object with some weird results.

Step 5

Now select your object and let’s harden the edges. Go into the Edit polygons>Normals>Soften/Harden options box. Press All hard button and apply. Close the option box.

Step 6

Now we will flatten the caps on the gear. In the front view select all CVs on the top side. With the Scale tool move the CVs in the line. Make sure you use the Z axis (green) cube manipulator. Do the same thing on the bottom side of your gear.

 

Now you have finished up with a polygonal gear. If you are interested you can use this gear in our next tutorial where we will drive this gear with particles.