Introduction

In addition to creating NURBS surfaces using curves, you can edit and sculpt surfaces and primitive objects in Maya using the Sculpt Geometry Tool.

The Sculpt Geometry Tool allows you to interactively push or pull on the surface regions to create areas that are embossed or in relief in relation to the surface.

In this lesson, you learn some of the basic concepts of these tools by sculpting a cartoon face and head from a NURBS primitive sphere using the Sculpt Geometry Tool.

In this lesson you learn:

• Basic sculpting operations (push, pull, smooth, relax and erase) with the Sculpt Geometry Tool.
• How the density of isoparametric lines affects the surface detail possible when sculpting.
• How to increase the surface subdivisions on a NURBS surface to aid with surface sculpting.
• How to change the brush radius for the Sculpt Geometry Tool.
• How Opacity and Max Displacement affect the sculpting operations.
• How to import geometry from a pre-existing file into your current scene.