2D editor equivalents in Maya

[RFairey]

I'm really getting fed up in MAYA - some simple tasks seem to take huge tedious efforts to accomplish. Can someone tell me there is an easy way to do this?

Draw an outline and revolve it (making pillars etc.)

Whatever I try, I either get funny smoothed off shapes, or loads of extra overlapping polygons.

[ilkman]

Use curves. Draw a shape using any type of curve, center the origin of the shape, click revolve, then convert to polys. Also i think it will make it easier if you revolve around the Z (vertical) axis.
This is a simple way, although controlling the poly count might prove a little dificult.

[chip]

for lower-poly game objects, it may be just easier to start with a poly cylinder primitive and use the poly modeling tools to shape the pillar. this allows you to set an initial limit on the number of faces and is more reliable than a lathe/revolve from a NURB curve or the like that is then converted to polys. plus you can work in quads until you get the shape you want, then easily triangulate.

hard edges are another matter though -- i'm still working on getting the MayaPLE exports to have proper hard edges. this is a plug-in prob, though, not a Maya bug.

[RFairey]

Aha - cracked it.

By hard edges, I meant being able to draw CV curves with sharp corners, that gave sharp edges when revolved. To do this, you have to set the degree of the tool to 1(linear).

Then to revolve, you have to select the revolve option box, then set surface degree to linear, output geometry to polygons, then use tolerance to none - this gives you a segments option like in the 2d editor.