Andrew F. Scott: Smooth_extrude.mel

After the lecture in class on polygonal modeling and its use for tessellating surfaces and creating structural frameworks I decided to go home and do a little MEL scripting for Maya. I revisited a script created by Ming Tang call Super Extrude. It is used to generate a lattice forms from a polygonal model using the extrude commands.

I decided to extend the script by unlocking the PolyPoke node and adding the duplicate feature to the script so that you retained a copy of your source geometry. In addition I added a chamfer node as well as PolySmooth node. These additions have greatly expanded the capabilities of the script because you can go back and modify the parameters of each of these attributes to create your own unique lattice tessellations.



In each of the examples above a simple cylinder was used as the base geometry. A taper deformer was added to add variety to the basic primitive object. From there I tweaked each of the nodes that were generated in the script to arrive at the above tessellations.

This script provides an excellent way to explore the parametric capabilities of Maya. a powerful tool for conceptual modeling in architectural visualization and spatial simulation.I look forward to developing more scripts that can be used to generate architectural models. I want to thank Professor Tang for providing the starting point for this exploration. A copy of the script will be available on the course blogsite for download and use. Have fun.