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Getting Started with Maya

> NURBS Modeling

>  Lesson 3:  Lofting curves to create a surface

Lofting a surface

You’ve created a total of nine curves. In the next steps, you loft these curves into a surface that matches the contours of their perimeters. Above the midpoint of the surface, the shape will change from a flower-shaped perimeter to a circular perimeter.

To loft a surface for the salt shaker’s body

1. Starting from the bottom circle, and working towards the top, shift-select all the circles, one at a time.

The order of selection is important when shift-selecting for a loft operation. You must start with the bottom flower-shaped circle and end with the top circular-shaped circle. Alternatively, you can drag a selection box around the circles. The surface to be lofted will be based on the selection order of the curves.

2. Select Surfaces > Loft.

This creates the salt shaker’s body.

3. Name the surface shakerBody.
4. Press 5 to display the view with smooth shading.

Note Many of the surface creation tools also have the option of creating polygon or subdivision surface versions of a surface with the same input curves. You do this by setting the appropriate Output Geometry option for that particular surface tool.