Maya Sculpt-Map Modeling Tutorial (by Talila Liu)

This Tutorial will take into account that you already know how to change Viewports, Modify Objects(Faces, Edges, Vertices) with Translate, Rotate, and Scale, as well as Move around with the Camera should you need to. This tutorial also expects you to know how to export and upload your sculpt maps into SecondLife.

This tutorial will show you basically how to model using the Draw Curve and Loft tools, which have worked best for me in Exporting objects to sculpt maps for SecondLife.

Step 1. For this Tutorial lets make something Simple like a Balloon. A simple shape, mostly spherical with a little nobby part on the bottom. So we choose which viewport would be the easiest to create our balloon from. From the Side or Front we might have a little difficulty with the little tied off end, so we will make our balloon from the Top viewport.

We want to make sure we are in the Surfaces Menu, that will be all we are using.

Step 2. We will use the CV Curve Tool to draw the basic shape of our balloon, a Circle, found in Create > EP Curve Tool.

Using this just draw a basic circle, It doesn't have to be Perfect, Just as much of a circle as you want. Make sure you don't overlap points at the end, we will close the circle in just a moment.

Now close the curve using Edit Curves > Open/Close Curves and modify your circle by vertex editing so it is round.

Step 3. Now that we have our most basic shape lets start making a balloon. Switch to the Front or Side Viewport.

Now Duplicate your curve ( Ctrl + D ) and Move it Upwards or downwards. Do this 6 times so that we have 7 circles above and below each other making a cylinder.

Step 4. We can do two things at this point, To give a better visual of making this we will Perform our Loft on these circles right now so We can see the balloon form in front of us. You could otherwise form the balloon with just the circles and Loft later if you prefer.

Select all the Circles from Top to bottom ( The bottom one should be Green while the others are White when selected in this order ) and choose Surface > Loft.

And so we can see what we just did Hit the number 5 on your keyboard to show shade objects.

Step 5. We should now have a hollow Cylinder formed out of 7 Circles. We will turn this into our balloon.

Select the very top circle ( Note: You may have to click a few times to get it or drag select over it and deselect the Loft surface ) and scale it down using the center handhold until it is really small to show the top edge of the balloon.

Now that doesn't look a lot like a balloon, so you might need to move that curve up to stretch it out, and continue scaling and moving your curves around until you get a balloon shape your happy with. Also make sure you leave at least 3 circles on the bottom so we can make our little tie off.

Next we want to scale those last three circles down and put them closer together. This surface we've made is considered a NURBs surface so the closer two points are together the sharper they will end up. Scale down and Move the edges close together so you get your little balloon tie off.

Step 6. Now that should actually be it. Now you select the Lofted surface ( Balloon Mesh ) and export it into your sculpt texture and import it into Second Life for your Final Result.