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Taking Up The Slack

R

eturning five years later to finally begin completing these models has been interesting.

I cleaned up model topology and improved UV maps whilst also adding in some extra detailing, making each piece consistent with a level of detail from the viewer's perspective.

One model I added further detailing to before texturing was the Coiling Block. This piece features heavily in gameplay and is centre stage out of all of the mechanical equipment for bringing up crab pots, so it made sense to focus more attention on it. I further reduced the poly count and added hydraulic cables to the back.

Something I have always done manually since learning Maya at Uni is wrapping hard surface objects with other objects like cable ties, tape and rope.

I always found this a time-consuming and annoying task (even though I have got pretty quick at the steps involved and avoiding intersecting objects). Recently, while looking at rope modelling inspiration, I found a simple tutorial on wrapping objects in Maya 2026.

Using the ShrinkWrap deformer, I was able to wrap a cylinder around cables and make it look like bound tape holding the cables with ease. How have I never used this super simple technique before?

Like other things I have learnt along the way, this is something I will be instantly adding to my tool bag workflow!

Below are a few screenshots of the tool in use on the hydraulic cables...where a little tweak in the attribute editor and topology clean up can all be achieved in a minute or so!




Jason Bartlett ©

Jason Bartlett ©

Jason Bartlett ©


Next time, coiling block renders!


Thanks for reading :)

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