Hi I'm an animator who specializes in 2D animation and have recently been studying up on 3D to add to my skills.

I would say I still have my maya training wheels on.

Anyway, here is my problem. I am following a tutorial, and at this point I am modeling using a NURBS cylinder. I create the cylinder, do some minor tweaks with it's shape. Now, when I need to add more geometry to do the more complicated shaping, I go to "rebuild surface", reset the tool to the default, the set "# of spans U" to 20 and "# of spans V" to 20.

After I apply this tool, I can select the shape and right click to "control vertex". at this point I can see every vertex, and I can select them, but none of the translation tools will affect them; they are essentially locked in place.

when I undo the "rebuild surface", the added spans do go away, but still I am not able to move any of the original vertices. only when I quit Maya and reopen my file am I able to go back to shaping by controling the vertices. However I'm stuck because the minute I hit "Rebuild Surfaces" this whole thing starts right over again.

Is this some kind of bug? or am I somehow activating some kind of locking mechanism that I dont know about?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

What version of Maya are you using?

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Andyba, 3d artist
skills: 3d modeling, texturing, rendering, 3d character animation, compositing
3d software experience: 3ds max, Maya, Softimage XSI, Deep Paint 3d, Body Paint 3D, Wings 3D, Z Brush
2d software experience: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After effects, Macromedia Flash, Freehand

Seems to me that you are fighting with the technical side and not really "feeling the flow" using NURBS, I suggest you use polygon modeling for a start