In this tutorial, we will be working with NURBS geometry. NURBS surfaces are always XY grids, but these grids can be shaped in different primitive forms. For our purposes, we will create a simple plane. After creating the plane, open the channel editor.

Within the channel editor, we can click ‘makeNurbsPlane1’ node to unfold a series of options for that NURBS surface. This is one example of ‘history’ within maya - we can go back and change any attribute that defined the object. In this case, we will increase the surface detail by increasing the values of ‘Patches U’ and ‘Patches V’ (from 1 to 5) In this tutorial, we will be working with NURBS geometry. NURBS surfaces are always XY grids, but these grids can be shaped in different primitive forms. For our purposes, we will create a simple plane.

After creating the plane, open the channel editor.
To apply an image data to transform the NURBS surface, we will be using the following command. Surfaces > Edit NURBS > Sculpt Geometry Tool > Option Box

Download pdf MAYA Height Field Mapping Transforming 2D image data into 3D NURBS surface