[TylerHunter]

Hola,

Alright, Ive been in deep thought about what is my prefered method of modeling, There is Patch and spline based which is down right AWFUL!. slow, combersome, and awkward, then there is nurbs, in MAX there useless except for cool cloth effects. In Maya/Softimage there useful with such tools as SCM and Global Stiching. These modeling methods where used to create most of the Hollywood creatures you see today. ForExample Stewart Little was made with 200+ nurbs patches stiched together. Recently however, SubDs, or subpatches for lightwave or NURMS for 3DSMAX(all are the same thing). Are suddenly being hailed as the new way to model things. For one Im sold. I can model gorgeous models quick and headache less, plus these models animate faster, run faster, and the Morph points are 10000 times easier to make. Then a few days ago I noticed something. On the cover of Maxim I saw the girl from Final Fantasy the movie, and I opened up the cover to see her wire frame, low and behold I noticed that the characters for FF9 were modeled using SubDs. So I wanna know DO ANY OF YOU STILL THINK NURBS are the way, and if so TELL ME.

Im assuming you know what these 3 modeling methods are and there differences. If not, then ask me and ill write a length describtion.

Tyler

[Etah D'Te]

I'm still pretty new to 3D, but anyway. I hear ya with the sub-divison surfaces! I first started with Rhino and everything was nurbs and I got some pretty nice results and I used to look down on polygons totally. But since Meshsmooth it's soooooo much easier to extude and bevel a character into shape and have him look just as good! Besides, Nurbs have points distributed globally which leads to a lot of wasted processor power (to me that makes a BIG difference, no super computer here!) Also with patching Nurbs together I tended to get breaks in the mesh all the time. So I'm all for sub-division surfaces, I have seen the light!

[Tendril]

Subd Surfaces are definately the best all round method. I wouldnt rule out Nurbs though. It is hard to get mechanical shapes with sharp corners with Subd surfaces. Nurbs make really good mechanical looking things because the methods you use to model with Nurbs are similar to those in CAD programs, That is how most manufactured objects are made.
But for organic objects, Subd is definately the way to go. Setting up UVW coordinates can be a pain in some programs. I know they are in Maya 3 and Max 3. But I think future versions have/are fixing this.

[Sammy]

TylerHunter,

I'm no pro on this subject, but I've got the Mastering MAYA 3 book, and in it's chapter on Subdivision modeling it has an interesting intro that explains the benefits of Subdivision surfaces :

Subdivision surfaces are useful for the following reasons

- They can exist on arbitrary topology, like polygon surfaces, bypassing the difficulty of creating a form in four-sided patches

- They are smooth and continuous, like NURBS surfaces. They do not have the problem of creating a faceted look, as polygons do.

- They allow a hierarchy of up to 13 levels of detail, which allows isolated areas of highly detailed modeling, and binding at the base levels.

Subdivision surfaces are ideal for creating organic models. When dealing with sharp, rigid edges, polygons would still be more efficient, because they are lighter and come with edges already. If you want to create perfectly circular objects, like mechanical parts, again, you may want to use NURBS modeling.

---

Sammy
[email protected]
---

[Anthony]

I model most of my stuff out of straight polys. If I need extra smoothness on a face or something, I'll hit Metanurbs in LW. But if I need something to be perfectly smooth and reflective, I have to use splines. SubDs are not as good at doing, say, the basic hull of a modern car. Using splines you can quickly get a flowing, smooth shape(which you then freeze into polys and convert to SubDs). So basically they're all necessary. I can't imagine modeling Sebulba with splines, yet it was done. Good thing the textures and film grain cover up the artifacts splines leave behind(often).

[snap]

True Sub-D's rock. I'm not sure if Max 4 supports them yet (u know how long it took them to get nurbs into Max, and they still suck) I've never really cared much for nurbs. You have to add to many isoparms to get detail. Sub-d's (in Maya) will let you refine a selected area w/o increasing mesh resolution on places you don't need to. Plus with Sub-d's you can use an underlying low res poly cage to update the hi res sub-d, which really speeds things up.

[Icannon]

what makes max's nurms untrue sub-d? max4 allows you to refine certain areas as well. i'd like to know some of the technicalities on this subject because i've never really understood.

as far as nurbs\sub-d goes, i use nurbs for technical modeling (car\guitar\screwdriver) and sub-d for organic modeling. rhino for nurbs, max for sub-d.

edit- spelling

[ May 12, 2001: Message edited by: Icannon ]

[TylerHunter]

Interesting points.

I do think that when modeling something technical splines and nurbs are useful. but as I saw at a demonstration at e3 for Maya 3, The guy used SubDs tomodel the parts on a motorcycle.. SubDs have the option to weight edges so you create rigid creases were needed. You can make a box into a cylindar buy taking the top edges and creasing them.

Max NURMS are SubDs, lightwave Metanurbs are SubDs. Actually Maya was the last program to implement SubDs. Not until Maya 3, Max implemented them back in I think 2.5 which was some years ago.

Just so you know, subDs. are polygons, that are subdived on a ration of 1:4 and are rounded off with a smooth equalition added to remove the facetted effect. Actually the faccetted effect can be removed in either the polygon editor, or the material editor.

Tyler

[ambient-whisper]

subds have been around for about 15 years now. max was not the first to implement them. also. theres more than 1 algorythm for smoothing available.

[NukleoN]

I'm a big fan of Sub Division Surfaces using a cage (MAX 4). The way it works now (looking up the stack) is plain broken compared to a clean, Editable Mesh cage with a MeshSmooth modifier applied.

Note, the cage would have self illumination and a wireframe material applied so you can still see it as a wireframe in the shaded view.



[ May 18, 2001: Message edited by: NukleoN ]