Poly v SubD v Nurbs

[BoomRat]

I've been working with Maya for a few years now and here's my take:

1. You can start out with NURBs, model into the shape you like.

2. You convert the NURBs to polygons, connect the parts that need to be connected, add detail, etc.

3. Duplicate the poly shapes, convert to subds, see how it looks. If you like it, keep it.

4. Rig your POLY character, not the subd. Perform a wrap deformer on the subd with the poly as the influence object. Maya really doesn't like it when you rig subds (meaning it makes your computer want to vomit trying to calculate all the movements).

Polys for sets would probably be best though sometimes NURBs work OK.

[BillB]

Thanks BoomRat, very helpful and matches what we're hearing elsewhere.

So why are subd's so poor to rig? They should be as quick as nurbs to animate with - then again, I remember when metanurbs went native in LW, they were bog slow until newtek stopped it re-tesselating every time you changed frames :)

[BoomRat]

The rigging of subds is painful, I think but not sure, due to the fact that when Alias|Wavefront was two different companies, each had their own modeler, one NURBs and one poly.

When they joined, Maya only had NURBs and polys. Subds came along and I don't think the mathmatics/coding in Maya is quiet there yet.

[Levitateme]

sub d are great, but i think in my opinion for organic characters, i would use them any day over nurbs. that is me though i bought 3 dvds total on nurbs patching, 2 gnomon,1 AW. there just to much fuss.

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