Modelling: Polys or Nurbs
 

Could someone explain to me the advantages/disadvantages of modelling using Nurbs and the same with poly's, and what instances would you choose to model with one over the other?

Thanks

Ps I'm very new to Maya and have lots of little questions to help get my head around this 'new' software package.

Mike

Most models are done with polys I think.....the general feeling I get is that polys are just easier to work with. I have heard some say that they like modelling inanimate objects in nurbs and organic in polys and visa versa. Really I think you should try modelling the same thing, one nurbs and one poly.....remembering that sometimes there are more than one way to do things in maya, every model has it's creator's style

Saiyan:cool:

Nurbs are nice because they have a very clean typoligy, so even if your modelling a head which would be harder to rig up nicely in NURBS you can convert to polys/ sub div and get a very nice typoligy if your using 1:1 span nurbs patches.

Basically for a beginner a good rule of thumb is that polys are good for practically everything, but for some objects such as space ships or extremeley curvey forms it may be wiser to use NURBS due to the fact that you can achive a nie curvey surface with very little geometry. e.g. a boad.

But it boils down to what your modelling and what you prefer to model with. As Saiyan said, try both and see which you perfer.

Actually I think nurbs is something from the past. It might be good to start out with but most of the time convert it to polys. Alias hasn't upgraded Nurbs for a long time and it looks like they won't to because subdivision is the way to go over Nurbs.

You can do some great things with NURBS when you know what your doing, its not a thing of the past by any means, its just one approach to modelling that some people prefer to subdivisions or polys. Its not correct to say they are a thing of the past, if you got rid of nurbs a few areas of maya wouldnt function quite so nicely.

Sorry, but what are sub-divs? or when you say "convert to sub-divs" what does this do, and what are the benefits?

The great thing is, you can model using which ever method suites you, because you can always convert to a different type once you're done modeling. The nurbs to poly can even createa single shell mesh with version 6 or higher.

Play with them all and I bet you'll find you favor one, but there will be certain things that are just easier to do with one type or another. So you should have some familiarity with all three.

Thanks, I'm currently in the process of working my way through the Maya Learning Book/DVD Suite so hopefully once I reach the end I'll know quite a bit more about the Maya utilities even if I can't use them properly yet.

Yea I do believe you can get very good results with nurbs, but I don't see much people actually using it for characters any more. People that actually use it are usually car modelors. Nurbs used to be the only thing used in film industry know it isn't. Lot of them moved to polys and I have to say Alias can care less about Nurbs if they haven't updated it for a long time. The reason I say its from the past because alot of people are moving to polys. And most of the time everything is converted to polys because its a bitch to texture or rig nurbs.