Nurbs to Poly and Smoothing
 

Well guess this is my first question, i was modelling simple stuff like the hammer from the tutorial maya ple came with and have a question.
Nurbs to Poly and to subd seems to be the best way to do things, if so at nurbs, do you guys create curves and then revolve and so on to get the shape you want. I tried to extrude the nurbs cube but couldn't then tried a poly cube and extrude face. It works. Anyone wants to explain how to manupilate nurbs primitives.
After poly, you smooth it right? Can you go back to edit the polys like in lightwave, tab for subd and tab to come back to poly. Sorry a lightwaver myself.
Last question i promise, I want to move vertex around like the drag tool in lightwave, not selecting each vertex and then move it.

I talked with you on IRC about some of thease but I'm sorry I forgot to adress the nurbs question for you. I know you found a little difrent way that you liked, but if your still intrested in knowing about the nurbs editing just give me a shout.

Thanks Pony, Think i am fine as of now.

Nurbs to poly to sub-d

Best thing to do with nurbs is to use the simplest modeling form you can. Usually i start off with a primative.

Convert to poly and attach all the vertices up that line up. Try various types of conversion to ensure that you dont get 3gons or 5gons, you only want 4 sided poly patches.

Do Not Smooth... unless you intend on staying with polygon surfaces. Smooth will add too much unnecessary geometry for sub-d surface conversion.

Convert to sub d and add additional geometry in either Poly Proxy mode or in refined vertice mode.

I usually rought out my model in low poly and then convert it to subd to see the smoother version, and if i don't satisfied yet i'll convert it back to poly again with the option setting of tessellation method to vertices. You can make this convertion way a little bit quick and handy if you put them to the shelf, with this way you can just click it back and forth between subd and poly