I'm not sure, but I think nurbs is something from the past. It used to be that all characters where modeled in nurbs for movie productions, but not no more. I believe that polys or subdivision are used more now. Most the time when you finish modeleding in nurbs you will evently convert to polys. Animating characters and texture organic things are easier in polys. Agian there's still people that use Nurbs for characters, but not as much. For a beginner I recomend that you learn how to use poly's first to create characters. Patch modeling is more for advanced users. If you want to learn how to patch model there's video tutorials at ****** website. There Organic modeling 1 and 2. Thats the only patch modeling tutorials that I know of. But there very expensive. One DVD is $69.