Hi Danny,

> and what other tools from other (NURBS) apps out there would do this easily?

Really the easiest way to get a very evenly smooth branching structure tends to be using subdivision surfaces. Tsplines is probably the best for that since it will allow you to generate NURBS output.

An example here:
http://www.tsplines.com/community/casestudies/jewelrydesign.html

However, by using that method you also will sacrifice a bit of accuracy because the straight "tube" parts will be part of the melted-down type surface and will not be an exact perfect cylinder shape like you've got in your actual model here.

But if you are focused more on the blended area than the straight parts, then that is probably the easiest way to get very natural "all directional" blending.



Other than that with traditional NURBS tools you probably need to use an "n-sided patch" type tool that will place a fitted surface that is tangent to the input edges (MoI does not have this tool yet).

But it is best to narrow down the area that will be patched to a small region instead of a large region. I would do that using the method that PaQ showed above by doing some blends between the pieces where possible to reduce the area to be patched, like this:



It tends to be harder for that kind of "N-sided patch" tool to do its job if the edges are bending around a lot, often times that tool works by starting with a best-fit plane and then deforming it along the plane normal to fit the shape. The more than you can reduce the area to be fit to be semi-roughly planar will help with that.

Currently in MoI I think that PaQ's method is the best. And actually the zebra results show a pretty good tangent result there.

- Michael