Hi Rich,

> Now I'm sure some of you hardcore Nurbs fans would
> dispute the former (but I suspect not Mr Gibson after
> seeing several of his posts) and some poly pushers on
> the Modo forum would dispute the latter but this is exactly
> what I want.

Yup, I definitely agree that some kinds of models are better suited for sub-d modeling and some kinds of models are more suited for NURBS modeling.

Basically NURBS modeling tends to work best when much of the model can be described by a somewhat sparse amount of profile curves, often just 2D plan curves. This is often the case for mechanical man-made type objects.

But often times organic models do not boil down to a small set of curves very well - like for example with a human face you can have a silhouette profile curve of the face, but that curve does not actually "define" the shape, it only captures it at one single spot and the shape changes rapidly in numerous different ways (with little bumps and indentations, etc...) as it moves away from there. So models like that tend to be better suited for the type of 3D point cage manipulation workflow of sub-d modeling.

So ideally it is best to use the right tool for the particular job at hand, and this new tool will certainly help for cases where there is actually some combination of both elements within a single model.

The only tricky part about that is that sub-d modeling I think tends to have a somewhat higher learning curve, you have to kind of wrangle more data (more points) to use it, and work more in 3D and not in 2D and so it's just somewhat more complex overall. So it's not all that surprising when someone doesn't particularly want to learn it because it can be a pretty big investment of time and practice to get good at it.

- Michael