Hi PaQ, yup that thread is definitely impressive. But if you read it, you will find that the person who made those worked for 3 years developing their modeling technique to do it. In that time they developed a lot of skill and working methods to deal with a high density of points.

So if you have 3 years to devote to it, you could certainly use NURBS modeling to create such models.

Here's another similar one:
http://3drender.com/jbirn/ea/HeadModel.html

But that one is also done by someone who invested a lot of time perfecting their technique.


Subd style modeling basically allows for a more flexible type of point layout, it basically kind of opens up more kinds of paths for different modeling strategies for high detailed type point manipulation style modeling which is what face modeling is all about.

Please note that face modeling is not "easy" to do in sub-d modeling either... It still takes quite a lot of time and effort to get comfortable with doing faces in a subd modeler as well.

But the subd toolset just fits more naturally with that style of modeling.


For industrial / man-made type shapes that can be defined by profile curves, this balance is very much reversed, the NURBS modeling toolset is a much better fit for that, and Subd modeling tools tend to be frustrating and very time consuming to try and do operations that flow naturally and quickly in this area with NURBS modeling.


- Michael