Hi Keith, I've put a lot of effort into MoI's polygon output to make it work better than the typical kind of NURBS export that those people may have been thinking of.


> I would never the less like to know if there are problems with my
> idea that makes it a non starter.

Not that I know of! Although as far as I know Poser itself does not have a whole lot of detailed rendering capabilities, it is focused on pretty basic things. You may be better off bringing things into a sort of more flexible rendering program like Carrara to be able to have more control over things like texturing...


> With regard to the objection that the polygon count would be too
> high. Can anyone tell me if this is really going to be a problem?

Probably not, unless you are planning on building extremely detailed models or also have a much older machine.


> Is there a rule for the number of polygons that are acceptable in a model?

Not really - if it runs fast enough then you're fine! :) There isn't any one single number that works in all situations because it really depends on your computer hardware. If your computer is 10 times slower than another one, then you'll have a different and much smaller limit than the other faster computer will.

If you have like the cheapest kind of computer available, with the minimum amount of RAM and CPU speed in it, then it can become more of an issue. It is an especially good idea to not have too small an amount of system RAM.


> Incidentally I have been shocked to learn that many people don't
> like nurbs and would prefer to use vertex modellers.

The deal with that is that stuff for very glitzy hollywood type effects like character animation, creatures, humans, very organic models like that have really switched over to be done in a vertex-based modeler.

So people who are really focused on that kind of hollywood special effect type stuff and nothing else will want to tell you that NURBS are dead. But they just are not tuned in to the whole world of manufacturing and product design which uses NURBS almost exclusively...


> So I was very surprised to read that nurbs modelling was dead.

That's pretty much true for that one particular style of "character" modeling.

But certainly not for making any kind of man-made or industrial objects! NURBS are absolutely 100% the standard method used for CAD, manufacturing and product design, there is absolutely no doubt about that.

Modeling is a very wide and diverse field, there are a lot of different possible types of models that people need to build - some types of models like creatures and characters are better to do in a vertex modeler and some types of models like machines and man made objects are better to do in a NURBS modeler.


So I'd recommend not really taking those other people's comments too seriously... :)

But again it is all relative to what specifically is being done - it is quite possible that for what they need to do, NURBS is indeed not the best choice.

- Michael