Hi Kevin,

> Also the more sub pieces that are created the more shading
> errors I get when it is converted to a mesh in 3DS Max. By
> shading errors I mean the joints between the surfaces are
> visible depending on the light direction.

Yeah, this is related to getting creases between pieces that are built separately from one another, that's described in some more detail here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1398.18

Typically 2 surfaces that are just constructed adjacent to one another will not be guaranteed to have a completely smooth shape to each other. In the future I do expect to add some more tools to edit surfaces to achieve smoothness to existing ones, but that kind of "smoothness in all directions" is really the great function that subdivision surface modeling provides much more easily and automatically. I mean that is like the primary function of subd.

Currently in MoI to make pieces smooth to one another you would generally use a fillet or blend to build a small smooth connector piece, but that does not work so easily when you want more of a totally smooth skin like thing which is more of what you have in this situation - like more where the different components are very blurred and not really very distinct as different pieces.

That kind of heavy "blurring" between everything tends to be a indicator to lean towards subd for that task.


> and was hoping nurbs would be less time consuming.

It definitely can be if you use it with the models that are most suited for it, that will be stuff that has a more mechanical design to it rather than a kind of "smooth skin" design to it.

I think you've got the right idea - things like instrumentation, cockpit interior, landing gear, parts that have a lot of holes drilled in them, those are the projects where it will become a slam dunk to use NURBS instead of polys. Those are the kinds of projects where the focus on booleans makes things come together more quickly and the "smooth blended skin" main function of subd does not really help...


> At this point I head back to polymodelling unless some
> ground breaking piece of software eventuates in the future
> that makes it easier and quicker. Some might say dream on !

Eventually you will see more of a combination of SubD tools being combined with NURBS surfaces together - that will be where you will have making a subd cage be just another option in creating a base NURBS surface which can then be trimmed or whatever same as the result of a sweep. You can see this in action currently with the TSplines plugin for Rhino. That will be coming into play more frequently in the future but it will take a while before that will get into MoI, MoI is still primarily focused on the type of "boolean oriented" models right now and probably will be still for a fair while yet.


In addition to using MoI for boolean-oriented pieces, one other workflow that may appeal to you is to use some of the surfacing tools in MoI to create a kind of rough base form quickly, then take that into your polygon package and use some of the newish style retopologizing tools to rework it into a sub-d friendly form and then continue to work on it as polygons. That can give you kind of a jump start because you can get a kind of basic rough outline of your shape pretty quickly with the NURBS tools by drawing something like 5 or 6 2D curves.

That helps to leverage one of the strengths of NURBS which is that you can kind of whip out some concept forms quickly by drawing just a few curves.

That kind of combo could be worth looking at I think.


Anyway, sorry that the NURBS toolset did not deliver on what you expected. I think it will be a lot more in line with your expectations for the more mechanical type pieces.

- Michael