Hi Kevin,

I'm following this thread, and I understand your filling, I'm coming from more of 10 years of poly/sub-d modeling and I discoverd nurbs this year with MoI.
So far I never had to build something 100% real, so I always find some workaround or 'design' change because I can't exactly get the base shape I want.
In the other hand, as you probably know allready, when the base shape is done, adding all the details is really fun with nurbs, and much more productive than poly modeling.

Maybe you should give a try to T-Spline for rhino and maya. I didn't bought (is that the right spelling ? :P) it yet, just did some easy test with the demo edition. I suppose if I have to build something more advanced with a really organic base shape, I will certainly use this tool. T-spline provide a lot of tool, the best one (for me), is to be able to translate a sub-d cage object into a nurbs version. I don't know if the output quality will be enough for what you are looking for, but maybe it's a solution to help the transition.

http://www.tsplines.com/

Here's for example the modo old guy head in MoI
http://moi3d.com/forum/get_attachment.php?webtag=MOI&hash=b952bf93a30a94269695bbcd2f01caae&filename=wow4.jpg

I don't know howcomplex the technology is, but if one way or an other we can have this kind of feature natively in MoI, (importing a obj cage and get the sub-d version in nurbs) ... that would be realllllly amazing !!!!!!

*edit: Just discovered that Maya allow natively to convert suv-d in nurbs too (I'm only learning it since yesteday :) ... now have to inverstage what are the export format available to get the model in MoI :P