Hi Gav, did you check out the tutorial videos that I linked to above?
(http://moi3d.com/1.0/docs/tutorials.htm)

So one thing you may notice when viewing those is that there is no time where any surface in those videos are edited by grabbing surface vertices and moving them around.

There are points edited but they are on 2D curves, then you use those curves to construct your shapes to produce the result.

In NURBS modeling you mostly generate surfaces from profile curves in that same way instead of directly manipulating the surfaces like you would in a polygon modeler.

This NURBS "2D curve driven" type approach tends to work really well for man-made or mechanical type shapes which tend to be made up of blueprint-like profile curves that define how the shape should look like.

When you get into more very organic shapes like a creature or monster head, then things like that are not well defined just by a 2D profile curve and so for things like that you do want to use mesh vertex modeling which is more suited for direct surface tweaking.


But when your design is well defined by 2D profiles, it tends to be much quicker to do the setup work in 2D instead.

One way to compare it is that NURBS modeling is kind of more like a construction and drawing approach to building the model, while the mesh vertex modeling is kind of more like sculpting since it is pushing a bunch of vertices around in 3D.

But setting things up in 2D when possible can be really quick and easier to control, that's why for things that are defined by profile curves it will usually be better to make those with NURBS rather than with polygons.

The other part that works well with NURBS is that booleans are something you use as a basic modeling tool, while in polygons it is something that you usually try to avoid. So things like holes or cut away pieces are very suited for NURBS modeling.


Make sure to go over the videos a few times, and maybe try to build the same thing by following along.

If you get stuck with a particular model, please post the model here and I'll see if I can give you some tips on how to better approach it.


Also here is a recent thread where I was helping someone switch to a more "NURBS construction" mindset instead of a polygon mindset, you may want to look it over:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3321.1


One kind of key thing is that with NURBS modeling you will often times want to draw a slightly extended model that you then cut with other pieces to form the final shape. You generally want to incorporate booleans and cutting as much into the modeling strategy as possible.


- Michael