Hi PP,

> But, you're right, for this very specific work,
> I need a polygonal tool.

Yeah for some kinds of things the NURBS focus on generating something completely accurate can be a hinderance if you only want to render the shapes instead of actually physically construct them.

With text that you are just going to render, a polygon modeling program is generally set up to be more free to make messy structure in the model that doesn't really show up in the rendering though.

Here's an example from Xara3D with some text:




If you switch to wireframe view, you can see that the model is not quite exactly the same as that outside appearance, various pieces are overlapping and running through each other beneath the outer surface:






The filleting mechanism in a NURBS modeling program tries to avoid that kind of a thing and instead actually produce the full accurate model with all pieces trimmed up and the inside actually all hollow. But that's a much more difficult task.


Anyway, this is an area where a polygon modeler can have an easier time making this kind of stuff since their tools are not really focused on making physically accurate results so much.


- Michael