just wondering... have you ever worked with clients?
Clearly communicating with clients and approving the design steps until the product is finished
should be IMHO mandatory if you want to avoid such thing you have mentioned, especially if
you use toolsets not having parametric input options, where you can do changes on the fly, in
every step you do.
I would let your clients approve every design phase (sketching, modeling, texturing and rendering)
to avoid surprises. Otherwise start all over again and make it clear to your clients that they will be
charged accordingly.
@You : "...just wondering... have you ever worked with clients?..."
Oh yes! It's happened many times.
My main job is not 3D creation but software developing, but during the years many times I happened to do some 3D/2D creation
for some of my customer of desktop/web/Android apps.
You're right. A clear communication with clients before doing the job it's mandatory. Anything to say about that :)
But what I wanted to say is that even if you take every "commercial preventative measure" with the client,
this not erase the "technical" problem. The crux of the matter.
That is, integrating all the different approaches into the same pipeline.
This is what I wanted to point out with my previous post. Not the trade matters with the clients.
When I started to shift from 2D to 3D work around 1998, my tool of choice was the mainly polygon-based 3ds Max (it has some NURBS tools, but they're limited). I clearly remember how I longed for a modeling method that would be able to combine primitive shapes and seamlessly blend them together. The problem with subdivision modeling for me personally is that you're carefully planning and constructing in stead of sculpting. Constructing doesn't allow for spontaneous creation, with "happy accidents" as the late Bob Ross used to call them.
In those days, the late 1990s, there was a cool plug-in for 3ds Max called Clay Studio Pro. It was a metaball system, but you had many different shapes to work with, including 'Clay Splines', which allowed for a lot of modeling freedom, and everything was animatable as well. Clay Studio Pro was ahead of its time, kind of a very basic 3D Coat avant la lettre. But the problem was that PCs didn't have enough processing power yet to turn Clay Studio Pro into an all-round solution. To achieve smooth meta-surfaces you had to increase the polygons higher than my system could handle.
When I discovered MoI many years later, it was the first program I encountered that combined the accuracy of constructing with the spontaneity of fast and easy creation. And for organic modeling, ZBrush and — for me only recently — 3D Coat turned out to be fabulous tools.
The bottom line is that I really love not having to worry about polygon structure planning, keeping everything quadrangular, and having to keep an eye on edge flow everywhere. So my best friends are MoI, 3D Coat and ZBrush.
Having said this, I do love the polygon-based Blender, but mainly because it fills every gap that's left by MoI, 3D Coat and ZBrush, such as animation and high-level rendering (although I also use Keyshot for rendering).
In the field of sculpting freedom, the only area that's still a bit on the weak side currently is automatic retopology. I dislike processes that require tedious manual work, such as manual retopology, manual UV mapping and manual rigging and weighting. I hope AI / machine learning will improve those areas soon.
So, the bottom line is that I think subdivision is not yet outdated, but it is becoming slightly dated as powerful alternative modeling methods are on the rise.
In my opinion the whole SubD thing was an ultimately poor solution to an existing problem. Tools to perform easy control point modeling and continuity operations are lacking so this was an attempt to address that issue. I do think there are some interesting developments on the horizon but the first toolset to make those operations highly usable will win.
I’ve been using Nurbs for illustrations maquettes for 10 years now.
It’s ridiculously faster than subdivisions, but of course polygonal software is useful when needed.
Being focused on user interaction and simplicity, Moi makes a striking difference in the landscape.
I guess it also comes down to preferences, my brain must be curve based.
When you use Nurbs you know exactly the form that you want!
When you use SubD you don't know exactly the form that you will obtain! :)
it's always a surprise (good or bad :)
//
When you use Nurbs you know exactly the form that you want!
When you use SubD you don't know exactly the form that you will obtain! :)
it's always a surprise (good or bad :)
//
The problem is that most of us need to use SubD in a predictable way, where there is no room for surprise.
And the only way to archive this control is with a lot of practice (and planing) ... creating edge loop in every direction, fighting with surface distortion etc.
It's not a very funny process, at least not any more after a couple of years.
In the other hand SubDs is the only modeling technique that can tackle any subject, from organic to mechanic, and that's probably the reason its far to be 'dead' yet.
Fortunately we can now convert SudDs cage model into a Nurbs surface, and somehow take advantage of the best of those 2 modeling method.
Still much easier to UV map a sub'd mesh than a somewhat messy mesh generated from Nurbs Surfaces.
Also you have to be really careful to keep your normals data intact before rendering a nurbs generated mesh.
With Sub'ds you can model anything you think of. Modern retopology tools are overcoming many of sub'ds shortfalls. Its still time consuming though.
Nurbs are really at their best for hard surface objects.
I don't know if it will ever happen but a program that has the speed & power of nurbs and the tweakability of sub'ds would be really cool. Modo's meshfusion is an attempt at this but still generates a messy mesh.
Yes, you are correct about UVs. Still, have you tried out 3DC's UV tools for NURBS polys? The auto mapper is pretty darn good and can often suffice with a single button click. I use it all the time. Here's a quick video of some of the easy to use features.
Ah, some kind of flashback :)
Couple of years ago I started topic like this and there was huge battle:)
I just want to say what I learned from that time, guys do not waste your time posting on forums to debate with each other, just do your job, it will be much more effective to learn things:)
There are thousands of designers that use NURBS, there are thousands of designers that use Polygons, there are thousands of designers that use Sculpting, everybody uses the instruments they need, because there is no any universal tool!!!
Just to be clear, I'm not advocating one over the other for everyone. It's just my observation that there is a shift in focus among many of the top concept design modelers that I know and follow.
Of course everyone should use whatever tool they like.
That said, paying attention to shifts in trends makes sense as the technology in the space moves so quickly.
I wonder how many times fillets etc. would fail on such a complex model and if NURBS
modeling would be really faster than subd modeling. One other advantage is also dynamic
subdivision (rendering), so that poly count can be kept low when saving, compared to a
frozen subd mesh.
Pixologic must had a good reason to implement the ZModeler brush in 4R7... :-)
But i agree, one should use the tools one is most comfortable with.
