>Seeing this was my very first, ever, plane model I was pretty pleased with my 75 year olds new MoI skills.
Looks pretty good Brian. Certainly interesting camoflage.
It reminds me of the Salvadorian type camouflage http://hsfeatures.com/features04/fg1ddwa_2.htm

Hi kevjon,

I can understand your frustration on this. Myself, I am the complete opposite to yourself, as I come from a background of using nurbs packages. I did move on to trying poly programs and found them very limiting to what I was used to. It did take quite a while before I was comfortable with poly programs before I added them to my pipeline (for home hobby), but even now still prefer nurbs.

I do agree that MoI could be seen as limited in the toolset, but that is down to possible comparison with other packages, (and there is also a need to consider the price on those other packages), but what is within MoI works quite well, various functions that are missing, such as the variable fillet you mentioned, can quite easily be worked around using such as the blend, which, although at times it cannot be used well directly with split surfaces, it is just a need to blend projected to surface construction lines and sweep.

I will try and find time tomorrow to build in MoI part of the model you mention.

Regards,

- Steve

Hi Steve, thanks for your post.

>I am the complete opposite to yourself, as I come from a background of using nurbs packages.

My background is Autocad and Inventor which I use all day, everyday at work for past 15 and 5yrs. Both those programs would be totally unsuitable for a project like this or to model up a car. Both are great for architectural and mechanical type work though.
As I have a interest in aviation and creating digital aviation art I decided to search for the best tool for the job. At first I tried Rhino V2 and V3 but found getting a a good clean mesh from that program problematical. The problems are mostly bad mesh at the joints between the surfaces which creates shading errors when rendering the model. I hoped V4 would address this area but they have done little to no work in this area and may tackle it in V5. I then decided to learn poly modelling and found that much more suited to creating a nice smooth seamless mesh that renders beautifully from all angles. It also has the added benefit of being able to continually tweak the model until I am satisfied it looks pretty close to the original. This of course is all done by eye using photo reference as I do not have the original construction drawings of the aircraft, just some blueprints aimed at scale modellers to correct their models.

I will be most interested to see your attempt at the model and I appreciate you taking the time to have a go.

Hi Kevin, I thought a few details on how I arrived at that model and a few other tips and background might be useful.

If you want to end up with a shape that has a kind of long and evenly smooth type form it is really hard to get that by building things only in small individual panels that touch edge to edge. Even when you have continuity control for matching the edges it is still not a good way to do it, because the continuity control will tend to bend around the area just near the ends of your patch, which produces kind of lumps which are technically smooth where they touch edge to edge but does not have the kind of totally even distribution that you want in a case like this. For it to work your initial curve network has to have a very even curvature distribution in it and it is hard to create that.

There are several industries that do construct their smooth things in a panel by panel basis, however it is a very time consuming way to do it. They have some fancy software to help a bit, but really the role of the fancy software tends to be fairly exaggerated for this particular stuff, the results are more about a lot of expertise in setting up the framework and also in nudging surface control points around, and probably the biggest ingredient is a lot of time and effort spent on the problem. It is just not a very practical method for your kind of situation.

So for a project like this I would really avoid that kind of a strategy.

Instead to get smooth pieces it works a lot easier to build surfaces that are larger and also try to be more sparing in the number and complexity of curves used.


So I started by drawing a profile following the edge of the fuselage in the top view.

Then I took a look at the front view, and I noticed that this cross-section pointing to in red here:



seemed to be an exact circle.

So exact circle made me think of revolve, one of the nice things about revolve is that it will always make a very predictable and evenly shaped smooth form. So it is nice to use it when possible.

So the revolve builds a large smooth section of the fuselage all at once:




That's a good example of the kind of componentization that I was referring to earlier.

Forget about some of the other pieces like the canopy for a minute, just focus on getting a particular element of the model right. Later on the canopy will get built separately and then blended in to the main shape.

It probably would have been a good idea to rotate the profile 90 degrees down so that the seam was on the bottom, that would just make a more symmetric topology for later on when putting in wings.

Then looking from the side, it seemed like the front part was good, but along the back part there is kind of a rising section. So I turned on surface control points and pulled some of the up to stretch out that part a bit, and to start some of the transition into the tail:






Then I traced a profile of the canopy from the front and side:



Note how the side profile is extended beyond where the line ends stop on the blueprint, this kind of extension is a big ingredient for building components so that they punch through each other and can be intersected:




First I tried doing a sweep, using side profile as the rail:




But that kind of gave a sort of flat-sided shape (may be just I did not pick a good profile to do...), I noticed in the photos that the canopy has a lot more rounded bubble type shape to the sides:




Instead of messing with the profile much, I decided to try a rail revolve, which is a variant of revolve that can also take a shaping curve. So in this case the revolve profile is the long side view piece, the front profile is the rail, and the axis is snapped to the endpoints of the long side view piece, that generates this individual piece:



And together with the main body:



Then to fuse them together, select both of them, run Edit/Trim, at the "Push cutting objects or Done for mutual trim" prompt, press done or right click to say that you want one to cut the other, switch to Mode: Keep and pick on the 2 pieces you want to keep and then Right-click and the inside pieces will removed. Then join them together, and I used Fillet to round off the edge, but switching the Shape: option from the standard Shape: Circular to Shape: G2 Blend - that will put in a more organic connecting piece that is not an exact circular shape, it tends to make for a more seamless and less distinct boundary to the blend.

I hope this may be useful to you or others, I mean you can see the results give you smooth surfaces without the kind of warping or bunching that you were seeing with the other kind of strategy.

Unfortunately I probably won't be able to do any more extensive posts on this, got to get some work done on the software too! :)

- Michael

Thanks Michael, some more great tips and ideas posted there.

With the canopy surface you've generated I could not cut the windshield to the right shape. I think you solution in the canopy thread was a far better although that is a trial and error exercise with the windshield side profile. However I do understand the principle your getting at and I think you've come to realise how difficult some of the shapes that make up a aircraft are. Same goes for cars.

I actually built the fuselage of my model as a revolve as that was the simplest and most accurate way to do it. It also highlights the errors in the blueprints used as the side profile when revolved did not match the top and bottom profile of the aircraft but from the front view it shows the aircraft as a perfect circle.

I like the point pulling idea to give me a leg up in the tail area and reduce the seams in the model. The only problem is that a user can't point pull after a surface is trimmed so he can't tweak the shape till it looks right compared to photo reference. Nor can the user define how many points should be put on the surface to aid them in the point pulling exercise. As we have discussed point pulling is probably best handled with a subd poly modeller which is designed for that purpose.

I don't want to build the model panel by panel (even if a could) as it would take to long and would be difficult to keep it all straight and aligned. I'm interested in reducing my time to create each model and creating a nice smooth mesh that renders perfectly from all angles. That is my one and only goal when it comes to a project like this.

Hi Kevin, yes I still don't recommend that you use this process in place of your existing one, like I mentioned previously the level of adjustment and detail that you want to achieve would not be any easier and most likely more time consuming with this method rather than your current one.

This does not change any of that.

However, I wanted to show you what the suggested approach would be if you (or someone else) did want to build this using NURBS. You were previously saying it was not possible to build such things with NURBS because of bunching and warping issues. I wanted to show that there is a method that can be used that does not create warping and twisting, but you do have to use a different strategy than your original one.

I mean you can clearly see that the overall form that I created there does not suffer from bunching or warping issues.


> With the canopy surface you've generated I could not cut the
> windshield to the right shape.

Yes - please understand that I did not take a whole lot of time to do that shape, if it is not the correct shape you would need to edit the curves and tweak things. That is not a whole lot different than your polygon modeling approach - doing things in polygons does not automatically create them at the perfect shape immediately, you have to do a lot of tweaking to manipulate the shapes. The same principle applies here as well.

So even though you could not generate the windshield to the right shape with the specific canopy I have created here, I hope you do not think that it is not possible to create a suitable shape with further edits, because that is certainly not the case. I wish I had time to demonstrate and prove to you that it is possible to create every single one of these little details to a very exact specification, but I'm sorry I just do not have the time available to do that.

I would probably have to spend quite a bit more time studying a lot of details of the shape to become more familiar with it before I could try to create something to meet the level of detail that you are targeting.


You're certainly right that it is a challenging shape to work on!


> The only problem is that a user can't point pull after a surface
> is trimmed so he can't tweak the shape till it looks right
> compared to photo reference.

No, that's not quite accurate - you can still turn on points and manipulate them on a trimmed surface, but not on a joined assembly of surfaces, you have to use Edit/Separate on a joined together cluster of surfaces to break them into individual pieces and then they can be point edited.

But there is a general problem of after trimming if you yank things around you can pull trim edges apart from one another.

Again though the general strategy is to form the shape of each component more correctly and fully before you do any trimming. You would not want to trim and combine them until you liked their shapes.


> Nor can the user define how many points should be put on
> the surface to aid them in the point pulling exercise.

That's not quite accurate either, for example if you use Rail revolve that will create an output surface that has the exact same control point structure as the input profile and rail curves combined, so you can insert points as you want on the input curves to control the point structure of the final result.


> As we have discussed point pulling is probably best handled
> with a subd poly modeller which is designed for that purpose.

I agree - definitely it is a focus of that toolset and once again if that is your main focus for how you want to operate then I would recommend going with that toolset instead.

Again, my last post was not an attempt to convince you to use NURBS instead of your current workflow, but rather as an explanation on how one would go about this task if you did want to use NURBS for it.


> I don't want to build the model panel by panel (even if a could)

The reason why I mentioned panel by panel, is your previous post here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2036.31
showed that you were using a panel-by-panel type approach when you were trying to build this in MoI, and you were complaining about buckling and seams between pieces. That strategy is not going to be fruitful with NURBS, you have to use a different strategy of making components that intersect like I was showing in my last post. It is a totally different way to approach the construction than the way you were doing it...


Again, sorry if my last post was not clear, it was not meant to convince you to abandon your current method of working in polygons, but just to show you what type of an an approach you would need to adopt to construct such a thing with NURBS without the kind of buckling, warping, creasing problems that you had encountered.

It is not an easy method, it kind of requires use of many of the detailed and advanced parts of the NURBS modeling toolset. It may require you to do things like subtle edits and visualizations of how pieces intersect before you get a good result. I do not really think it would save you time in your particular case of needing such very minute details and tweaking, but for other people's purposes who are not so particular about replicating very minute details it could be useful and just generally shows off the approach that you would use for creating more seamless skin type models using NURBS.

- Michael

Hi Michael

To some extent when modelling anything you have use a panel by panel approach. Why am I doing that ?

The answer lies here in your own statement
>It may require you to do things like subtle edits and visualizations of how pieces intersect before you get a good result.
It is pretty darn hard (impossible) to visualise what shape the canopy needs to be so that when the windscreen is booleaned from it that shape matches the look of the real thing or plans. Where it is far more logical to create the windscreen shape, get it to look right by tweaking curves and then create the canopy shape from there. Which as we have seen doesn't work. And yes this is also how I would do it with polys except this approach does work.

The other reason is that the plan view & side view shape of the cockpit opening and windscreen are known entities from the plans so I am trying to model up to those know entities. What are not know entities are all the subtle blends that lead to those items which can only be done by eyeballing the shapes from photos. The plans are not much help when it comes to the shape of all those blends.

>I mean you can clearly see that the overall form that I created there does not suffer from bunching or warping issues.
Yes, I can see that the way you have tackled the transition of the fin from the fuselage is a good approach much like polymodelling.
But trying to get the shaped pulled to match the airfoil shape of my fin would be almost impossible to do on a first attempt. Once I've trimmed it so I can see what cross section shape I have got, I can't change it ? I would have to undo, trim again, nope still not right, undo, tweak, trim, undo, tweak trim undo etc. Bit of nightmare for someone trying to model this thing accurately. Sure if you're modelling fantasy stuff, who cares what shape it is.

As I stated in Jasons Clarks thead, nurbs almost gives you the shape you want but without the ability to tweak those surfaces to get those surfaces looking right compared to your reference photos, the user is in for a lot of trial and error and a very frustrating time. But as you've said if it were possible to do this, all your joints would start springing apart.

So this all comes back to the wrong tool for the job at hand. Best to use nurbs for what it does best which is boolean operations of more mechanical type parts rather than the complex curvatures and blends associated with trying to accurately portray a real car or aircraft.

Michael
I feel we are both going around in circles. Your telling me how nurbs works and how I should model. If you feel your not getting through to me your wrong, I fully understand exactly what your saying. For the reasons I mentioned above (please read them carefully), I'm sorry that approach is beyond the average modeller or even the above average modeller who wants to model a car or aircaft accurately which is probably the reason there are so few Nurbs cars or aircraft that are accurate looking representations of the real thing. All this work being done with polys. I honestly wish this was not the case as I like the precision and speed of working with nurbs but unfortunately for projects like this trying to get nurbs to bend to the complex curvature of this aircraft is just too difficult and time consuming for the average modeller.

Aside from solving all the modelling problems, getting your nurbs model to good clean mesh ready for uvmapping and rendering is another whole set of problems.

Hi Kevin, sorry I haven't gotten the other kind of strategy explained clear enough yet.

> To some extent when modelling anything you have
> use a panel by panel approach.

No - maybe the confusing part is that the final result of all methods will result in a side-by-side set of panels that have shared edges.

But there is a big difference between trying to build a skin of surfaces by a totally edge to edge construction (which is not a good strategy for your desired smooth skin result) or by first creating components that are extended surfaces that do not share direct edges with neighboring pieces until they are intersected with them.


> Why am I doing that ?

Because you are trying to build a surface directly following the edge of another surface, instead of as parts that punch through each other.

Here I'll try to explain it more clearly. This is a screenshot of one of your previous models that you posted:



Here are a couple of surfaces colored in:



Notice how you have constructed the green and blue surfaces so that they are following the same boundary edge as part of their initial construction - they do not push through each other instead you are trying to build them in an edge-to-edge manner, similar to the way that panels touch each other edge to edge tiling an area, hence the description of "paneling".

That is not a good strategy for trying to make a broad smooth skin with NURBS.

Instead a completely different strategic approach is needed, which is to build components that are initially completely separate objects that push through one another and are not constructed based off of a common boundary.

I was trying to illustrate that method with those previous steps, here is one key part:

In the steps I showed, notice how the canopy is a completely independent assembly, it was built off of "self contained" reference curves and not attempting to ride along the boundary edge of another piece:



The 2 pieces do not touch edge to edge yet, they punch all the way through each other:



They do not share an edge-to-edge common boundary until you trim them to one another. That is why they are not like the paneling method that you were using, which instead tries to build surfaces directly to a common 3D edge curve. Again that method is not the right strategy to use for making smooth skins with NURBS.


> It is pretty darn hard (impossible) to visualise what shape the
> canopy needs to be so that when the windscreen is booleaned
> from it that shape matches the look of the real thing or plans.

It is not impossible, it is a skill that may take time to develop. But it is certainly valid if you do not wish to develop that skill and find it easier to use the subd type method instead, I agree with you that your current method is an easier and faster method for the way you want to edit and tweak things.


> Where it is far more logical to create the windscreen shape, get
> it to look right by tweaking curves and then create the canopy
> shape from there.

I don't agree - to me the overall shape of the canopy is the sort of "primary" outer form that you would want to shape, and the windscreen is a cut out smaller subcomponent of that.

With NURBS I would usually work in that kind of a way, focusing on major forms first and putting in small details later which get merged into the main pieces by trimming or booleans.

It is definitely a very different approach than what you are used to with polygons, so it is not surprising to me that you would not like to work that way.

It does not however mean that it is an "impossible" way to work at all though.


> I would have to undo, trim again, nope still not right, undo,
> tweak, trim, undo, tweak trim undo etc.

That is not the only option available - you can also use Construct / Curve / Project to project a curve onto the surface, when you edit the surface you will see the projected curve update dynamically with your edits so that could be a more convenient system than what you describe here.

But really the main thing is getting used to the process so that you have more of a good anticipation for how the projection is going to look, with more experience it gets to be a more natural process.


> But as you've said if it were possible to do this, all your joints
> would start springing apart.

It would be if surface control point editing was the only way to do edits. But the more typical way from a "construction" type workflow would be to instead edit the input curves that went into the sweep or revolve, etc.. to tweak the shape. When I was talking about tweaking the canopy that was the kind of editing that I was thinking about, sorry I did not make that more clear.

Surface control point editing is also available and can be helpful to kind of make a slight adjustment in an already close surface, that is what I was using it for in that one stage in my previous illustrations, I probably would not use it though for tweaking the canopy.

I do not disagree with you that it is much more difficult to achieve a smooth skin type model using NURBS instead of polygons.

Doing it with NURBS tends to require a particular strategic approach, which is what I have been trying to describe. It is definitely more difficult to learn this approach, which is easy to see since my descriptions of how it is different than how you tried originally or what "paneling" is do not seem to be getting through.


None of these several past explanations have been intended to convince you to switch to a NURBS based workflow, they have just been an attempt to show you what kind of strategy would be required in order to use NURBS. The strategy that you were originally trying to follow in your initial posts is way different from that.


Anyway, you definitely do not seem to like the strategy that would be required for NURBS and I don't blame you - the way that subd works is definitely easier for making a totally smooth skin that has various protruding kind of bits with a kind of "melted together" type blending going on everywhere.

Since it is not something that you are going to want to switch over to, I think I'm going to stop trying to explain it over and over again.


> Aside from solving all the modelling problems, getting your
> nurbs model to good clean mesh ready for uvmapping and
> rendering is another whole set of problems.

Did you notice PaQ's previous post just earlier today that had a good clean mesh and uvmapping?

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2039.8

- Michael

With a little research, shows you have been makeing this same post since at least 2006.
Forum posts from you stating how making an aircraft "TRUE" has to be done with poly modeling due to the shortcommings of NURBS.

Whats the agenda here? It really is a belief you hold close and wont let go of.

Burr

Ahhhhh!!!

Still 4 years (decades in 3d time ) behind in modelling app theory/application?
(And, also, STILL!, Lightwave can not handle .obj files properly!)

What we know about Poly modelling is , even now?, left in the dark ages by what is happening in the latest Alpha/Beta version of 3D Coat--NOW, that really is a different WHACCO!

Brian

PS Complimentary to MoI!

Sort of?

Brian

Hi Michael


I know this functionality does not exist in MoI and last time I used Rhino it doesn't exist either.
Once a surface is created, say a swept surface and then trimmed.

Is it technically possible to in some way let the user define how many points make up the surface. If there were less points it would be more artist friendly because there are two many at the moment to manipulate the surface unless you wanted to add a small detail to it. Or could something like 3DS Max's FFD modifiers be programmed into the software. That would then allow the user to manipulate the surface and kind of mould the shape they want. Just a thought anyway. I'm thinking if it had that functionality I could probably mould up the upper surface of the aircraft.

>That is not the only option available - you can also use Construct / Curve / Project to project a curve onto the surface,
>when you edit the surface you will see the projected curve update dynamically with your edits so that could be a
>more convenient system than what you describe here.

That is the answer I've been looking for. That will give me a kind of cross section tool that will allow me to see what shape I will get before I boolean. Hopefully this will also work on the point pulling exercise you showed for the tail section. If it does then I can now have another crack at this project.

Hi Burrman

Thanks for your post.

The reason I started this thread was at Michaels request. See post 20 of this thread http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI
He asked if I would show him some examples of the kind of things I was referring to. I decided it might be best to put all those examples in the one thread rather than scattered around the forum.

My agenda with this thread is as follows
1. Create an accurate looking F9F with nurbs and export a mesh out to 3DS Max for texturing and final artwork.
2. Learn more about MoI and Nurbs surfaces.
3. To show Michael some of the problems users face when modelling up difficult subjects which may help him (it may not) further develop the software.

Hi Kevin,

>>My background is Autocad and Inventor which I use all day, everyday at work for past 15 and 5yrs. Both those programs would be totally unsuitable for a project like this or to model up a car. Both are great for architectural and mechanical type work though.

Aircraft/cars are mechanical, so dont quite follow your statement. I cannot comment on "inventor" as I have not used the program, but Autocad, I have used many versions over the years for aircraft and F1/touring car work.

>>At first I tried Rhino V2 and V3 but found getting a a good clean mesh from that program problematical. The problems are mostly bad mesh at the joints between the surfaces which creates shading errors when rendering the model

That is final output and not related to internal construction, and it is mainly construction problems you have posted about.

>>I will be most interested to see your attempt at the model and I appreciate you taking the time to have a go.

Unfortunately I have had no spare time to look at this, but I am unsure of your exact problem. Is it with construction (which should not really be a problem with your use of autocad), or is it just the poly output after construction (in which case whatever method of construction is used, there could still be the poly problem).


- Steve

Some interesting stuff I found if of interest to anyone.
Brian

http://pubs.drdc.gc.ca/PDFS/unc48/p521647.pdf

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-au&q=Modeling+an+Aircraft+in+Nurbs&start=10&sa=N

http://www.icon.fi/~jtki/3dimens.html

http://ogigi.polsl.pl/biuletyny/zeszyt_14/z14cz3_6.pdf

Hi Steve, thanks for your post.

>Aircraft/cars are mechanical, so dont quite follow your statement.
> I cannot comment on "inventor" as I have not used the program, but Autocad, I have used many versions over the years for aircraft and F1/touring car work.

I'm not talking about using Autocad (or Inventor) to draw up the components of the car as I know both are used for the that purpose all day every day right around the world. I was referring to using Autocad's 3d modelling tools to create the aerodynamic shape of this aircraft and all the subtle blends around the upper part of the fuselage and fin and then converting that model to a nice mesh from Autocad. Autocad's surfacing tools are a little on the primitive side compared to MoI and Rhino.

>That is final output and not related to internal construction
Yes the mesh is a seperate issue and nothing to do with constructing the model in the first place. I suspect Michaels work on the FBX plugin will largely resolve a lot of my past meshing issues especially since I use 3DS Max.

>Unfortunately I have had no spare time to look at this, but I am unsure of your exact problem.
Where I am having problems is creating the blends that are around the cockpit and upper part of the fuselage as shown in the photo of post 63 of this thread.
The rest of the aircraft I should not have any problems with.
What I was hoping you might be able to help with is the best way to tackle this area and keep the blends that are created tangent to one another so that I get nice smooth highlights on my aircraft when rendered.

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

for the old guy is that the process?
Modo OBJ -->Tspline -->Nurbs --> MOI

Hi Paq

Thanks for you comment and interest in the thread. I know there has been a lot of discussion in this thread but I hope there are solutions presented here by Michael that will help people solve some of their more advanced nurb modelling tasks. Unfortunately for me so far on this particular project I haven't been able to achieve what I want.

I had a good look at tsplines yesterday and believe that it would be the best way to tackle the upper part of the fuselage of this aircraft and also give me a nice mesh. It would allow me to kind of sculpt up the shape I need as I am unable to get nurbs to conform to the shapes I need via converntional sweeps and networks especially since surface tangency options are somewhat limited.
Unfortunately the cost of buying tsplines and Rhino for my hobby is a little prohibitive but like you I hope that one day this tool will be standard in nurbs packages as I believe it would be of tremendous benefit in instances like this and many others that I can think of.

>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.
Yes, I am having similar issues except I don't want to change the design. I want to capture the look as closely as I can.

>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.
Absolutely, totally agree 100%. It is not much fun cutting out holes, vents and openings in meshes, very tedious work.

Yes Pilou,

I used t-spline for rhino,

So in rhino you import the obj as an sds cage with the tspline plugin (not with the rhino obj import of course), t-spline create a t-spline version of the cage ... then convert it in nurbs, and save it in .3dm.

There was also an tool in the t-spline toolbox you have to use to smooth the blending between every patches. (I don't remember the name)


Now again, until one hour ago, I was thinking that the sds->nurbs was only possible with this t-spline plugin ... but if maya can do it natively, we maybe don't need an alien technology to get the same thing in MoI ... crossing fingers :o)

If of interest
My second go at an aeroplane--all imagined!

Hugely faster than my first effort in MoI but still did some things in silly ways which I would not repeat in a third effort.

Pretty rough I guess--but very, very quick!
Saved to both FBX and ObjN-gons from MoI to use in Carrara.

Brian