Anto,

Point 1 and 2 would be my number 1 and 2 feature requests for MoI also, they would both be extremely useful features to have.

>Maybe I could help you some more if I understood the particular reason _why_ you want to use this Softimage function on your surfaces to begin with... What is it that you're looking to gain by doing that?

It's not only that. Actually I already have a small set of tools for attaching the NURBS grids to portions of mesh subd hull, mainly used for "unusual" purposes, like rigging, hair styling, emitting particles, so on. Something like "poor man T-Spline". From my understanding, if NURBS grid is attached to arbitrarily shaped, quad like mesh structure, it acts like "uniform". By the way, Maya has exactly the same function, with same name.
This time, as I have to stop with experiments. It's much easier to me, to attach these NURBS grids in Softimage, to existing mesh, then to export IGES to MOI for adding details - instead of finding curves on it. It's space ship model for use only in DCC app, accuracy doesn't matter. It's not what we consider as "organic".
Next time I hope I'll be able to do everything in MOI.

Hi Anto,

> From my understanding, if NURBS grid is attached to arbitrarily shaped, quad like mesh structure, it acts like "uniform".

I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but yes a totally regular quad mesh structure using sub-d modeling will behave the same as a uniform NURBS surface.

But I don't really understand why you wouldn't just use sub-d objects for these various things that you mention, like hair styling for example.

The main area where NURBS surfaces have benefits compared to sub-d meshes are when it comes to booleans and cutting operations. But you're probably not using stuff related to booleans when doing hair styling... ?

Just in general MoI itself is not focused on generating things for squiggly jiggly type stuff, it's more about building mechanical man-made objects (where booleans and 2D curve driven modeling is very useful) which are usually just animated with movement and rotation, not arbitrary squashing around.

- Michael

>But I don't really understand why you wouldn't just use sub-d objects for these various things that you mention, like hair styling for example.

NURBS surface provides always present UV space, perfect interpolation as well. Generally it's much easier, and faster, to use NURBS for any kind of defining the custom, deformable, 3d cord system.UV as XY, normal as Z, or like. Usually there's built - in constraint to NURBS surface, deforming operator that works in similar way to MOI flow, so on. Getting the same form SUBDs, takes more effort, means much slower computation time. For example, Softimage applies SUBD interpolation, always as last operator, after computation of collisions or distance queries - so it's more a display/ rendering feature, not something to use for interaction. But NURBS is taken fully interpolated, all the time.
There's traditional "Maya ribbon spine" rigging setup which utilizes NURBS surface: http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/tutorials/character/c/ribbon-spine-rig
Here is one small hair styling system created by me: http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/mars_police_hair_and_render_breakdown. Here, polygons were used only as hulls for tweaking, only because Softimage has much better tool set for polygon tweaking.

Yes, almost all setups of this kind, utilizes single, open NURBS surface, or bunch of them. So built in tool set is more than enough.

Anyway, I bought MOI for modeling, as I noticed that with polygons, about half of modeling time (or much more) goes onto preparing the geometry for adding the details.

There is also individual approach, how someone visualizes the forms. Having a zero experience with CAD modeling, I'd visualize, for example, bottle as modified cylinder, house as bunch of boxes. Not as revolution along axis or extruded plan. But that's just me :).