Hi Mike,

> I am more used to solid modelling, so my surface
> modelling and it's variants need some intensive study.

Yeah unfortunately polygon modeling in particular is pretty different from solids modeling, so it requires developing a whole new skill set to be productive with it, even if you're going to be doing it within the same program that you are already doing solids with.

The fundamental task of poly modeling is about managing a big cage of 3d points and keeping them nicely organized into a smoothing-friendly topology.

NURBS surface modeling is a different thing yet than polygon modeling - NURBS surface modeling (like Burr shows above) is more about drawing profiles and then constructing surfaces from those. That works well if your object is actually defined well by a smallish number of profiles but objects that contain a lot of small sized details in them like little bumps and lumps (like what you showed before but also things like a human nose or ear fall into that category as well) are not really "defined" by a profile curve. You can get a profile like a silhouette of a human face, but you can't easily generate a face from that silhouette alone because the face's shape is changing in all kinds of small localized ways as it comes away from that silhouette.

Then the brush-based displacement modeling systems like Sculptris, Zbrush and 3d-coat are another different organic modeling approach yet, and they actually tend to have a lower learning curve than regular point-cage-manipulation type polygon modeling.

So anyway, there are several different kinds of categories of surface modeling.


> I like where you are going with MOI, an excellent creation
> that really grabs the imagination.

Thanks, I'm glad you like it!


- Michael