Maya Modelling (NURBS, Polys, or Sub-D?)

[ross_coe]

Hey folks

I been trying my hand at Maya (PLE) over the last few days. And I've been looking at some tutorials and I'm a bit confused to be honest. Ya see, I can't decide whether I should be modelling with NURBS, polys or Sub-Ds???

It seems like polys and sub-d's are pretty much the same.....so does anyone know which is best to use? I've been doing mainly poly modelling which seems cool, but I've tried sub-d's and they seemed a little fiddly. It also seems to me that they both have pretty much the same functionality - you can use poly modelling tools when modelling with sub-d's, and you can use smooth or smooth proxy with polys to get the same result as sub-d's anyways, it's been bugging me so if anyone knows which is best, i'd be chuffed if you could let me know

Oh I've recently had a try of XSI, and all I can say is....it has great modelling tools very nice to use and it has lots of cool modelling tricks

[Bonciu Toma]

Well, I think it's easyer to start modeling using polygons. Then when you want some extra detail at a smooth level you can swich to the sub-d mode. It has the advantages of beeing able to add detail only where you want it; also very easy to make hard edges in smooth mode; and the posibility of editing the object at different levels of detail (this means that you can alter the major shape by moveing few vertices, for example, in a low level of detail).

And after a while of playing with polys I think that any modeler will try the nurbs which I must say are so powerfull represented in Maya and can give you some posibilities to make things so much easyer if you know how to use the proper tools.

I hope this kinda gives you a point of start or something to take in consideration.

Ofcourse that when you'll master all the tools that Maya offers for polys, subd's and nurbs and once you'll know theyre desadvantages and advantages you'll be able to decide what method of modeling it's more suited for a specific task.