Anyone NURBS Modeling Heads?
I was wondering if anyone is actually modeling heads using NURBS, either completely or in part? I would like to maintain a high level of control for my character models, stylized cartoony characters with lots of precise curvy planes and I was thinking NURBS might be the way to go. I was thinking of starting by sculpting to get myself partway there and then using NURBS to finish things up or just help with modeling a few trickey parts like eyes and mouths. Does anyone think this is a worthwhile or pratical persuit and if so do you know of any good tutorials online or workflow ideas? There used to be a lot of tutorials on NURBS modeling heads but, now there are relatively few and I don't even know where to begin with NURBS modeling a head, it seems like it would be kind of difficult.
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Hey, personally I'd steer well clear of nurbs. I was taught how to NURBS model characters 20 years ago - it was a massive headache, and never worked right - I would be very surprised if that was still a relevant workflow.
I've nurbs modeled a head. My avatar image has a lot of nurbs in it. A long time ago nurbs was considered the only way to model an object with complex curves.
Nurbs modeling a head is incredibly difficult. The topology rules of nurbs patches is very constraining. And deforming nurbs will often develop cracks between the patches when you go to render them.
I'd stick with Sub division surfaces. These days I wouldn't ever use nurbs to model something.
Yeah same, @Benjammin . I started to learn NURBS about 20 years ago and gave up because I was never able to successfully create a decent looking NURBS head, just a nasty looking monkey thing from a 3D Studio Max tutorial. NURBS were kinda hyped up back then and now there's barely a tutorial online on the subject. Even back then there were very few good tutorials on the subject and workflow involved which is why I think it never really caught on outside of commercial product design.
@sprunghunt it seems like it would be good for modeling characters like your avatar though and probably for my characters too, non-humoid or cartoony stuff that dosen't need to be realistically animated or have alot of granular detail.
I think I'm still going to learn NURBS modeling eventually because it's still very useful. I'm suprised it's not used more for hardsurface modeling in game dev. Using anything but NURBS for modeling hard surface things like cars, guns, and mechs seems kinda crazy to me. I feel like the only valid reason for someone to use sub-d instead of NURBS for hard surface modeling is the learning curve. I think it's pretty obvious that NURBS would produce superior results for hard surface. Right tool for the right job I guess. Modeling using just one technique is not the way to go as far as I'm concerned, but I know a lot of people who either sware by sub-d or sculpting. Realistically though I think working on a commercial productions, sub-d and sculpting are probably the way to go because they can produce decent results rapidly.
I've been imagining a NURBS workflow for game dev. A NURBS + procedural texturing workflow that would make updating assets for HD remakes simple. Obviously it wouldn't work well for anything with alot of granular detail, but for games with Pixar style character or racing games it seems like it would be the way to go. Imagine how much time and money could be saved creating games like Grand Tourismo and Forza. For racing games that get updated every couple years, the only additional cars that would need to be modeled are new cars models with all the old ones just being created from the old NURBS models. Companies like EA could make new soccer games with higher poly models, nothing could be easier, nothing! ;D Only thing would be that you would have to expect ahead of time that there would be a future remake to justifty the time and difficulty of working with NURBS.
Anyway if I can figure out a good technique of integrating NURBS into a modeling game dev work flow I'll be sure to let everyone know. Write a tutorial or share my findings/techniques.
You mention "pixar style models" - Pixar uses sub-d modeling for all their characters. They are the ones who developed the open sub div engine that Maya uses.
I don't know why you think sub div modeling doesn't have a way to increase resolution? You can just increase the subdivisions on a subdiv model the same way you increase the divisions on a nurbs model.
You can't easily get all the tiny bevels that a hard surface model needs to look good by using nurbs. It'd be a nightmare trying to make a model like that.
Nurbs will also never be able to make a model of an organic object (like a person) that has the same level of detail as a modern zbrush model. So EA probably won't ever be using nurbs to make soccer players.
You should watch this tech talk from pixar:
The EA thing was a joke, they made an HD remake of a soccer game and just used all of the same models and changed the name from XZY Soccer Game 2010 to XZY Soccer Game 2011.
With the sub-d thing, I know you can increase the resoloution but, you don't have an exact level of control. With NURBS you know it will look exactly like the cage, with the quads distributed evenly and topology preserved just at a lower resoloution. So far as bevels go, from my experiance it's all pretty easy. Don't know what kind of specialized instances you're talking about. I see solid modeling and NURBS as the same thing, maybe I'm wrong but, in programs like Fusion 360 and Solidworks bevels and stuff can be created easily by, projecting paths on to surfaces, extruding, and beveling resulting edges or using boolian operations to subtract and bevel the resulting edges all of which can be created procedurally adjusted on the fly easily. I mean I wouldn't use Fusion to make something like a character so maybe it can't be done in something like Maya. Maybe I'm wrong but are they not technically the same at least in terms of capabilities? It's been a while since I've actually done anything with NURBS in Maya but, have worked in Fusion lately and that stuff it pretty simple.
There's plasticity which is advertised as CAD for artists, might be a good option. https://www.plasticity.xyz/
It won't look exactly like the cage? the defining feature of nurbs and, any kind of bspline, is that the control points don't sit on the surface. The cage sits off the surface because that's how the maths works.
It's not a specialised instance. Most hard surface models in the game and VFX industry are done with subdivs. Having lots of detailed bevels is normal. In my experience doing this in nurbs is too complicated. Especially if you want to animate the mesh afterwards.
Fusion360 does not do animation and is not a tool designed for games or VFX. So it's definitely different.
"Anyone NURBS Modeling Heads?"
No, no one does it. The benefits you are imagining do not exist in practice.
Nope.
There was an artist on CGTalk maybe 20 years ago that did amazing characters with NURBS, but other then them I can't think of anyone that ever really mastered organic NURBS modeling. Polygons are the way to go for characters.
I used Animation Master in the beginning. I got my first job in 3d using that software to vizualize info islands/columns for exhibitions and shop interiors. The site is still there and there are tutorial rescources for things like figure modelling. I think its very much horses for courses though. Someone here did a functional model of a rifle using a CAD app fusion 3d that was impressive. Polys cant accurately describe a curve whereas nurbs are accurate to 100,000 th of a milimeter which makes them super for real world production application. However modeling characters using this process is really very tedious. You are welcome to try as 3dMax, Maya and Blender all have nurbs tools that probably hold up for what you want..
Here is a spline head I did about 25 years ago
Not doing that again 😎
And to be a bit of a contrarian : if I am not mistaken, model kit sprues are produced by CNC machining injection molds from CAD data. Wonderfully tightly detailed mecha toys and model kits have existed for decades, some of which include some nearly organic heads (Transformers) ; so sure enough, there are people able to produce some tight, somewhat organic head models with CAD NURBS. There has to be a noticeable point in time when most model kit manufacturers made the switch from manually operated milling machines to CNC (hence first embracing programming the machines, and then driving them directly in CAM), in the late eighties - that would be very interesting to research.
back in the day - jeremy Birn
https://www.3drender.com/ncf/index.html
jeremy birns work not mine, can't fid my old stuff, was kind of pre 2000
It all kindof makes sense seen from that angle ...