new to nurbs. nurbs to solid object?

jord_an

I have these glasses traced with nurbs curves, and was wondering if there was any way of making it solid. I think i know a way which involves just using the curves as guides, but is there an easier way? Using 3ds max 7

Faucet

Well I'm a Maya user, but I'm assuming it would be similar in MAX. Basicly you'd have to chop a few of those curves up and do lofts using the curves. This will create square NURBS patches that stretch between the curves.

I'd recommend playing around with much more simple curves and get used to working with them before going for the glasses. The curves in that pic would not really work without being cut into sections first.

Hope this helps.

Steve Schulze

I dunno whether they've improved things with Max 7, but Nurbs were never one of Max's strong points. Its one of the things those Maya infidels always hold over us. You might be best to use a different technique to model. Even if Max did have quality NURBS modelling, with such a simple shape it'd be far quicked just to box model it.

jord_an

aww darn , all that work for nothing. Ill use it as a guide i suppose.

MacD

Hmmm...I'm pretty sure that even in max 5 you can define a NURBS plane/sheet/whatever directly from splines/NURBS curves (using 2, three or four lines).

Ok, I found it: I dunno 'bout max 7, but in max 6 select your NURBS curve and get that little pop-upbox open. Look in the surfaces (bottom of the box) and click "create ruled surface". Then click on your curves. If what pops up looks funky, try the "flip end (or "beginning")" checkbox in the modifier rollout to the right.
This should pretty much do what you want to create a surface. Once everything is how you want it, fuck around with the curves to create a single surfacee or convert everything to editable polies/mesh and weld the verts (but I don't recomend that...keep the Nurbs).

FatAssasin

If you want to model like this in Max use splines and the Surface modifier, much easier.

Snowfly

FatAssassin's right, just lay extra wires to connect each spline to another, and apply the Surface modifier. In effect, you're building a wireframe object that resembled an editable poly, but with the added benefit of adjustable beziers and a tweakable LOD.