Maya Nurbs Face Modelling from a sphere?

Jeremy Lindstrom

As some of you know I quit work to finish my degree and push me into doing more artwork, luckily I have a generous wife that makes some decent scratch.

Anyhow, my instructor informed me they've drastically changed the curriculum since I left and to catch up I should practice making some human faces using a nurbs sphere ("NOT POLY") he emphasized... by making the one pole of the sphere the mouth. He said I shouldn't have trouble finding a tutorial on the net to help me out..

ALthough it's pretty hard to find such a tutorial.. ANy ideas? I got a couple weeks to figure it out, thankfully. Any ideas or help finding such a tutorial would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

motives

wtf, nurbs head from a sphere? it is july right, not april 1?

seriously, that was the most wacked out thing ive heard in ages. Polys-> Zbrush gogo


Edit: just to point out that im not a nurbs hater or anything rather the other way around when it comes to some mechanical shapes. However i cant see no point in using it for heads.

Jeremy Lindstrom

yeah, that's what I said.. but it's an assignment.. so I'm trying to figure out what the hell's going on..

Toomas

[ QUOTE ]
wtf, nurbs head from a sphere? it is july right, not april 1?

seriously, that was the most wacked out thing ive heard in ages. Polys-> Zbrush gogo


Edit: just to point out that im not a nurbs hater or anything rather the other way around when it comes to some mechanical shapes. However i cant see no point in using it for heads.


[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry to say but as it turns out nurbs are still widely used in the movie industry

Cthogua

Yeah, I think I've heard Dreamworks and ILM (although that may have changed recently)are still both predominatly NURBS based as far as characters are concerned. Also it seems like Daz mentioned being told he needed NURBS experience when he was applying at some film effects places.

Daz

True dat. Dreamworks turned me down on lack of Nurbs experience (apparently. But I think there was more to it than that). There must be something on learning-maya.com but tbh, I too have not had much luck finding good Nurbs tutorials.

noritsune

I thought the majority of Gnomon tutorials (the Alvarez ones) were NURBS-based. 'course, they aren't free.

motives

damn never could have thought they still use that for characters..

hard surface sure but chars just feel wrong. Can you really get the same amount of control and detail with a nurbs head than a poly one?

Jeff Parrott

That seems like a really old school way of modeling Dekard. Also seems real basic. We had to do that when I was in school in one of the beginner classes. Check learning-maya or autodesk.com Maya help section.

Daz

[ QUOTE ]
Can you really get the same amount of control and detail with a nurbs head than a poly one?

[/ QUOTE ]

http://jjcoolio.cgsociety.org/gallery/

You tell me.

Btw, what jeffro said. If you're gonna model a Nurbs head, use the patches method. Modeling from a Nurbs sphere is archaic. Still, its come from a tutor, so that would make sense.

Jeremy Lindstrom

found this one but stops shy of completion..
http://www.caligraphics.dk/ID2/head2/head2.htm

And he even states he has found more effecient ways

Daz

"By Carsten Lind, 1998 "

malcolm

Everyone realizes there are no uv's on nurbs right? Once your done modeling with these god awful patches you can look forward to projection maps and a layer shader with one million layers just to get a basic diffuse layed down. We build our terrain on ssx out of nurbs for various reasons, but I could never imagine modeling a human or a gun out of these? Perhaps it is an old school film industry thing?

motives

Cool link Daz. My previous experience from nurbs and heads was more of the kind that dekard showed us with his link

Thats pretty cool tough. I guess when using patches its not that far from creating it in polys.

Daz

It aint as old school as you'd think malcolm. Places like Dreamworks have a 100% Nurbs pipeline. They physically can't render polygons. I interviewed there several months ago.

yeah that guy is a spectacular modeler.

aesir

that might be true daz, but according to a part time professor of mine who is in the film industry, "nobody uses nurbs." I think its kinda dying out.

Daz

I'm not sure I follow you. What might be true? Many cg film studios and fx houses DO use Nurbs. Either in part or in whole or in construction technique. "nobody uses nurbs" is not an accurate statement.

Trust me, I've had interviews with some *very* major fx houses in the last 4 months, and every one of them asked me If I had experience with Nurbs as a surface type.

flaagan

While not directly related to dekard's situation, when I make my vehicle models I've often started them out by making most of the body panels in nurbs / curves (and often converting this to polygons). More often than not it creates a good mesh flow and makes it easier to create some of the more interesting surfaces on vehicles. I can definitely see how this would come in handy with creating a character. They're not completely useless by any stretch, but I can definitely see how many people would consider them obsolete.

Mister Sentient

NURBS scare me . I tried to model a vehicle using Maya NURBS once and got so confused and frustrated that I gave up and started over with polygons. The NURBS learning curve is a lot steeper than that of polygon modeling.

Jeremy Lindstrom

Thats possibly why they are trying to teach us them first.. But I find it odd, I pay so much for class and the guy can't even help me and it seems so archaic there's not even a real tutorial for what he's asking for.

Rhinokey

thats one of the things i've heard about game art schools that anoy me, you pay heaps of money, and they tell you waht to do,, but you have to learn it on your own.. could you not sit at home for free and go "hmm i should learn to make heads"

Jeff Parrott

Honestly though Rhinokey, most schools are like that to some extent I think. In college no one held my hand to learn graphic design. It was all on me to do mock product packaging, logos, etc. Then bring it to class and get feedback from the prof with 10+ years of exp.

So, yeah you could learn it on your own. But part of what you should be looking for in a school is one that has faculty that has experience that you respect. It's a tough thing to find since the industry isn't that old. It's much easier to find people that genuinely want to teach accounting, nursing, etc because it's been around longer.

Sage

What's up? I found this

http://www.caligraphics.dk/id2.php?content=tutorials.php&tutorial=ID2/head2/head2.htm

I love the sentence at the end of the tutorial. Read it, it's priceless.

here are the keywords I used

maya +modeling +nurbs +sphere

http://www.geocities.com/susantio/head01.htm

I love the sentence at the end of the tutorial. Read it, it's priceless.


Good luck with that class it sound like a rip off if the professor isn't even going to discuss how to this. The Mastering Maya books seem to be pretty good. The idea behind modeling a head with the poles at the mouth is to simulate the muscles in the face. Essentially you put one pole at the mouth and the other pole of the sphere goes into the the base of the head where the neck meets the head. I hope your class get's better and more useful. Good luck. I have the Mastering Maya Complete 2. It has some good tutorials in it but I'm not sure if they made newer versions of this book. The show how to model a dog with a sphere and detail it's face in a very basic fashion and it also has some images on how to do it with a human head but the damn author doesn't go into it. The only advise I can give you on modeling with nurbs is that it's pretty much like drawing edge loops and your really want to keep those curves simple and add detail latter as needed. Everytime you add a CV it will add it thoughout the entire model. It's kind of like adding and edgeloop to a model except it goes through the entire thing. If I remember corretly your can't end it like you would with polygon modeling. Later.

Alex

aesir

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure I follow you. What might be true? Many cg film studios and fx houses DO use Nurbs. Either in part or in whole or in construction technique. "nobody uses nurbs" is not an accurate statement.

Trust me, I've had interviews with some *very* major fx houses in the last 4 months, and every one of them asked me If I had experience with Nurbs as a surface type.

[/ QUOTE ]

What I thought "might be true" was that some companies still produce some assets with nurbs, just that I think (obivously I dont know for sure) that most have stopped. My prof would be one person who has told me this, but I've also seen a few videos showing the inside of a couple studios and going through their workflow and they built all their shit with polys.

Daz

[ QUOTE ]
What's up? I found this

http://www.caligraphics.dk/id2.php?content=tutorials.php&tutorial=ID2/head2/head2.htm

I love the sentence at the end of the tutorial. Read it, it's priceless.

[/ QUOTE ]

See Dekards post.

Daz

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure I follow you. What might be true? Many cg film studios and fx houses DO use Nurbs. Either in part or in whole or in construction technique. "nobody uses nurbs" is not an accurate statement.

Trust me, I've had interviews with some *very* major fx houses in the last 4 months, and every one of them asked me If I had experience with Nurbs as a surface type.

[/ QUOTE ]

What I thought "might be true" was that some companies still produce some assets with nurbs, just that I think (obivously I dont know for sure) that most have stopped. My prof would be one person who has told me this, but I've also seen a few videos showing the inside of a couple studios and going through their workflow and they built all their shit with polys.

[/ QUOTE ]

So if you don't know, why are you pushing the point?

Surely 'the point' is now obvious in that it depends what you want with your career as an individual? If your personal career path involves a dream to make cartoony Shrek characters, then you sure as hell MUST learn Nurbs. Since most studios that produce that kind of work use renderers that can't even render polygons. Knowing a ton of people at PDI and (other cg studios here in CA), there is zero internal talk of them switching to another surface type.

But If you want to make monsters for Weta, then sure, Nurbs is possibly less required perhaps, since their main pipepline is going to be polys>displacement maps. But as flaagan touches on, you'd still want Nurbs under your belt to use as a construction technique.

If you're a videogame artist then no, there is no need to learn Nurbs. Like I said, it depends what you want out of your career. That is all the point I was trying to make. Saying Nurbs are dead is totally invalid.

aesir

Im pushing the point because just as my first post insinuated that nobody uses nubs, your posts have suggested that everybody does. Your last post however, makes sense.

Daz

Hah! Find my quote that suggests that everybody uses nurbs!

aesir

''Trust me, I've had interviews with some *very* major fx houses in the last 4 months, and every one of them asked me If I had experience with Nurbs as a surface type.''

would be an example

Daz

Yeah you see, I'm still not following you. Where in that sentence do I say that ALL studios use 100% Nurbs? I say that every studio asked me about Nurbs experience. That's not at all the same thing.

malcolm

Agreed, nurbs are still being used all the time, even in video games. I wonder what advantage a nurb has over a true subd or smooth proxy though? I heard somewhere the hulk was built out of nurbs, I've avoided them since I found out final fantasy spirits within characters were built out of smooth proxy.

aesir

first off, I said suggested. Secondly, I dont see why youre getting defensive about this. I brought up a point an instructor of mine had made (who I would probably trust on this more than you considering he works in film), not because I really want to prove a point, but mainly to offer a differing opinion in the thread. Whether hes wrong or not, I have no clue. I admitted to as much earlier on. Obiously companies want to know if you know nurbs. But then, maybe they just wanted to see for how long you've been working with film res stuff. I dont know, and dont really care anymore, because like you said, im in game art. If youre determined to argue these ridiculously unneccesary points in order to try to back me into a corner, then feel free in a PM.

Daz

Well um, who's getting defensive?

Your 'opinion' was that of your instructor (who works in film) who stated that "nobody uses nurbs".

In a nutshell, it is my opinion that that opinion is wrong, since PDI/Dreamworks rejected me on the basis that I have little experience in Nurbs, and that they use a 100% Nurbs pipeline. That's an actual cold hard fact.

What is starting to totally baffle me here, is that you've seemingly consistently disputed that Nurbs are not dead, whilst insisting that you 'don't know for sure'. Well here's the thing: I've interviewed at various fx houses in Northern and Southern California and we of course discussed surface types. Not only that, living in Northern California I have many close friends that work in film. So I KNOW for instance that ILM too use an awful lot of Nurbs in their work. So I KNOW that Nurbs are still in widepread use.

My frustration here is stemming from the fact that I know something to be true, and you've continued to dispute it whilst repeatedly stating that you do not know for sure.

Now, how fricking bizarre is that?

End of.

malcolm

I hate 3dstudio max.......