Spline modeling?

AnimeAngel

So a friend of mine has been singing the praises of spline modeling for sometime now. I usually just brush him off and tell him to go sub-d. Last night he was over and going on and on about how spline modeling is far superior to box modeling. I had to admit that I was a bit offended by this, and if he wasn't a good friend I might have smacked him. I found myself wanting to rebuke him on this but since the last time I saw anyone using spline models was in college I had no knowledge of them to back it up
So I am just curious if anyone uses spline modeling, if so what are the positives and negatives of such an approach? What would you use such a model for? Can it do better then box or sub-d modeling?

Neox

let him add new loops on a highly complex shape

Mark Dygert

They both have their place in the toolbox. Splines are great for all kinds of things but they are not a perfect replacement for poly modeling, what a tit.

Xenobond

It's just a different method of getting to the same end result. I use it a lot for trophies and it works well for things like shoulder pads.

I wouldn't recommend it on high density meshes, though. Manipulating that many segments can get to be a pain.

AnimeAngel

Well yah I can see its use for things like glasses, trophies and random items. Things like these I can easily visualize where and how I should make the spline cage, but he insists that he can do full high poly characters with it. Just the thought of making a spine cage for a fully detailed character almost gives me hives.
I ended up challenging him to recreate a toy bull character model that was in the 1st 3d artist magazine. He says he can do it fairly easily, I doubt it but we will see. He showed me a couple thumbnails of some spline characters he had done. They didnt look to impressive but I couldnt tell much because the thumbs were pretty small.

renderhjs

I guess it depends on the industry, some areas just worked out better in one area and visa versa.

I think what is note worthy is the shear amount of subdivision based technology that has been developed lately. Tools like zBrush, 3d Coat or modo are great examples of how tools around sub-div modeling have been greatly improved over the years.

All in all I think that especially poly modeling in comparison to NURBS modeling is more free, natural and fast. Its easier to play with styles and to add or remove parts thanks to the modeling improvements many modeling applications had here over the years.

Ruz

after 8 months of spline modelling( max patches ) I can tell you that poly modeling is heaven as compared to patch modeling hell.
seriously, you topology is defined by the boundaries of each patch, whereas poly modelling, you put detail where you need it

renderhjs

on the other hand for example in Rhino or Moi3d projecting splines on NURBS or do some complex boolean stuff is a dream - no poly modeler comes close to that.

AnimeAngel

ya i believe you can project splines on nurbs surfaces in maya also and it is certainly a very powerful tool and can do some real nice stuff. I certainly enjoyed doing the few nurbs models I have done, but I wouldnt want to model everything that way. especially game models, wich is what he wants to make with them.

But I think he is using them as Ruz mention, for max patches. I can see where having an object defined by its boundrary would be very problematic. I can see manys hour of frustation with this.

Murdoc

I miss XSI where it didn't give a s@#% and just gave me the tools for all of them for polys.

Zwebbie

Splines were designed for ship hulls, and I imagine that they're rather good at that, because they're so precise. But the workflow is completely different; with NURBS, you've got to plan out everything about your model beforehand, because you can't make changes. With polygons, you just add 'm as you go. It's also important to realise that NURBS is always flatly UV-mapped full from 0-1.

The only downsides to polygon modeling are that the curves aren't as precise - but who's gonna notice? - and that the smoothness isn't infinite - both you can just subdivide stuff often enough that nobody will see that either.

AnimeAngel

Ya I wouldn't want to plan out every point on a character before hand unless i had a real world model of the object and could trace the contour lines directly into the computer, (like they did in Ice Age).

I have also never animated either a nurbs or patch model. Is there any advantages to that? Can you rig the spline cage and drive an animation cycle that way?

Valandar

I started out in Rhino, and while I think it's better for production / rapid prototyping, I can't see how a mesh from that program could possibly be better than a poly mesh with proper topology for animation or even stills - when converted to a mesh, many edges in Rhino end up awkward and with a jagged look - or extremely sharp and with the vertices not welded (horrible when adding displacement maps).

frubes

spline modelling is great for an awful lot of things. Typically i would suggest not so good for organic modelling which is superceeded by box/strip modelling but for technical modelling such as generating roads, complex geometry such as mountains, lattice work, ornate structures such as railings and lathes etc where you want to be really accurate i would say it has its place and performs better than standard box modelling. I use it an awful lot purely because it generates mapping coordinates for you which saves a whole load of unwrapping.

It depends a lot on how you work. It also has the great feature of being able to keep your work "live". You can step back down the stack, adjust the base spline which will update everything else, mapping and the model etc which is a great non destructive way of working so i wouldn't be too quick to brush it off.

MattW

I use splines an awful lot coming from arch vis. But that's basically glorified boxes. On anything complex I can't see at least ending with an edit poly even if habits still have me developing my initial shapes with splines. But like someone said above, in reality I mostly do it because I'm insane about having PERFECT curves. Typically because of the nature of what I model now it's quick for me to make a spline in the shape of my piece, extrude then convert to edit poly for fixing the volume. But it's really just my starting point rather than using a flat poly because i feel like I have more precise control.

AnimeAngel

Well see I was talking with my wife, who also is arch vis, and she was saying that she didnt like max's splines one because it takes 4 points to make a perfect circle. Where you can use Blenders tools, (i think thats it, never have used it myself) to make a perfect circle with only 3 points. I am not sure how that works in the pipeline, i will have to ask her later when she is home.

Ya I can where being able to have the mapping cords genrated already could be very helpful. Could save a lot of time that way, for certain object.

MattW

AnimeAngel wrote: »

Well see I was talking with my wife, who also is arch vis, and she was saying that she didnt like max's splines one because it takes 4 points to make a perfect circle. Where you can use Blenders tools, (i think thats it, never have used it myself) to make a perfect circle with only 3 points. I am not sure how that works in the pipeline, i will have to ask her later when she is home.

Ya I can where being able to have the mapping cords genrated already could be very helpful. Could save a lot of time that way, for certain object.

Since you can just use the circle tool I'm not sure why it'd matter how many points it creates. Also there's times where I use a circle to create a round corner on a right angle since fillet doesn't always five desirable results if the adjoining segments aren't the exact same length, a circle made of quarters lends itself to that perfectly.

Vailias

that really is a weird argument. It doesn't take 4 points.. but 4 points gives more control if you want to make the circle into an ellipse or teardrop for other applications.

However I have made good use of spline modeling in the past. I felt organic and or smoothly curving surfaces were much more easily achieved via a patched spline cage back in 1999 than via attempting to box model things.

really its all just tools and techniques, like comparing face extrusion to edge extrusion, to point by point poly model creation. (used to do that too back in the day)

AnimeAngel

Yah I will have to ask my wife more about it. I don't usually need to make something so precise so its not something I am very familiar with .

Vailias - Yah I remember back in max 4 or 5 when patches was the best way to model things, but edit poly has come along ways since then and that is no longer the case. Back in college, like had metioned before, was where I saw this last and have not seen it since.
I think it this method that my friend is so set on using and for the most part it makes me beleive that he thinks this is the best way to do it because he doesnt know how to properly poly model. I think I need to see more of his models up close to see for sure.

Ryno

Spline modeling for game art? Or for general 3d?

It has it's place, but also has some pretty severe limitations.

AnimeAngel

he thinks he can use it for game art/ characters. I agree it has its place but not for those.

renderhjs

another nice mix:
http://www.headus.com/au/cyslice/

AnimeAngel

thats an interesting application. has some potentially very useful features. Anyone around here ever use that? and would the models from that be useful for games? Seems like it might be better for film or something

renderhjs

I think its more what I said before,- it really depends on the tools which technology makes sense here and there. NURBS often has/ had to technical input controls whereas poly modeling in combination with Sub-Div really evolved in the last years in the game and entertainment industry.