Maya Nurbs Face Modelling from a sphere?
polycounter lvl 18
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
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
Replies
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.
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.
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Sorry to say but as it turns out nurbs are still widely used in the movie industry
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?
Can you really get the same amount of control and detail with a nurbs head than a poly one?
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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.
http://www.caligraphics.dk/ID2/head2/head2.htm
And he even states he has found more effecient ways
Thats pretty cool tough. I guess when using patches its not that far from creating it in polys.
yeah that guy is a spectacular modeler.
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.
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.
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
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.
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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.
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.
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See Dekards post.
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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.
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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.
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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.
would be an example
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.