best for natural objects, best for man made objects?

# 1 20-07-2004 , 09:52 AM

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best for natural objects, best for man made objects?

Having completed a few tutorials that have mainly focused on natural objects (such as the dragon head tuts). I've been modeling using NURBS cylinders and pulling and tweeking the hulls and vertex's, which has worked really well so far.

I've now started making more man made objects such as planes, automobiles and boats.

Should I still be using a basic NURBS cylinder, or should I be going directly for a poly or sub div? cylinder, sphere, or cube?

I'm just wondering what basic shape types the SM members here use to create these more man made objects?

Last edited by azimuth; 20-07-2004 at 09:57 AM.

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# 2 20-07-2004 , 10:17 AM

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Hi ..it is really down to personal preference and what you find easiest to use.Some people start in nurbs and then convert to poly, others start straight in a poly and some only use nurbs.
you can even use a polyproxy object if you like.
As for which primitive to start with..well it is a matter of judgement, obviously a cube would be more suited to straight boxy type parts and a cylinder lends itself to more rounded objects.
nurbs are more suited to curvey smooth objects such as cars for the simple reason that they are constructed from a curve and give a smooth rounded result, but it doesnt mean you can't make the same thing from a polygon it would just be a different method. ploygons are more suited to hard flat type objects but again it is not impossible to use nurbs.
I suppose there is no right or wrong it is just what you find most comfortable to work with.
The only thing to bear in mind is to keep it as simple as possible as you start and try not to get to dense a mesh..you can then add detail once you have the model roughed out to shape and size.

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# 3 22-07-2004 , 10:45 AM

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Originally posted by jsprogg
The only thing to bear in mind is to keep it as simple as possible as you start and try not to get to dense a mesh..you can then add detail once you have the model roughed out to shape and size.

Originally Posted by

I know exactly what you mean about keeping it simple, it pays off so much as time goes on.

At the moment I have been inspired by the various Fighters and bombers models to try and make my own. Due to habit I seem to be making the wings from NURBS cylinders. They are looking great along all the edges, but they are not closed off at either end (at least not looking decent, never a smooth curve).

For a wing of a plane, should I be using the NURBS cylinder at all? I've tried using things like poly spheres and crushing them down into a flater surface, but when I then want to tweak the shape I find I'm swammped by to many vertex's!! user added image

Am I missing a really easy way to do a fully rounded simple wing shape? I've also tried lofting a series of CV curves, but the less said about what they looked the better............ :p

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# 4 22-07-2004 , 02:50 PM

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Why choose a polysphere ? If you choose a poly cylinder and turn it on it's side the flattten it I would think that would be the most simple way to create a wing and you could keep the polycount down to a minimum and add a cut when needed to pull it into shape.
Dont forget you can select the polyshape and reduce the number of spans to the original primitive i.e. from 20 to 10 and when smoothed it will still be ok.
That is how I would do it but others might have other ideas user added image

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# 5 23-07-2004 , 07:07 AM

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Thanks jsprogg, thats a great suggestion, I completly forgot you can change the spans on a poly cylinder! (which is really stupid cause I do it practically everytime I use a NURBS prim!! user added image

)

Fear me - for I am uber-noob :bandit: :p

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best for natural objects, best for man made objects?

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