At the end of the day I don’t really care one way or the other. As long as the art looks good. I was just enjoying looking down the road from my own perspective, even if it is uniformed and biased.
splodge,
you’re still under a false premise or two… As there’s no right time, side or reason to consider nurbs for organic modeling.
It’s a common misconception to think of nurbs as ‘smart’ smooth surfaces without the hassle or alleged penalties of polys.
Apparently you can also know various facts about nurbs and still misconstrue them. 
Nurbs are heavier than polys for all the additional functionality it accomodates, none of which happen to be applicable to organic freeforms.
The heaviness you may not necessarily feel but nurbs,as opposed to polys, do require you to toe the line (or seams).
Now I wouldn’t say that box-modeling is always the optimal approach for organic forms. I know it’s not. You can, for instance, loft a leg from nurbCircles, but you ‘output’ polys and not nurbs.
The reason, in one word; ‘polysubDs’.
You don’t need to polysubD necessarily but doing so would of course emulate nurb tessalation or whatever ‘smoothing’ you care for.
PolySubDs are nurb patches without the ‘patching’ or nurb-irks, such as seams, uvs, retopologizing etc… and because most nurb operations/tools have a poly equivalent, its possible to polysubD a car with almost the same ease as with nurbs but the reverse is not true when it comes to organic forms, which you probably knew, as well as how both nurbs and polySubDs max out at the ‘plastic-organic’ look…
The polysmooth function was always available in Maya. So was connecting the outmesh to the inmesh attribute between two poly shapenodes. And likewise resolving ‘shells’, the equivalent of stitching nurb patches, using polyUnite and polySewEdges commands… Except no one really cared at first, nurbs were considered cool, in spite of their limitations, while polys were considered plain, tedious, etc…
Dirk Bialluch, back in 99, uploaded his CPS toolset to hiend3D (connectPolyShape), one can think of his polySubD as an early ztool in true 3D… but again, due to misconceptions, it took a while to get the ball rolling… Alias honored him with a Maya Master in '01… and yet it took a number of versions before Maya incorporated/legitimized ‘proxies’…
For a brief while regular subDs were in mode (Jerri’s Game) but it didn’t take, and as far as I’m concerned, rightly so. I’d be hard press to come up with something that I would prefer to contend with in subD than polysubD or nurbs or ‘voxelize’…
This more or less covers why at no point in time can nurbs make a comeback and why, in spite of better options, even pros used to model characters with nurbs…
It’s not a question of raytracing vs raster. Voxels simply don’t exist in 3D, that’s why you can’t have a voxel-based 3D engine.
If voxels could exist in 3D - they’d be called polygons.
If you want to capture ‘voxel data’ and have it stand in for actual geometry in actual 3D, try normal maps.
And lets say normal maps could evolve into voxel-maps, they wouldn’t behave/respond as polys. So you’d need a substantial amount of underlying polys for cloth simulation and sub-skin deformation etc, and it would still be considered a cheat of limited application/value and one collosal headache to integrate…
Bear in mind that pros/studios don’t sweat the polycount, as they optimize for articulation/rendering purposes, and this means, among other things, that things that don’t need to be 3D geometry, aren’t, so no one’s waiting for voxel-maps nor can some stupendous futuristic polycount warrant collapsing 3D to 2D…
And for what its worth, I’m still under certain misconceptions about odd things and then probably some I’m even oblivious to… as such I really embrace the opportunity to stand corrected. And I don’t hold your misconceptions against you, but if I were your supervisor, I wouldn’t take kindly to “I didn’t say that” and “I know that!”…
all the best, -G
But you started a discussion even without basic knowlage about how 3d soft works, you schould care, and you can learn some important stuff on the way ;f You can create mindblowing sculpt in zbrush without knowing what a voxel and polygon is, but its always better to know this stuff if you want to predict the future of the industry ;] On other hand you will never graps maya fully, im in 3d for many years now, and i still know very litlte ;]
Pologons will never die, since without them you cant create any 3d model ;]
Hardsurface Subdivision with polygons will never die.
Zb3.5´s hardsurface brushes make this pretty obvious:p
I don’t really agree with most of what youv’e said, but I’m not really the argumentative sort. So I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree and move on. 
Clappy,
fair enough, for starters you sound a lot more grounded than in your first and second post… So you do know some jack and your points are valid within your context…
I thought I had a decent understanding of Maya till I started learning mel and I’m still a couple of years away before I’ll be ready to tackle the API…
Sometimes you just need to know that you need 5 years in maya before tackling mel, to not burn out on it beforehand or waste 5 additional years before rolling up the sleeves…
cheers, -G
Cheers to you too. 
I suffer from thinking I am communicating everything clearly, when in fact it is all over the map. Probably why it took me 6 years to finish university!! I am also prone to drama, i.e. using words like “death”.
Type in “3D Sketching” into Google and you will find some pretty amazing things. You can see where the hardsurface and design stuff is headed. Albeit, it can take ten years from university lab to an actual product.
Check this one out. It does not create 3D geometry (yet), but looks promising:
http://www.baekdal.com/future/Interaction-Design/3d-sketching/
Take care,
Matt
im so sorry
i wont ask anymore,okay ?
i feelofended by your question,i hope you apologize !
Clappy71 you seriously lost me there, i think you dont know what hard surface modeling means, it has nothing to do with drawing curves in 3d, you could do that for years now in every 3d package …
Clappy,
thanks for the ILoveSketch link… IStillLoveCorelDraw, lol…
Did you know- AutoDesk’s coming out with their own version?
http://vimeo.com/2419011
So much for AutoDesk sitting on their non-cutting-edge asses, eh? :lol:
10000hours;
so you wanna be an outlier, eh…? Good for you.
Here’re my 2bits, but don’t take them personally, they’re actually intended for all and no one in particular;
In CG, getting the various mini-big-pictures wrong can’t be helped, for starters, not only is everything a cheat, everything’s also cheat-oriented (goal).
At times we’re in on it, but at times we get caught up interfacing with them as tools/procedures/workflows… in this regard I can’t think of a more heinous software than ZB, it’s such an ingenious cheat, you get sucked into “The ZSpell”…
Confounding this is how you can function and produce so much without understanding/appreciating the underlying dynamics/constructs, but overall we’re more likely to just misconstrue them in some rational/minor way…
-except for Digital Tutors, they can pull a Darwinian Award every 3 minutes…
Impartiality is paramount, as we can get caught up in biases etc… knowing this doesn’t help… being conscientious about it, I think really does.
So there’s this queasiness that can ever floor you when you have to revamp some cozy mental-model that just crumbled on you, big deal, it’s normal for the brain to not like it, you just got dumped back to square one in your own video-game, and it ain’t the first time either, lol, but taken like a game, it can become an acquired taste…
btw, I don’t think you can actually ‘think outside the box’, I think you can only (pause) upgrade the box you think in. There’s no friggin’ exterior to the box, but from cardboard to penthouse, we can definitely remodel.
I’m not toe-may-toe toe-mah-toe`ing you… The difference between the two, I believe, is the very extent that the mind can literally accomodate the one over the other.
10000hrs and many of you are probably familiar with “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell -and if not, check out his spaghetti-sauce lecture on www.ted.com, in fact I’d like to recommend this one awesome site for it’s almost 500 mini-lectures (18 min on average) by some of the world’s leading and coolest brains, so if TED is news to you, you’re very welcome, go ahead and treat your brain to a joyride… (you can also peruse their lecs on youtube).
Anyways, his book and my point being, the mind can, in a blink, manifest/communicate thru physical sensation/discomfort, what is wrong with the box/paradigm/situation; from a gut feeling to a bad taste to an eyesore etc - so - honing in on the flaw, imo, works way better from within the box than stepping out into the void, lol…
Ever started an artwork/project only to lose interest/steam/mojo? Is your backburner some project retirement home no one visits…? If so, you sir/madam have a case of the artist’s mental clap, (no relation to Clappy),
also known as perfectionism…
-Hi, my name is guringo and I’m a recovering perfectionist…
Here’s what happens, perfectionism leads to overwhelmingness, which in turn leads to procrastination (David M. Burns, MD, author of 15 yr bestseller on cognitive therapy,“Feeling Good”) and it can go on to self-invalidation and self-depreciation, you get the idea…
Why? Cuz shooting for the moon is shooting yourself in the foot. The greater you bloat your goal, the more you ‘lucrativate’ it, the greater you’re screwing with your depth-perception; before setting out, it’s so pretty or grandiose and you can almost touch it, isn’t it…?
The remedy is setting average/moderate goals -weekly, daily, and even per session, stick to it and you’ll be nipping it in the bud and your stamina will stay the course…
One great little aid for hardcore perfectionists- the egg-timer. Set it for 45-55 min session and make sure to actually break for 10 - even/especially/whatever… this ‘training’ is far more important in the longrun than whatever task you were in the middle of…
And moderating your goals doesn’t mean being average/mediocre, it just means accomplishing things with positive bio-feedback, and ease, before proceeding forth.
Training doesn’t make ‘perfect’, it makes mastery… and if resistance is futile, persistence is fertile…
On the hand, and I’m paraphrasing someone here from a CGTalk interview; in CG, it takes 10% of the time to achieve 90% of the result and 90% is spent on that last 10%… so don’t let that throw you off your game…
cheers, -G
10000hrs - I’ve been around this forum for ages, and I joined back then just to query certain things, but they got resolved before posting… I’ve been comfortable keeping my mouth shut, and now I can’t shu-
:DHahaha, you got me. That’s almost how i felt lately. I think it is a good advice making make moderate goals and try your best without rushing and making it too perfect. I don’t mean to impose anything from the username i used. I used it because it motivated me to use the best of my time, efforts and sacrifices to do what I’m doing right now. Thanks man.:idea:
Personal thoughts only:
Seen some amazing things come from the CG world. Many films, graphics, 2D print and more.
Amazing that the talent that goes in to what I have seen so far.
MAYA with the price tag of $5,000 is WAY too much for a person like me. The tools are sluggish and there is a real steep learning curve. Not saying it could be done but it would take too long to figure out something simple and should flow with the artist/tech illustrator. HINT
With that being stated there once again is a cost factor. An average student or some who uses this as a hobby cannot afford the buy in and the repeated updates at high cost.
I have been using Poser/Lightwave/ZBrush for a couple of years now and I am using it as a hobby. My work flow across these programs have been harsh to the point of throwing the computer out the second floor. Other times I hit it on the head.
ZBrush and those who contribute to it are by far one the best forums that I have seen. The people who generated and maintain this program are amazing. The keep generating tool sets that for me are based off of “Wow you can do that!” . The amazing art that has been generated is beyond words.
The path that ZBrush is going towards I hope will be based off of industry standards so that people like me can follow and contribute. OBJ since they are easily exported and can/Should be easily imported by all 3D programs. Based on common ground so that rapid generation of a creation can/should be possible.
My flow is to use Poser to generate the basic figure and exporting it to Lightwave, setting up the bones and basic rig so that I can bring life to my creation or inspiration is quite neat. Then bringing it into the ZBrush environment and putting those finer touches to bring it to a specific level of my expectations then export to Lightwave for final processing (when it works and multiple times) is something I strive for.
Doing this in one day or a couple of hours would be great but something that detailed and that meets my inner perfectionist takes time and being able to focus on the end expectation. PaintStop which is a very addictive program which has consumed much of my time hopefully will be integrated into a better work flow so that I can paintstop something and bring it to the 3D environment rapidly then port it over to a program such as Lightwave for the render/motion would be amazing.
ZBrush has come a long way since version 2. I hope they go forward and keep the pace up.
With the new tools that ZBrush has came out with the ability to generate muscle (definition) and other types of movement is very possible in the near future. CG world has never to date been able to do that naturally.
Ideally I should (when tech comes of age) put on the goggles, gloves, boot up the computer and start building my character/environment. Would be cool to work in the VR environment. Would be amazing to see what would/could be generated.
I keep using the word amazing a great deal because to me this is like having an ice cream on Sunday. A real treat and it gets better every week once I learn more.
Sorry got long winded. Just ZBrush is going towards something hopefully towards what the artist needs and can use.
My take is that the industry is becoming more left-brained. Things like base mesh topology and absolute rigid control over vertices is a thing of the past. Zbrush turned modeling into sculpting. Whether it will turn maya into a rendering program is still up for grabs. The significance of 3.5 is that one can create a mesh, normal map, and texture straight in zbrush. the key to sealing the deal will really be GoZ, I think that GoZ will present a very serious ramification to Autodesk, if GoZ is what pixo says it is. And with Z4’s spotlight and lightbox looming on the distant horizon…
Edit: :o Right brained MY BAD! lol
[QUOTE=MudboxRules]My take is that the industry is becoming more left-brained.
Muddy, you meant right-brain (creative), left is analytical…
Things like base mesh topology and absolute rigid control over vertices is a thing of the past. Zbrush turned modeling into sculpting.
ZB turned sculpting into painting actually, and we always had 3D ‘sculpting’ in Maya, not just the “absolute, rigid control over vertices”. And yes, it wasn’t very practical because ‘tris’, whether they’re masquerading as nurbs or otherwise, are far more resource-intensive than voxels.
And like a few others on this thread, I couldn’t disagree more about ‘modeling’ becoming a thing of the past; optimization is no less an aspect of design than appearance -evermore so in 3D.
And subdivision (voxels, disp. maps, polysubDs) will always be an inferior medium for industrial forms, for how they subdivide both horizontally and vertically, this simple difference of dialing in the resolution (tessalation) independently is nurbs upperhand, the same difference that makes nurbs obsolete for organic forms…
Btw, ‘accuracy’ in Maya is 15 digits after the decimal point. We interface with 3-4 in the channelbox but like everything else, that’s just for our convenience. And while there are a few laws of virtual-physics that we must abide by, Maya is anything but rigid. I would suggest to any student that running into a ‘this is dumb of Maya’ is a good sign you misconstrued something.
Whether it will turn maya into a rendering program is still up for grabs. The significance of 3.5 is that one can create a mesh, normal map, and texture straight in zbrush.
It’s not up for grabs, you’re just taking a very narrow view of Maya, and for what it’s worth, that should really concern you. First and foremost it’s how everything (hair, cloth, dynamics, particles, expressions, deformers, shaders, utility nodes etc) - must -and do- plugnplay with everything else.
Even if you’re content to limiting yourself to ZB in some professional capacity, you’re really asked to appreciate the entire pipeline and at least one of the all-in-one packages.
Albeit, it’s easy to get tunnel vision in Maya, had it myself, just as it’s easy to get turned-off by polys when there are voxels to play with…
the key to sealing the deal will really be GoZ, I think that GoZ will present a very serious ramification to Autodesk, if GoZ is what pixo says it is. And with Z4’s spotlight and lightbox looming on the distant horizon…
I’m pretty sure Mudbox also came out with the same setup hack (GoZ) for max/maya/xsi (?)- I’m too lazy to confirm. At any rate, it’s hard to see how ZB4 could pose or present anything to Autodesk -other than hurt Mudbox revenues. It would be akin to thinking aeron chairs will undermine Ikea, except AutoDesk of course is more walmart than ikea…
-G
most of what I’m thinking has already been said here but it’s quite interesting to see how you boil the industry down to modeling. I would like to see you attempt particle simulation or simple matchmoving in Zbrush LOL.
It’s interesting that Modo is given as an example of moving away from ‘all in one’ packages. I think the development of Modo is proof to the contrary - as it’s slowly growing to be one of the so called ‘clankers’. The same can be said for some other lower end modelers.
Having all those small packages like Zbrush or topo gun or unfold 3d around is great but I feel a clancker with the abilities of all of them would be even better. Having to export and import objs continually and dealing with issues that it sometimes causes can be a pain in the patella in the production pipeline - especially when you’re dealing with riggers waiting for you to correct stuff or texture artists who like to use their own way of unwrapping which may prove to make the model impossible to import back to Zbrush all of a sudden, because cutting the mesh changed the point order 0_o…
So yeah clanckers can be annoying and are certainly more difficult to learn but they do have their advantages… I love my xsi and find it totally not clanky to be honest…
Guringo: I did notice that Autodesk is coming out with a similar tool. So much for my theory! Thanks for the productivity tips, I am definitely going to use the egg timer method. I actually started a group with a bunch of artists which is about meeting deadlines for your own projects. We meet every two weeks and present our progress. The week in between you have to upload your results to a google group we created. Has really helped me progress with my modeling portfolio. Being accountable to others is a great motivator. I am going to present some of those ideas you mentioned at our meeting next week (with full credit to you of course).
Intervain: I must say that XSI users always seem to be the least bitter. I think I will have to check it out once I have landed my next gig.
Glad this thread sparked some lively and informative discussion. Even if it was born out a rant.
MC
thanks MC, I’m glad your ‘rant’ got me off the couch and my 2bit aside, I got something out of this thread as well…
And I’ll take this opportunity to apologize to splodge for coming on too strong, and for misconstruing his replies as I’m sure I have…
-G
You’re right hehe, I just reread my post and it seems like I need to stop posting late at night. All in one programs like max and maya most likely won’t be replaced. You’re right, they have hair, particles, scenes, animations, shading networks, etc. I myself am learning maya right now. It’s great to see some of the amazing stuff when the two have been used in conjunction.
that’s because it’s a really clean and well organized software. Has it’s problems but for a modeler and especially one using Zbrush a lot it’s perfect, since you can import really highres meshes [ I mean I imported level 5 meshes - more than 1 subtool] into xsi and it handles them easily [in comparison to Maya which chokes badly on a mid res mesh]
If you know what you’re doing in Maya and did your retopo homework, there’s little to no reason to have a level 5 mesh in there. Actually I wonder what such a case would be, care to enlighten? :rolleyes: