http://img274.imageshack.us/my.php?image=testnurbsloftshapeforpeyi4.jpg
OK, here's my NURBS/ loft solution to this problem and it seems to work fairly well. If I want to switch over to Ploy or Sub D's I can now except for one last thing;
I've tried EditNURBS > Attach Surface and EditNURBS > Attach Surface Without Moving to no avail...
How do I attach the ends here? What am I doing wrong?
And if doing one hole in a solid is so difficult, what kind of hell is it to make two or more??? I can't even begin to imagine the geometry of that...
FINALLY!
TA DAA!
http://img173.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitledyi0.jpg
Somebody on the Subdivision Modelling forum gave me the word;
QUOTE
Nurbs are hard. If your model doesn't map nicely to a rectangle, you need to use multiple patches, all carefully held together with Maya's global stitch node. And even within a single rectangular patch, if you need more control points in one place, you need to add entire lines of U and V through the entire patch, so you end up with places with too many control points; this can cause weird wrinkles when you try to move points in such places. And if you try to animate the surface, you're practically guaranteed to have problems with seams.
Subdivision modelling is much easier. You start with a polygonal model -- made up of sharp edges, faces, and vertices -- and you apply a smoothing operation to it. Each time you apply this smoothing operation, you increase the number of faces in the model, typically cutting each face into four new faces. The vertices of the model may also move slightly, to better approximate a curved surface. So you apply this operation over and over, and the polygonal model gets smoother and smoother, and pretty soon you have a huge number of tiny faces. But each face differs so little from its neighbors that you barely notice the edges between them -- the whole thing looks smooth.
Mathematically, a subdivision surface is what you get when you apply this smoothing operation an infinite number of times, but most subdivision surface software doesn't bother calculating this infinitely smooth "limit" surface. Instead, it just smooths the model a few times -- probably no more than 10 -- just enough that more smoothing operations wouldn't make much of a visual difference.
In fact, many people don't even use Maya's built-in subdivision surface objects, preferring to work exclusively with polygonal objects, then smoothing the model with the Smooth or Smooth Proxy commands. They simply eyeball the amount of smoothing that looks good. Sometimes you can get away with smoothing as few as one or two times and the model will look fine.
Your picture of the lofted plane cut with a circle probably does have a surface on the other side, and it probably looks a lot like the part of the surface you can see. If you built a polygonal model with the vertices in the same positions as you see on the surface in the picture, the smoothed model would look almost identical.
As for punching a hole in a polygonal model without booleans, well, it's not too hard. One way to do it in Maya is to select the faces on each side of the hole, delete them, then use the Append Polygon tool to add polygons inside the hole, bridging the edges on opposite sides. Then you can use the Split Polygon tool to add edges on the inside of the hole, so that you can manipulate the tunnel mouth without affecting the inside.
Another way to do it is to build up the model around each side of the hole, then build a bridge around it -- as you seem to be doing with your "pelvic problem" picture. You can try converting your model from Nurbs to polygons (probably under the Modify menu), then using the Append Polygon tool to build a bridge between the two borders.
Polygon > Append Polygon Tool...
And then go to Faces, select the faces you want subdivided and
Polygon > Smooth or Smooth Proxy Tool
http://img72.imageshack.us/my.php?image=smoothtoolow5.jpg
That built up the walls of my hole created by removing a face from a subdivided polygon...
SubD...here I come!
Oh yeah, and thank you sincerely for your advice Joojaa...you're always here to help us noobs!
