Been doeing some modeling latly, and have tried both nurbs and polygon modling.
I like polygon modling better then nurbs altho I can see the greatness that is nurbs, but my polygon modles tend to be "low" res. is it possible to make polygon modles High res? or is it all in the rendering?
also if some one could explaine to me or link me to a post that tell what the two modling methods are used for?
senserly thanks
Freman
You can use the poly Smooth Effect under Polygons>Smooth. Works great.
Also try pressing the button 3 on your keyboard while selecting the poly model. That could be the low res prob.
I think that Nurbs are mostly used for soft and deformable surfaces where as polygons is just to build different Things. Even though you can use which ever one you prefer for whatever you want, Polygons is just easier.
-Shmulik
QUOTE(animatorsam @ 01/05/06, 05:48 AM)
Polygons is just easier.
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They are jsut easeier to understand conceptualy theres nothing truly easiear about polys.
Personally I'd use Subdivision. They act like a cross between nurbs and polygons.
They are quite easy to use as you use a low polygon model with a few vertices and faces to create a high polygon look.
go to:
Create > Subdiv Primitives > Cube
You can manipulate it in a similar way to a polygon model but it has a second mesh which is higher resolution.
You'll find the tools for Subdivision surfaces under;
Modelling > Subdiv Surfaces
In there you find "Full Crease Edge/Vertex" and "Partial Crease Edge/Vertex" which will help you get the nice hard edges while the secondary subdivision object will give you some nice curves.
You may find it the quickest way to create high end results.
You can also use:
Polygons > Smooth Proxy > Options
You can alter the subdivision levels in the options box. It behaves in almost the same way as standard subdivision, but it seems to process much faster, whereas standard subdivision can cause you machine to slow down. It's happened with three machines I've used in the past.
Or you could use nurbs, but I don't know how to do that as subdivisions works fine for me : )
QUOTE(Pogg @ 01/05/06, 12:00 PM)
Personally I'd use Subdivision. They act like a cross between nurbs and polygons.
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Exccept for the proceduralism they have more in common with polys, they have the same limitations as polys. Whereas nurbs can be trimmed, booleaned and so on. Tough true their the same family of geometry would mean Subdivs could have all theese tools they just dont.
THis means nurbs have a muchg higher source of precisicon (again subvs are like unevolved nurbs). Take any eingeneering app geo ad see they dish nurbs surfaces like faces in polygons with super ease.
To be honest, Mayas subdivision seems pretty inflexable compared wth XSI. There seems to be many more tools for it in XSi, and the edge crease works much better in XSi as it's more variable, whereas Maya just has too edge crease settings.
Ahh yet again someone who does not truly understand mayas subdivs 
NO seriously mayas subdivs are technologicaly more advanced. And the mayas nodestructure does not hide away the fact how maya works underneath wich can make mayas subdvs seem tricky to work with. BUt its rather the mays design philosopy that comes against you here (this is tough what maya is about and why i choose maya over xsi). This said many users have veru weak knowlege of maya design philosophy and what it offers for the user.
This said, maya has the samekind of one level subdivs too (they just dpnt call them subdivs). Its just thet they dont hide the fact that the onscreen representation is a meshsmooth (XSI says te onscreen thing is subdivs it isnt, its ajust a relaxed interpretation of what subivs are, alias is kindof seeming strict on the terminology so amaya normal subdiv is based on the splinic patch underneath making for less accuracy deviance, this seems to most people a mistake tough)
Anyway its called smoothproxy and yes it has pixarlike edge creasing sliders. And yes its a true subdiv, thet works like the pixar subdiv interpolation.
Its been apparently added there because of comments like yours, ist just that most users havent bothered to read what alias tells about things.
Someone once asked why tehy implemented ist this obscurely, and the aswer was because we dindt need to change exsisting thinsg thatmuch thisway. INdeed for a lowlevel user theres no much difference. Alough they could have set hard edges to 30 while they were at it but hey theyll fix it later. They could have svept the details under the rug but they didnt because they seem to repect the tdcore,
There is "Smooth Proxy" which is what I end up using most of the time, yet it's still more aukward and less intuitive (in Maya 6.0) than in XSI. The fact that it has two meshes on screen at the same time is a pain. But I guess you know some way round it....
maya 7 has a nice feture hotkey to switchin between them the would probably work as in 6.0 (so copy it over form someone with maya 7). Also maya 7 implements the creasecontroll too.
Please not ethet the XSI one is realy just only a sommethmesh onscreen
The hotkey will be very handy, thanks.
I can see your point, but using smooth proxy in Maya or the hotkey funtion in XSi makes producing models much faster. My main complaint about Maya's smooth proxy (at least up until Maya 7) is that it can be aukward to use.
It may not sound like much, but when there's deadlines and milestones to hit, being slowed down can cost money.
I'm looking at this from a games point of view though, so I don't do a lot of the highend stuff, though I've produced stuff for TV using the XSi mothod and it's worked ok.
Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent. I hope our discussion has in some way answered the initial question.