Nurbs Modeling

What is nurbs modeling used for is it just pre rendered cutscenes or can u actual use it for character models?

 

In general, GPUs apparently aren't designed to deal with NURBS. Accordingly, Unity has no support for them. However, the Sony PSP, for example, does support them, and Unity Technologies has listed a job opening for a developer for that platform, so it's always possible that Unity will support them in the future. (Personally, I'd like them as non-rendering paths.)

So, for the time being, NURBS are probably of little use. You could use them for pre-rendered material, but by and large, subdivision surfaces (along with multires sculpting) have replaced NURBS for higher-detail models anyway. However, you still may prefer to start off with NURBS, in some cases, and convert to polygons afterwards.

However, DirectX 11's tessellation capability could cause them to become more popular in realtime. We'll see. Check out this video at 26:40 or so:

http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/CL15?type=wmv

 

you can use nurbs for whatever you want. it would have to be converted to poly for any engine but I use nurbs, patch, spline, blobmesh. it doesnt really matter what you start out with. it will be converted to poly in the end. I could show you nurbs faces in an engine. you can control the tesselation of nurbs and create very small file sizes. I use it for anything anything that can be drawn

 

Considering this is the Unity forum, I bet a bunch of us would like to see that, running in Unity.

 

how do they make the toons look so adamn good in Unreal, Crysis and high end games like that? Other than epic skill

 

Like Jessy said, Z-brush and normal maps. Z-brush uses subdivision and is able to produce extremely detailed geometry (this is an alternative technique to nurbs) then normal maps are able to reproduce much of that look on lower polygon, game optimised meshes.

Nurbs are best at describing smooth surfaces with a small amount of data (since the surface is basically mathematically derived) and this is at odds with modern techniques that generally want to use any increase in polygons to represent greater amounts of detail.

 

here is a nurbs face in unity, its an image. I didnt know it was so troublesome to upload a unity3d web file or else I would have uploaded it. its not high poly but it does have some paint.

it really does look better than this image. this was just to show a nurbs face but the lighting is all jacked up and affecting the model


I was able to upload it, a temporary fix anyway

http://www.weebly.com/uploads/3/8/3/9/3839095/nurbshardpoint.html