What's the difference?? I don't know - I know nothing about modelling & haven't gleaned enough from posts & conversations to figure it out myself - so I raise my flag of ignorance and wave it around gently..... TDW :)

Nurbs is a mesh made from B-Splines. Nurbs meshes are not made from straight lines, they contain curves and are better suited for creating organic models (like humans) then the traditional polygonal meshes. There are few ryatracers which can handle NURBS directly, so they are usually converted into normal meshes before being rendered. As far as I know NURBS modeling is rivaled by modeling with subdivision surfaces. Both methods are usually converted into polygonal meshes. Hope this helped.

omg......my head aches now L B-Splines?? subdivision surfaces?? learning hurts....... G But thank you :)

If you want to look at NURBS, take a look at Rhino 3D. The people in the Rhino forum will probably help. If you want to look at Subdivision Surface I would advise you to have a look at Cinema 3D, 3D-Studio Max or the small version of the latter, gmax.

There is a picture in which you can see how subdivision surfaces work. A change at the cage defors the model.

non uniform rational b- splines :) you can't get that much detail in nurbs model as in polygon-based one with the same data size. they are mostly used for organic modeling or for basic forms that can later be refined.

Here's the difference between NURBS and polygons. This is a simple sphere made out of NURBS curves.

These are the control points that make up the sphere. The control points control the curves that make up the surface of the sphere.

When you pull one of the control points, you change the curves and therefore change the surface.

This is the same sphere made of polygons. The polygons are made up of the straight lines connecting the points.

Here's the spehere with a single point moved. You'll see that it only affects the polygons that have that point as one of their corners. None of the points around it are touched. That's the major difference. With NURBS, you affect the surface you are working on. With polygons, you only affect that part of the surface your selected polygons make up. In order to make that smooth, pointy sphere I did with the NURBS, I'd have to move more points on the polygon model, either directly or using some sort of tool (depending on your software). That's why NURBS allow you to create flowing surfaces much faster and easier than polygons. Polygons, however, give you more direct control over the surface itself. If I's wanted to make a sphere with a single sharp point, like I did in this polygon sphere, I'd have to add more cntrol points and fool around with things like how much of the curve they control and so on in order to do it.

Go to www.universe3d.com and there might be a video on nurbs. If not, and if you have a few bucks, get the 3dtoolkit which has not only a high end modeler/animator but also comes with amorphium pro and 3 gigs of video tutorials that will edumacate you on nurbs, ubernurbs, etc. To make it easy, here's an explanation.... A model is made up of a bunch of surfaces. Those are called polygons. You can put a texture on a surface, or reshape it with morphing tools, but a surface is merely the shell of an object. Knock on wood, you have just touched a surface and in 3d lingo, you have knocked on a polygon. Nurbs is one method among many of how people create surfaces. You draw a circle with points on it. draw another just above it. Connect the points to make a cyliner. If you use nurbs to draw the polyline, then you get a rounded edge as opposed to other polyline tools like bezier curves, etc. This image shows a nurbs curve in EI Universe. Notice that the pink line (which is the outline of the model) curves around from the blue lines, which are strait. The blue line is what I put in, the pink line is the resultant nurbs curve.

Here I've rotated the pink poly line made from the nurbs curve and generated a mesh. Each of the squares in that mesh is a polygon. In the lower left you see the wire frame display and the polygon squares. In the upper right you see what the model looks like.

Once you've made your 'model' which is referred to as an object, you can export from Universe in a .fac format. There are converters, but the kit comes with a program called Amorphium Pro which lets you import the .fac and apply several special effects tools to alter the shape....Then import to Poser as a prop or bone it in the pro pack and pose it, etc.

Attached Link: http://www.annsartgallery.com/freeprop.html

If you want to play with modelers and fool around with some freeware, I have a tut up with links that you really should explore.

Wow!! Thank you everyone for all the info and answers. I really do now have a better understanding of it. I've had Amorphium (not pro) for a long time now but was just overwhelmed by it - maybe now I'll get the gumption to work harder with it.
And thank you EricofSD for the link. :)

toodles off to play with her 3D progs....

Warm regards to all,
L_F - a.k.a. TDW