How does one do spline (or patch) modeling in Blender? Is it spacebar-Add-Curve? Why do I see NURBS stuff under curves and under surfaces? Does this have anything to do with NURBS? What is the difference? All the books I have talk about spline modeling as being the best for organic modeling such as character modeling, but in a previous topic I started people were telling me subsurf modeling is the way to go. I am so confused. The more I read, the more confused I get. This does not seem like it gets any easier. I want to model cartoony characters, so which way should I go, spline (patch) modeling or subsurf or NURBS? PLEASE HELP! Thanks.
Use Add-Surface-NURB Curve. You can loft selected splines with FKEY or Make Segment from the Surface menu. There are Make Cyclic options for both u and v directions.
Surface Curves can be lofted. Curve Curves cannot.
Patch/Spline modelling for characters has largely been replaced in the industry by subsurf modelling which is quite a bit more flexible. The reason you find so many patch/spline modelling tutorials is because they existed for all the major packages before subsurf modelling became common. Spline modelling is however still used extensively for parts design/industrial uses since cutting tools and other machinery can easily be programmed to follow the mathematical splines. So for modelling your characters subsurfs is the way to go. I suggest you google for the infamous “Joan of Arc” tutorial which while not written for blender, shows most of the techniques now commonly used for character modelling.