allthough rhino is a really good modeller and blender is sufficiently good in animation and rendering there is one big problem in using blender in the professional workflow as a follow-up of rhino modelling: if you want to use geometry created in rhino you have to convert it to meshes. this means you loose all flexibility in geometry afterwards and you end up with really poor meshes which are very difficult to handle afterwards.
an example: try to do a uv-mapping on a geometry created in rhino and imported to blender. it’s a horror.
i don’t think blender can match rhino as a nurbs modeller in any way, and there is no chance to get it there. but thats not necessary. what is necessary is a nurbs-compatible exchange format. then i can use the really awesome quick n dirty workflow of blender and the precision of nurbsmodelling in rhino as two components of a creative workflow.
It’s as if commercial ones like Maya which claims to have NURBS are capable of opening Rhino files and stay as NURBS. I haven’t heard any commercial 3d package that could do this, let alone a free one like Blender. When are these people going to get it and start accepting things as they are at present. If you want Rhino files to stay as NURBS, then use Rhino! If you want clean polys, then use a subd app! Grrrrr.:mad:
Yes, read what Zarf wrote for you! No good NURBS in Blender atm. Go to write some Rhino articles elsewhere. Thank you & good bye!
You see it wrong.
There are more people enforced in enginering than in 3d entertainment industry.
http://www.ptc.com/solutions/industry/index.htm
All CAD is NURBS.
And 3Dabbler; you are an idiot. Maya does not “claim” to have NURBS. Maya has NURBS. Blender is the one “claiming” to have NURBS.
There is a perfect NURBS software interchangeble file format: IGES
Supported by Alias, Ashlar Vellum, AutoFORM, AutoShip, Breault, CADCEUS, CAMSoft, CATIA, Cosmos, Delcam, EdgeCAM, FastSurf, FastSHIP, Integrity Ware, IronCAD, LUSAS, Maya, MAX 3.0, MasterCAM, ME30, Mechanical Desktop, Microstation, NuGraf, OptiCAD, Pro/E, SDRC I-DEAS, Softimage, Solid Edge, SolidWorks, SUM3D, SURFCAM, TeKSoft, Unigraphics)
Good example of Elysiun back on amature hour.
Joeri, you are the idiot. You don’t know what the original poster is talking about. He wants to be able to edit his Rhino NURBS file in Blender as NURBS or, at least, be able to edit it as polymesh. The problem is it’s a mess.
Yes, Maya has NURBS, but you can’t directly edit Rhino NURBS with it. Converting a NURBS first to IGES, then back to NURBS is dumb. You are stupid.
Not exactly a true statement. Plain-Jane AutoCAD has no NURBS capability, yet is still used by the majority of CAD users, to some degree or another, particularly those still on 2D. Even much of 3D CAD makes little use of NURBS, but rather some form of CSG/boolean solids. I have used CAD for over 16 years and have yet to require a NURBS entity for any of my parts.
This is not to say that there’s no use for them, because there is. The advent of products designed with “freeform” or “organic” curved shapes was entirely made possible with this technology, for example. Its just that there’s a vast number of users who have little to no need of them for what they do.
I think you mistake the distinction: NURBS is a technology, a means of describing geometry, not a file format. IGES as a file format, in addition to supporting most geometric description techniques, also supports the method known as Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines.
what kind of bad thing did NURBS do to you? some kind of childhood trauma with flexible curves?
why are you posting such nonsense? i definitly know what i’m talking about here, or do you think every idiot is able to get a new software into a workflow at a university? you don’t have to read posts about NURBS if you’re not interested in NURBS, but it’s unacceptable to tell others that just because blender has an achilleus heel (if you know what that is) nobody should talk about it. just because blender doesn’t have NURBS now you’re not able to imagine NURBS for the future. i want NURBS in blender and a lot of other people do so let us post our wish for NURBS.
@popski
you should take your time and read my previous post carefully. i’m not posting pro rhino, i’m posting rhino for this, blender for that. blender is not capable of modelling for engineering, but it’s a very good fit for a creative workflow. so why do you read my posting as a commercial for rhino? it just isn’t because i’m saying rhino is not as strong in a creative workflow as blender is.
@joeri
thank you, you just prevented me from explaining 3dabbler what things he doesn’t know about NURBS. and iges-compatibility would be a really great improvement of blender and cause a lot of people to use blender more frequently or serious.
@3dabbler
about your new post: i don’t want to edit my rhino geometry in blender, but i don’t want to have that really messy mesh in blender afterwards. and if you are able to explain why converting NURBS to iges is dumb, just explain it. it’s of no use for anybody if you are posting cryptical messages.
don’t forget: this is an artists and not a developer forum, so if there is a technological problem, no artist is going to know that. and please be aware of the fact that nobody is ever an idiot because of a lack of knowledge, but somebody can behave like one if he is emotionally engaged in a topic like NURBS. just be cool, man, tell us what you know about NURBS and everbody is going to listen. posting radical statements is of no help at all.
How shocking, a flame war and I’m not involved!!!
if you really want to, i could imagine a topic that would be capable of getting you in really deep …
3Dabbler
maybe you should rethink your language you selected. Not only is it poor and very offensive but nothing anybody appreciates here.
AIGES allows to contain trimmed surfaces and export those to transfer the information into a different CAD/CAM application.
Also obj allows to contain trimmed surfaces. However AIGES and STL are rather more common in this area while STL is more polygon based.
A NURBS exported from Rhino is not messy. It is highly accurate to follow the pre-modled nurbs surface. You can say it is rather dense but not messy.
Maya actually allows to create nurbs patches from polygon models and stitch those together.
MZUNGU
I think you are talking about 2D CAD/CAM drafting applications?
They use algorithms which are similar to that depending if you
have surfaces or solids.
@cekuhnen
thank you for cooling the atmo in here, i already felt some sweat on my forehead.
with messy mesh i didn’t want to say that it doesn’t match the geometry of the nurbs model, but that it’s difficult to handle afterwards. as far as i know the nurbana integration project includes a task to develop a rhino importer. so this can’t be as impossible as 3dabbler posted.
i wonder a bit about the post which says maya isn’t able to import nurbs from rhino. is that true? and why? are rhinos or cobalts nurbs so different? i thought nurbs are a mathematical method to describe curves, are there different methods? and is the iges format not capable of containing such nurbs?
you have to have a rhino importer or just use a file format which supports trimmed nurbs and also is supported by both applications.
from what i know obj is a good solution. iges and step might work as well.
i read that scaling down the model and removing all unused lines/geometry will help getting a clean transfer as well.
claas
Yeah, these support the 2D equivalent: splines. I was just wanting to clarify that the statement that equated CAD with NURBS wasn’t entirely correct. There are all types of geometry-descriptive methodologies employed in CAD/CAM applications, not just NURBS.
Robert McNeel & Assoc. provides an open API for the Rhino file format, I believe. More here. (utilized by MoI.) This would be an excellent thing to leverage for blender’s use, I’d think. Can’t be sure… not a programmer.
i wish i would be one 
No I think not. I have learned to use the UI now and Blender has to many good points to let the UI keep me from them. I also learned the Blender mindset and after all a UI that never does the same thing twice is exciting.
As a rhino + blender user myself, I’m often working in Rhino and wanting to get my precise assemblies from Rhino into Blender. It’s almost impossible. Part of the problem is that complex assemblies that have been meshed can be really really really dense, even with lower quality settings.
I actually use a third tool to massage Rhino data into something that blender can understand…that being Deep Exploration’s file conversion and CAD converter tools. It gives me some ability to chop up the results of a meshing operation from Rhino into something that blender can work with better.
Concerning bringing Rhino functionality into blender…I don’t see it happening. Really I don’t. If it does happen, it won’t be any time soon. At the very least, a useful compromise would be the ability to simply load the data for rendering and animation and maybe limited editing…Rhino’s tools and abilities in the NURBS department are something blender won’t be able to get near for a while.
Loading IGES/STEP/ACIS/SAT files would be a great idea…or even .3DM(rhino) files. Again, I don’t think the full-blown editing power is really that neccessary from the standpoint of a CAD user, who will be creating the model in a different app. (This is of course a whole different point, that being that blender’s ability to import data is limited to polygon/mesh formats).
Bottom line, having better NURBS support in blender is imperative for it being attractive to the CAD community(Of which I’m a card carrying member, believe it or not, that being my day job.). There certainly seem to be a wealth of scripts out there to approximate functionality that’s available in CAD apps…of course I could go on for days about why blender doesn’t work for CAD, but I won’t bore you with the details.
ShortWave
just to add my own off-topic comment on NURBS because it seems “cool,” I will also say that NURBS are drastically faster to model certain things with because of booleans, lofted surfaces, trimmed surfaces (so many times I have tried to “trim” my polymodels forgetting they weren’t nurbs…) and objects that are made out of complicated repeated geometric shapes. the array function in rhino makes blender’s look like a joke…
there are also excellent tools in rhino for taking poly models and drawing nurbs patches and curves directly on the surface to “reproduce” the model with nurbs. you can then generate any resolution polys from it.
not to mention, and this is basically why they will never be “dead” - some complicated surface topologies simply cannot be reproduced in polys - there are fractal models and hugely complex abstract forms that can only be made with nurbs, because of their mathematical base.
Poly’s can make ANY shape a NURBS can. That is unquestionable. NURBS are better in 2 areas. 1. trimmed and filet, 2. precision (for example, if you have a sphere and try to add detail in one place the subdivs will warp and you will have to readjust them manually to get it “round” again.)
And that’s the whole matter. (though I didn’t mention disadvantages of NURBS)
oh yeah?
http://climate.uvic.ca/people/stingo/gallery/povray/quaternion_chain2
http://climate.uvic.ca/people/stingo/albums/povray/Sponge.png
http://climate.uvic.ca/people/stingo/albums/povray/Gyroid.png
here are some math-based surfaces I want you to model in polys for me.
(jesus I just geeked myself out. nerdranger it is…)