Is anyone working on fixing Nurbs ?

Support Modeling
1

I just saw that Ton had an AMA (ask me anything) on reddit and of course he was gone by the time I saw it.
I really wanted to ask him if NURB tools were being looked at.

I know it has some nurbs surface tools but compared to Mayas they are just terrible.

So does anyone know if someone is working on making them better ?

Also, Snap to Curve. I dont know why we dont already have this. Its just wonderful.
I dont use curves in Blender if I can avoid it because they are such a nuisance.

2

That question asked many times all years. In short, NURBS not important for main BLender target, movie with CG creatures. Current mesh+Catmul-Rom “Subdivision modifier” work much better then NURBS. But you always can send patch to impove that.

3

well I did ask question on AMA
and he did not say it was dead !
so there is very little hope that it might get back
this was a goal for 2.5 which has been put aside !

I do hope it comes back soon

happy bl

4

Ton’s response to a possible nurbs GSoC proposal http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2014-March/043101.html

Hi Jonathan,

I have seen people work on this topic in the past 10 years, yet nobody could deliver something more usable than what I did in the 90ies… what is still in Blender now. And what I consider not usable either.

For me then the logical question is this: why even bother about Nurbana? That code is also from the 90ies, it is unsupported for 15 years, and I rather only accept a GSoC project from someone when he/she can become a reliable maintainer for it.

Alternative: check on what we need to do for our Curve/Surface object and tools and make a plan of action what to code?

Or: ditch this whole NURBS thing, it’s ancient, it very hard to make usable and far too technical for artists. Everyone’s using hybrid methods (using subsurf approach) now. I know Adesk bought the T-spline, but something similar would be great to look into.

NURBS is also something you can bedtter hide ‘under the hood’ and then make great tools for artists to help them modeling. If you look at Rhino or Maya you can see how they handle it. Which is: tools, tools, and tools. Not technology.

Or, just adding B-spline surfaces (like LW, etc) would make Blender surfaces so much more usable…

I miss this kind of insight or analysis in the proposal. Are you really familiar with the technology? With subsurf, t-spline, nurbs, and all these parametric curve families?

-Ton-

5

i had to look up the Spline modeling for Lightwave. Its actually very nice. Much better than what we have for curves.


This is from LW 7.5 which was years and years ago.
I’d love to be able to work with curves like this.

6

I hope they can find some dedicated peoples to get a new system with lots of new tools to work with curves and nurbs surfaces
including the the T spline with holes!

and the sooner the better it has been put asde for too long !

I hope someone can make things move faster and get results!

happy bl

7

i agree, it’s not about bringing the whole nurbs system back from software like maya. it’s just that would be a lot great working better with curves. i come from maya, and the weak point of this autodesk software, is the stronger point of blender: flexibility, and workflow. maya has the ancient nurbs system, but for example, i hadn’t any problem cutting hole on a surface keeping the flow of that surface. then i would’ve convert it to mesh and keep working on. these are little things that would help even more the already strong flexibility blender have right now! maya is a complete yet hard as f**k software, it’s great but if you don’t have precise notion of where to put hands on, you get lost. that’s the reason why i learned using blender. i don’t want to put a software over another, it’s just my point of view!

8

there is an GSOC project right now
so we should have some more Nurbs things soon
but still don’t know what and when !

happy bl