I've always felt that for accuracy, NURBS and Metaballs are vastly superior to meshes for modeling. Unfortunately, it's a lot trickier to get them to render properly on a graphics card, and meshes can usually come close enough! Thank you for an excellent tutorial on the use of NURBS in Blender. Modeling things like stylized machines just isn't realistically possible without them.
Struggling to follow in Blender 3. What command does the F shortcut represent? Is it contextual to some 'mode' you're in? I can create a nurbs surface, I can duplicate (Shift D) and translate along the Z axis (Z) but then selecting the objects and pressing "F" does nothing.
the trick is to pay close attention at the start as to where the nurbs curve is....its not in the curve section but the surface section....if you got that the only other thing you need to pay attention to is the mode I am in when you get stuck...am i in object mode or edit mode because the shortcut keys like shift d or F mean different thing depending on the mode....also keep you mouse in your viewport when using shortcut keys...
I was having trouble with this as well, but I just figured out what I did wrong: you have to duplicate (shift+d) the nurbs surface in edit mode, not object mode.
it is comparable but still in its infancy compared to Rhino (Blender is the swiss army knife of the industry it is the best overall software....but often not the best at any specific thing) Can it be used as an industry solution yes.
I wanted to model a wooden spoon, and I tried surface nurbs, but it seems like a lot of the tools that we usually use don't work with them. Like, how can I merge points? It doesn't seem to be possible. When I deleted a point, the Active Curve menu for that object disappeared. I don't see a way to make an enclosed shape like a cube from one of these. I see there is a surface sphere, why no cube?
Interesting, I also see there is a cyclic option for animation, I wanted an object to follow the curve back and forth. Wanted to use 2 curves and jump inbetween them to get it done, now with cyclic I think one curve suffices, great.
Can you give dimensions precisely in Blender like you can in Rhino or other CAD software? Is it possible to do generative design in Blender similarly to Grasshopper?
blender isn't a CAD software and you won't find a CAD like workflow or experience. now i've never used Rhino or Grasshopper, but blender does seem to support node modelling. not sure if it's the same thing. you can set the units to millimeters if desired and you will be able to input exact positions for any vertex or curve handle. i don't know what you are trying to do, but if you want to render a CAD model, i've made good experiences using the STL format to get it into blender, using the "tris to quads" mesh function, merge vertices by distance and then split the model by loose parts. that way you could just model in a CAD software and then easily import it into blender for setting up materials and do product renders. gl and hf
i have not checked this out tbh but if oyu want to model with precision outside of the nurbs curve for CAD yes it is possible...however your experience would be better getting a cad plugin for blender...although the free cad plugins are okay.
Hey, Loved the tutorial Could you please tell me if it's possible to add more segments, like extrude a face after filling the NURBS surface? when I try to do that, the extruded part doesn't have a filled-in face
You can still do this tutorial in blender 3, but yes specifically in geometry nodes a lot of innovation is happening there and things are starting to change
Yes, but I would recommend sculpting or hard surface modeling over this. This is a great process for creating organic metal or car shapes etc...not really the best way to make a face.
Very nice! One of the few Blender NURBS modeling tutorials available out there for sure, thank you. Is there a way to convert SubD mesh into NURBS in Blender? In a similar manner to how Rhino 7 and Maya do it(if you don't mind mentioning them)...
You cant convert back to a surface nurbs curve yet unfortunately. Yo want to build it out and keep it as a surface nurbs curve and before you convert it duplicate and hide the backup if you need to modify it
@@FunwithBlender I really appreciated the reply, thank you. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing out on that magic button. For now, importing an OBJ mesh into Rhino 7 and running QuadRemesh and then MeshtoNURBS seems to be the way to go. Hopefully, Blender will develop something similar for this step soon.
Thank you for this tutorial ! Also, do you know a way to convert a nurbs curve ( from the Curve section ) into a nurbs curve from the Surface section ? Have a nice day !
@@lylefranksaunders2113 Cape Town side but i don't have time TBH my work keeps me busy. Blender is to big to learn its better to focus on completing a specific task and learning that way...what are you trying to do?
