I can only second that.
I use XSI's NURBS as "Import Only" feature because of this and for that it is at least usable, although the IGES Import could be much better.
The features that are there work halfways decent, but even stuff that makes NURBS stand out from Polys, like perfect Booleans, accurate EdgeBeveling/Rounding and Trimming Curves over several objects are either completely missing or implemented only partially.
XSI could also be a cool renderer for the industry type guys who always have NURBS objects to deal with, but it would need much import quality with IGES for this to happen...
Until then, I can really recommend Rhino for NURBS transfer. It has a lot of presets for IGES im- and export and a Softimage export setting that works most of the time (depending on your input). There is also a tutorial for IGES cleaning on the rhino website.
While I personally hate working in Rhino, it is a very good converter ;-)
But then again I don't care much for the stuff Rhino does when converting NURBS to polygons. I tried each and every setting combination but always got only mediocre results. Solid Thinking is much better in that area - at least with a trick one of the software support guys told me: In Solid Thinking Design (the medium or "Essentials Package" of that company) you don't get their advanced mesh converter. But if you export to STL, you get the same functionality as in the biggest package for the conversion. It produces very very nice meshes and from there you can convert easily to other formats...
It works, but is way more trouble that it could be. The old "Software Roundtrip" thingy :-)
Well, Character Tools aren't everything...
Best Regards,
Thomas Helzle
On Tue, 23 May 2006 15:44:35 +0200, Joey Ponthieux <j.g.ponthieux(at)LaRC.NASA.GOV> wrote:
Andy,
NURBS would have been the best method for this type of object. You are
attempting to create what is called "complex curvature" in NURBS-speak.
If you were looking for the interior scoop to meet accurate
specifications, this example would be rather difficult to reproduce via
polys or even subDs. Not impossible, just would require immense effort.
This is a very rudimentary type of modeling procedure for Maya, and
it's even easier in Studio than in Maya. It could be done quite
accurately in most solids modeling apps but solids modelers are not
typically known for their ease of use at the interface. Morten's
solution was quite innovative but works well only if it doesn't matter
if the interior scoop is warped by deformation.
Admittedly I've barely touched NURBS in XSI in recent months so I used
this example as a refresher. I was completely unsuccessful at
replicating it via NURBS in XSI. I am surprised to see that XSI has an
intersection fillet feature, but lacks simple multi-surface intersection
to generate trim curves. I'm not sure what's up with that. I hope I am
missing something there. XSI's NURBS seems to be a real mixed bag,
possessing some very advanced features while lacking some of the most
simple features required to do effective NURBS modeling. I would hope
that the NURBS toolset improves in the future. I would certianly love to
relax my dependence on Maya for NURBS modeling, especially since I'm
finding it far more difficult to transfer NURBS from Maya to XSI than I
had hoped.
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