Car modelling: Full poly or start with spline cage?

[Morne]

Hi all

I'm just curious how you guys approach this and if there are any benefits using the one over the other. So, like the title says: Do you use poly modelling from the start till finish or would you do the basic shape with spline cage and then go over to poly?

[Short_Fuse]

I'll usually start with a spline cage just to figure out some of the more complex curves. The splines are only used as a guide i don't convert them too poly. Basically for me its an accuracy assistant, but really it comes down to your own processes.

[Morbid Angel]

its a long time controversy as to what to use when modeling a hard surface. On one hand nurbs are great for precision, but on another they are difficult to work with in every aspect. And if you want to push those objects to extremes like animate them etc you will not have any luck.
Polys are easier to work with but they make it hard to create precision objects because they need to be manipulated by hand rather then by curve.
Recently a new solution came around where you would use polygons to get the general shape of your object, and then use curves to do poly trimming and boolean the detail like seams and other. This way you can get precise without worrying about mesh flow etc.

[joconnell]

I'd be almost inclined to go the other way - I use a lot of parametric objects and splines to make the base parts of my geometry since max'll do a far nicer job of evenly spacing things along a curve than I will. I'd probably go for making different parts of the surface using a loft / extrude / primitive / ffd but keeping in mind how many polys you have at each point so you can weld them back again. I'd be inclined to use things like ffds to adjust a long sweeping edge rather than trying to push each vert by hand for example since you're going to cause subtle bumps that'll mess up the reflections flowing along the sides.

[3sgteMKI]

I stick with poly modeling all the way through, using the "shift drag" technique to create polys. I occasionally draw out some lines for reference use though.

Keep the mesh simple, clean, and following the lines of the car; then let a mesh or turbosmooth do the rest of the work. I've found this technique works best for me.

[Da_elf]

i agree with joe. use splines for major components to get really nice curves and even polygon distribution then convert to poly to do the rest