Subd workflow in Rhino is somehow confusing and inconsistent.
In general it’s a mesh editing workflow and it should appear as such.
The workflow in 3ds Max is much more consistend because you always
work on a clear polygon structure with a SubD Modifier on top.
In Rhino it’s kind of a closed object, where i find it hard to extract the pure
underlying polies. Also creases are a questionable feature because of the lack of
control about the actual shape of roundings. Also it’s hard to keep track of the
creasind values.
I did not use them at all in Max and instead shaped the roundings by the polystructure.
It would be nice if the polies would be better and clearer accessible.
@sales4 are you using the Tab key to switch between Box mode and Smooth mode? Because from the description I’m not sure.
Or do you want to see both the control polygon and smooth result at the same time?
3ds Max allows you to see the original polygon wireframe on top of the smoothed-out
solid model. It’s a great way to see the actual rough topology and work easier while observing the smooth result.
Hard creases are quite simple to use.
Soft creases instead… yes, hard to use them efficiently, and then the next time you usually prefer to avoid them…
I agree the workflow is not the easiest. I have a couple of issues on my list to improve the bookkeeping part of it: RH-86159 SubD Display: Have a setting to change display of soft crease edges RH-86160 SubD Crease and SubDCrease: make new SelectSubDCrease and ShowSubDCrease commands RH-79821 Simplify Editing of SubD Creases
Hi @sales4 , is there something we could do to make this easier? I’m not sure how hard creases and weihted creases were implemented for SubD in 3dsMax but they are a pretty standard feature of SubD modelers now, and the math behind is very solid.
Rhino uses a definition very similar to Blender / OpenSubdiv for example. The UI might be hard to work with to get the result you want, but the shape of the limit surface is very well controlled by the mathematical definition of the edge weight – the surface stays smooth, it can be connected to other SubDs at a boundary edge, its shape varies smoothly with the edge weight, etc…
Besides using the Tab key / the SubDDisplayToggle command, or the PointsOn command as has been suggested here, you can also use the ExtractControlPolygon and ToSubD commands if you really want to be working on a mesh of the level 0 control polygon.
There is a big difference with Rhino’s fully transparent polygon cage. 3ds Max (at least what I remember from years ago) used the F2, F3 and F4 keys to switch between 3 different rendering modes for the polygon cage. One of the modes was super usable, because it allowed to see a semi-transparent coloured polygon model over the solid smooth version. The semi-transparent model received shadows (the bottom faces were darker), giving a better visual information about the shape.
It looked like a dark glass. Perhaps someone with access to 3ds Max could post a sample image here.
3ds Max (at least what I remember from years ago) used the F2, F3 and F4 keys to switch between 3 different rendering modes for the polygon cage. One of the modes was super usable, because it allowed to see a semi-transparent coloured polygon model over the solid smooth version. The semi-transparent model received shadows (the bottom faces were darker), giving a better visual information about the shape.