No problem.
In past years, I’ve tried mesh modeling in Rhino a few times, but I always found it “rigid” and limited in options compared to Blender, ZBrush, or similar software like Cinema4D or Maya.
Yeah the workflow is always a thing, but that really depends on you. I just responded on a comment thread back and forth with Daniel Simon (Tron, Captain American) on Instagram over this very thing. In his words "in Nurbs, you’re fighting for more organic vs crispness and then in Blender you’re fighting for more crispness vs organic. Both follow different rules and therefore are constrained differently.
I love that such a precise and massive talent as Daniel can speak to using Blender and not worry about “taking the loss” of the end result of a non-precise tool like Blender. The guy hasn’t been working in Blender that long (newer than me) and already has results of a 20 year sub-D veteran.
In Blender, I hated that you had to work hard to get these engineered edges and radii, so when I discovered NURBs, I suddenly felt like a dream was answered. But then suddenly my designs went from these sculptural pieces to these technical, minimalistic, almost “blocky” results. So I had to relearn how to find what I was looking for. It was like learning to walk again. But once I did and I was able to think about how to bring back organic form in NURBs, you basically retrain yourself to think differently about the same problem in a different tool. It’s all in the user, not the tool (like the Daniel Simon example).
Getting soft forms in NURBs (like fabrics, cushions, etc) is a different experience than doing it in Blender (poly mesh), but then when you’re working on hard surface modeling, you’re always trying to achieve that industrial perfect surface finish look (like in Alias).
What attracted me to Chris’s early tutorial with the corvette years ago, was that he essentially faked “Class-A”, ultra clean surfaces in Blender with the shrinkwrap technique and that’s what set me on my path to ultimately looking for Rhino. Daniel Simon’s response about moving into Blender these days after 20+ years of design from Alias also woke me up. He essentially said:
“The tool doesn’t matter if you’re getting the results you want, being in Blender allows to be free knowing that someone can oversee a team of technical NURBs modelers that really just do the technical work. Not the creative work”. So I think understanding our role in the production also has something to do with what tools we use and what we’re trying to achieve.
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If you’re strictly a “free flow” creative designer, then Blender can do alot for you. You’re not paying attention so much to the technical accuracy of the model. You might get there faster in a way.
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If you’re a more “production” based designer or desire a higher level of technical accuracy as you design (where I fall into), then you’re going to things like Rhino or Alias. The process is longer and more constrained, but your results are much more “Crisp” and high level. You may also incorporate blender in this process and trade back and forth in some ways.
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If you’re strictly just a technical modeler and focused entirely on technical accuracy (professional surface modelers), then you’re looking at deeper-level tools like Alias, Catia, NX, Solidworks, Creo.
And that’s a big deal tool because certain tools just make things so much easier for you (like engineered edges). You fight the CAD software alot less. Learning my purpose and specialty in CAD design definitely helped me land on the tool that works perfectly for me, I don’t fight against as much, which happened to be Rhino.
