A few stray thoughts to tack onto this discussion:
I think there’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation going on here with surfacing tools in Rhino. On the one hand, there are very few clamoring for the kind of tools that VSR provides - I get that we are a minority, but part of that has a lot to do with education imho. Virtually ALL Rhino surfacing courses focus solely on what I call “curves in->surfaces out” because that’s what the tools allow for unless you go to extraordinary lengths. Seriously, for giggles I bought a Level II course on Udemy (aimed at experienced modelers) just to see what it was like, and without naming names the surfacing portion of the course is utter garbage. Complete. Utter. Garbage. At least it cost me all of $11, the equivalent of a cheap movie ticket and in a way felt the same as watching a comedy. But, back to the point - we have a situation where folks are taught a workflow that is helpful when they start, but I think in the long run teaches bad habits - unnecessarily dense surfaces, an over reliance on input curves, an over reliance on trims and such. A big part of why I started doing my YouTube series is that I want to at least show people that there are other workflows out there, and how they can access those workflows in standard Rhino.
The number of new/revamped commands that would make a world of difference to users like me is not actually that big. It’s around 10. Two or three analysis tools, and six or seven surfacing tools. That’s it. I’m not expecting Rhino to be Alias - I’m just hoping that at some point McNeel will circle back to their core surfacing tools and update them. Like I said, they are OLD, and they show it.
The degree to which VSR is an incredible RE platform cannot be stressed enough. Realize that for RE surfacing, lots of companies are spending 10’s of thousands on packages that in my experience create mostly crap. Seriously, the number of auto surfaced aircraft models I’ve had to fix up to simply get them to go watertight is unreal. Now - I get that VSR is not an auto surfacing plugin - it’s aimed at the user who has more experience modeling, but it was also priced accordingly. I think VSR would have sold far far more units if they had actually marketed their product first and foremost as an RE tool - given the price and the quality of work that can come out of it, it’s very compelling when stacked against other industry options, at a tiny fraction of the cost. What I’m saying is that if McNeel was to create a similar toolset, simply with the ability to use both meshes and surfaces as reference, they could create a very powerful RE platform - so there’s value there beyond just the surfacing nerds like me.
Gustavo, I’ve never so thoroughly enjoyed someone mostly disagreeing with me! But I would point out - McNeel has decided to put significant resources into replacing the functionality that T-Splines provided with sub-d tools in 7, which kinda undercuts your argument maybe? Also - I’d strongly disagree that you can simply replace all NURBS workflows with sub-d tools/workflows. NURBS models and sub-d models tend to have their own unique feel to them - it’s not that one is better than the other, it’s that you need to have the right tool for the job. Sometimes that NURBS, sometimes that’s sub-d. Even in say the automotive space - there’s compelling reasons why the conceptual models get banged out in sub-d but the surfacing gets done in NURBS.
I would also note that there are parts of the 3rd Party plugin approach that work very well - we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to rendering. If you want to use Rhino’s render, cool, if you don’t you have options! It’s not all bad, but it is for when there’s only one plugin that fills a role.
-Sky
