NURBS models

3DModelerMan · Post by **3DModelerMan** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 3:51 am

Is there any way to use NURBS models in Irrlicht? I think that their might be a way if I changed some engine code.

DarkDepths · Post by **DarkDepths** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 8:33 am

Of course there is a way if you change engine code

I personally wouldn't have a clue where to start, but you may want to check out the wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NURBS as it seems to have a lot of stuff, some of which could probably be useful.

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 11:18 am

I'd doubt that there is a chance if *you* would change the engine code, but still there's a chance...

wyrmmage · Post by **wyrmmage** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 11:26 pm

I'm no expert on NURBS, but you could probably use them in your 3D modeling program and then just apply the NURBS modifier before exporting your model

-wyrmmage

Ion Dune · Post by **Ion Dune** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 1:16 am

wyrmmage wrote:I'm no expert on NURBS, but you could probably use them in your 3D modeling program and then just apply the NURBS modifier before exporting your model
-wyrmmage

That's what I am able to do in C4D, and is probably a better idea than trying to implement NURBS into irrlicht if only because of performance, unless you plan on some sort of real time NURBS modification.

christianclavet · Post by **christianclavet** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 5:53 am

HUmm... Nurbs wouldnt be so good to implement if you want real time feedback. The only part of the industry that use it today are in the design and engeneering groups. Nurbs are very good as they can produce very accurate 2D/3D curves and volumes, but they operate diffently than a polygon mesh and take more time to render. For an engineer wanting to plot accurately a blueprint of a new car model, this is not really an issue, for "realtime" application, this is not perfect. (Unless you have a way to get a LOT of calculation power from the workstation)

The thing that could be cool to implement in Irrlicht instead would be subdivision surfaces (SUB-D). Those use the low-poly mesh as a reference and can be subdivided, it's way of doing is compatible with any standard meshes and UV's can still be applied on it. With it you could do some kind of inverse LOD. For example, you could take a low poly mesh of a character and them subdivide it when it's going very close to the camera.

Mel · Post by **Mel** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 4:42 pm

I don't think that is a bad idea at all, adding some sort of Nurbs surfaces/objects to the engine. Now i recall OpenGL evaluators , which could be pretty well used to generate curved surfaces, with parametric generation of triangles.

I only find 1 main drawback, real time formats still don't have any chance of defining Nurbs objects.