The right tool for the job--when to use T-Splines (and when to not use T-Splines)

Guest post by Kyle Houchens
Owner and principal designer
The Outside Digital Art and Design LLC
www.theoutside.biz

I remember being around 6 years old, rooting around in my father’s shop at the back of our garage. My father had an exquisitely organized workspace and despite most of it being off limits, the “wood scrap bin” and “junk drawer” were mine… all mine. The junk drawer was a particularly fascinating collection of screws, bolts, washers, springs, and various other detritus from the modern industrial age.

I used to love finding interesting scraps of wood and screwing, nailing, gluing, tying or taping them together to make “stuff”. (Like the 1/839th scale version of Luke Skywalker’s tie fighter I made with a scrap of 2x4, a sharpie marker, speaker wire and duct tape…it…was…glorious.) This free form exploration is most likely what attracted me to computer modeling in the first place. Digital modeling provides unlimited potential and amazing shiny tools, to make, well….”stuff”.

One important lesson I learned… you have to hit a screw with a hammer REALLY hard to drive it into in a piece of wood, but it can be done. (My scrawny bird arms couldn’t turn a 3 inch long #10 wood screw for some odd reason, but boy could I hammer!!) Hammering a screw takes a lot of effort and a considerable amount of time, and yields a less than secure result. I can only imagine how much better my models would have been if I could have gotten my hands on a power screwdriver in 1976.

Today, in my current job, I face similar challenges. As owner and principal propeller-head of a small design consultancy, I am constantly called upon to make “stuff”. It turns out it’s a job I have been practicing for most of my life, and, unlike when I was a child, no tools are "off limits" to me now.

I am extremely fortunate as of late to work with Matt Sederberg and the interplanetary-genius-collective at T-Splines, Inc. If you haven’t heard, they created and marketed a subdivision surfacing plug-in for Rhino and Maya. The best thing about this tool is its simplicity and power. (Two qualities of any great tool.) The issue with having this type of power as a user is knowing where to apply it, and more importantly where NOT to apply it.

The T-Splines toolset is specifically intended and built for modeling and easily editing smooth, watertight, free-flowing forms. The type of forms that would be impossible or at least very difficult to model directly in NURBS. Think flowing hood scoops and air intakes, organic grips for tools, figurative pieces and characters, motorcycle fairings, swoopy Oakley sunglasses and ski goggles, as well as other insanely sculptural items. All the types of shiny “stuff” us designer geeks live for. Modeling these types of objects in T-splines is like being handed an 18 volt power screwdriver after you have been pounding in screws with a hammer. It's the best tool for the job.

The trap with amazing tools is that the rush we get from using them is so great; we want to use them for everything…even for things that don’t make sense. For instance, I would not model an entire Bang and Olufsen Beosound 9000 cd player with T-Splines. That model would be best built using traditional Rhino NURBS tools. However, building the grips for a pair of iconic orange-handled Fiskars scissors is where Tsplines flat out crushes traditional modeling tools. The fact that you are always only a single button click from converting a T-Splines object into a watertight NURBS object makes it even better.

That is the best thing about T-Splines; it’s like the nitrous button in an already awesome hotrod. You wouldn’t use it for every day driving, but when needed, it’s the best way to make some twerp disappear in your rearview mirror…

I often run into situations when modeling in Rhino where a piece of a model is highly organic, but the whole of the model is fairly straightforward. It’s these times I hit “the nitrous button” and let T-Splines do its thing. (See this car hood demo.) Conversely, there are times where the whole of the model is organic and flowing, but the details are crisp and defined. (See iron model demo.)

Insanely complex g2 forms blending into and out of each other? T-Splines. Hard edged weapon for the new version of Halo? Rhino. A little of both? Lucky for you, the tools for that are seamlessly integrated at your fingertips. Just pick the right tool for the job and enjoy truly unlimited power to make the most “glorious stuff.”