• Smooth, gap-free surfaces
• Easier to tweak (fewer control points than NURBS)
• Fits into your modeling pipeline

The T-Splines Maya Plugin was created for artists who want the precision of NURBS without limiting themselves to its stringent restrictions. In T-Splines,arbitrary detail is easily added, and the entire model can maintain just the optimum level of detail. This means creating seamless models is the rule, not the exception. Additionally, there is no need to worry about keeping tangencies between different parts of the model—T-Spline models are automatically curvature continuous throughout.

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The T-Splines Maya Plugin Version 1 was designed to accommodate two basic workflows: using T-Splines to create a new model and converting existing models to T-Splines for simplification.

1. Using T-Splines when creating a new model
There are a number of ways to take advantage of T-Splines when creating a new model. Since the main advantage of T-Splines is in editing and detail work, many artists create the general shape of their model with polygons, then convert to T-Splines to add detail and make changes. It is also possible to begin modeling directly in T-Spline primitives.

2. Using T-Splines to simplify and merge existing models
As 3d models become more and more realistic, every industry is demanding more high-detailed models. Achieving this level of detail in NURBS or polygons can result in heavy models that are unwieldy to edit and expensive to render. By converting existing NURBS and polygon models to T-Splines, you can subsequently cleanse the model of unneeded data and merge multiple-patch NURBS models into a single surface. This results in a T-Spline model that is easy to animate and edit, and accommodates arbitrary areas of high detail while leaving less detailed areas of the surface uncluttered with control points.