The most powerful tools for organic modeling for Rhino users.

Making something organic or freeform?

Save time and reduce your costs. Model it with T-Splines!

• Design while you model.


• Make revisions in minutes, not hours.


• Easily make smooth transitions and blends.


• Save time with powerful T-Spline features.


• Use familiar Rhino commands to edit your T-Spline model.


• All this, at a price cheaper than a seat of Photoshop!

Design while you model

Traditionally, designing in Rhino has meant laying out curves that represent the critical shape of your model, creating surfaces from the curves, blending the surfaces together, then inevitably realizing you'd like to tweak something. So, you go back to the curves, make some changes, build up the surfaces again, make sure your blends still work with the new surfaces, and then realize that you're a lot closer. Just a few more changes are needed. So you go back to the curves...

With T-Splines, you can still start by laying out curves and making a surface. However, rather than returning to the beginning of the process to make tweaks, you can actually explore design iterations by pushing and pulling the surface! This is a revolutionary way to model, and it's very effective, especially for organic forms.

Using T-Splines helped The Outside Digital Art increase revenue by 75%

Kyle Houchens has created over a thousand vehicles for the toy and entertainment industries, and routinely uses multiple software products to produce his models. He began using T-Splines in late 2009 for his organic models and has seen a substantial impact on his business. With T-Splines I'm completing models in a single morning that used to take me days, which has helped my revenues increase by 75% this year. - Kyle Houchens, The Outside Digital Art & Design

Watch this video to see how to easy it is to design while you model with T-Splines. The bike pedal designed in this video is made by starting with a cylinder; to see an example of designing with T-Splines when starting with curves, watch the video showing how to make smooth transitions with T-Splines (it may take a couple seconds for the video to load).

Make revisions in minutes, not hours

T-Spline models are easy to tweak and revise because large portions of the model (or even the entire model) can be constrained so that the surface is always smooth, no matter where you move tweak it. This helps you meet customer requirements with ease. It's easy to create multiple variations on the design, and then make revisions based on client comments in minutes (perhaps even in front of the client!), instead of hours or days.

T-Splines sped up tools4design's freeform modeling by 9 times

Dan Falvey, CEO and Founder of Tools4Design, is an experienced engineer who specializes in solving unique design and engineering problems for a wide range of clients. With the right tools, including T-Splines, Dan has developed an approach that lets him use 3D as an integral part of his engineering process and enables him to rapidly iterate designs and keep clients happy and coming back for more. A recent design project that would have typically been a 3 to 4 hour modeling job for me took only 20 minutes with T-Splines. That means I could pump out 10 to 15 design iterations in a day, and more quickly converge on the final design with my client. - Dan Falvey, tools4design

Days of modeling saved by T-Splines

Jason Burns has designed instruments for many world famous artists including Neil Diamond, Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, Korn, Stray Cats, Cypress Hill, Pretenders and Snoop Dogg. The company manufactures about 400 upright basses per year and has started building guitars in 2008 ago. Jason began using T-Splines in 2009 to save time while designing his basses. T-Splines has allowed me to create and design my musical instruments much easier and faster. I can now create several variations on my design in an hour. This same process used to take days before I started using T-Splines. - Jason Burns, President, King Doublebass

Easily make smooth transitions and blends

Transitions, a chief source of headache with most design software, are automatically smooth in T-Splines. When creating a blend or transition with T-Splines, you can actually merge the edges of two surfaces together to create one single, c2 continuous surface. By merging surfaces together, you mathematically eliminate seams and gaps from your model. You can then continue to tweak the model without needing to worry about creating gaps or kinks. Of course, if you don't want this level of smoothness, you can still blend T-spline surfaces together using the Rhino blend commands.

"For organic shapes...T-Splines is essential"

Pavel Zákravský works under tight schedules for car tuning clients, so he needs the best tools to allow for faster design and more concept iterations. Pavel uses T-Splines as a standard part of his design tool set, including for this bumper design, presented at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show. For organic shapes, such as this car bumper design, the ability to work with a single surface in T-Splines is essential. I can explore different shapes and move creases and edges on the surface with ease while maintaining a single continuous surface the entire time.” - Pavel Zákravský, Industrial Designer, PD Studio

Watch this video to see how to create smooth transitions and blends using T-Splines. The video also shows how to use Rhino's Blend command to blend a T-spline surface to a NURBS surface (it may take a couple seconds for the video to load).

Save time with powerful T-Spline features

The T-Splines features are all focused on creating a powerful toolset for organic modeling. See these features in action on our tutorials page. Additionally, you can use many Rhino commands when working with T-spline surfaces.

Primitives

Geometry modification

Deform/edit

Export

Utility commands

Use familiar Rhino commands to edit your T-Spline model

T-Splines is very tightly integrated into Rhino. Rhino commands can be used directly on a T-spline surface or on the control points of the surface.

The general rule is that Rhino commands that work on polysurfaces also work on T-spline surfaces. Some of them convert the T-spline surface to a NURBS surface, and others keep the surface as a T-spline. Below is an extensive list of Rhino commands, with an explanation of how they work with T-spline surfaces.

Abbreviation code key:

• TS= Command works as expected on the T-spline surface. Input: T-Spline surface. Output: T-Spline surface.
• CP= Command works on T-splines control points. Input: T-spline surface control points. Output: T-spline surface.
• TS-NURBS= Command works on the T-spline surface but automatically converts it to a NURBS surface. Input: T-spline surface. Output: NURBS surface.

All this, at a price cheaper than a seat of Photoshop

Buy T-Splines today for cheaper than a seat of Photoshop.

Try T-Splines

Still not sure if T-Splines is for you? Try T-Splines before you buy.