What is nurbs modeling in 3ds max?Is it useful for characters modeling in 3ds max?

NURBS is good for designing products (like cars for example) as it is Max interpolating a smooth surface between points. You can stitch multiple surfaces together to make a nice final shape. But I would say it is a nightmare to work with for characters. Why? Because a NURBS surface is like a piece of paper folded and molded into the desired shape, which can be quite difficult and time consuming for characters (just think of the ear for example). Another important reason is texturing. If you have a piece of paper that has a texture on it, think how difficult it would be to mold it into a human face and have the texture represent it well. The texturing and modeling toolset for polygons is much vaster and more refined and can get the job done a whole lot better than NURBS in my humble opinion.

NURBS Modeling is one of the best ways of modeling in 3ds Max with NURBS surfaces and curves. NURBS, which stands for Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines, is an industry standard for designing and modeling surfaces.

NURBS curves and surfaces have the important properties of not changing under the standard geometric affine transformations (Transforms), or under perspective projections. The CVs have local control of the object: moving a CV or changing its weight does not affect any part of the object beyond the neighboring CVs. (You can override this property by using the Soft Selection controls.) Also, the control lattice that connects CVs surrounds the surface. This is known as the convex hull property.

 

NURBS is popular because the objects are easy to manipulate interactively, and because the algorithms that create them are both efficient and numerically stable.

NURBS modeling is now somewhat obsolete. Remember the Gollum in Lords of the rings one and two... Its modelled with nurbs but in Maya. Maya has always been better in nurbs but after the introduction of SubD and now Open SubD from pixar, nurbs modeling is rendered ancient. I agree with Mr. AbdulAziz on the usage of nurbs in car or similar objects modeling and Alias studio was famous for it. Giant companies used it for reflection analysis, surface flow etc. I dont know if thats still being used. As an advice you should focus on zbrush in modeling. After the amazing addition of hard surface modeling tools i dont think there is ay alternative. But you need to do retopo of surfaces... But still Zbrush has made it very easy as well.

For smooth and fine result we use NURBS modeling and its different from Polygon Modeling. Also it is too heavy to render and handle. For character if we have a high budget project, we can make characters with NURBS.