in most games when creating players and npc's what is used more? nurbs surfaces or mesh objects or does it really matter?

Mesh.
I don't know of any games that used nurbs.

'mesh objects' is misleading and not a modeling term.

Polygons is what you need for games, Nurbs are curves used to model hipolystuff (movie/technical models).

I don't know anyone in the whole game industry that would use nurbs for game models (and i know a lot of people), if that helps.

You should look for some good old box modeling tutorials.

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Original post by StrangeFate I don't know anyone in the whole game industry that would use nurbs for game models (and i know a lot of people), if that helps.

From what I've seen (no first hand experience, I'm really not an artist and Blender frightens me), it is an often-used approach to create high-quality models with techniques like NURBS and then use those to create low-poly approximations which can be used in games.

Shadowdancer's got a point. It's what I do. You can get away with using this method for objects that have a lot of continous, smooth surfaces. (Conviently, like most organic objects.) Generate a NURB/sub-division cage and then subdivide the heck out of it for cutscene renders, then user a lower resolution subdivision for the ingame model. This isn't perfect, you usually still have to tweak triangles by hand, but it gets you close.

Well, you have to differenciate between Subdivision and nurbs. It's not the same at all. Nurbs are also not an often-used approach, it's quite rare actually. There's some small nurbs communities like for everything else of course.

Most people (me too) work with subdivision, still starting out of a box or cylindre (that's why a box modelling tut will get you to whereever you want, be it hi or low poly).
That's what 99% of the people in the industry use (+/- box modeling start), be it for low poly ingame models or hipoly cutscene/normalmap models.

Learning nurbs is rather counterproductive if you want to do _game_ models. If you master polygons, learn nurbs if you want, not that there's a benefit in doing so, SubD is easier to handle and simulates nurbs splines aswell.

I believe www.polycount.com has some modeling tutorials to get you started.

nurbs might be used later on when in game polygon counts reach ridiculous levels, but at the moment most def mesh