Any speculation for how McNeil and associates developed Sub’d for Rhino? Curious if anyone knows the story. Maybe it was developed inhouse or some acquisition?
If I had to guess they developed it in-house. If they were going to acquire a company for the code I would image that it would have been T-Splines before AD got their hands on it. Also I’m not sure that McNeil really operates in that way in terms of acquiring to gain code. There was a higher end surfacing plugin, VSR, that added some much needed higher level of surfacing capability that McNeil “should” have picked up but alas… didn’t.
It is not developed in house. They are using (and contributing to) the OpenSubdiv libraries.
Sounds like it was mostly an in-house effort.
Tons of development details here: Rhino 7 Subdivision Surface Project - SubD - McNeel Forum
I think they hired Giulio Piacentino shortly after he came out with an early version of his Weaverbird subdivision Grasshopper component 10 years ago.
It also doesn’t seem like OpenSubdiv is part of the equation: Sub D using OpenNURBS - #2 by dale - openNURBS - McNeel Forum
If I am not mistaken one of the original McNeel coders is the brains behind the Moment Of Inspiration 3D modeler:
Its lovely for sketching out design ideas in Nurbs without the complexity of something like Rhino or Solidworks.