What is the difference between a path and a bezier?

Question

What is the difference between a path and a bezier curve? I started to use blender and I was wondering what is the difference between those curves?

Answer 1

There are 2 main category:

• Bezier
• Nurbs

They differ in calculations.

Each is a preset for its category:

1. Bezier: It is a normal bezier curve with 2 splines,it is usually what you start with,It uses aligned handle.
2. Circle: It is a preset of Bezier that form a circle,It uses automatic handle type.
3. NurbsCurve: Nurbs are different in calculations,you can read the different here.
4. NurbsCircle: A circle formed by nurbs and is cyclic,made out of 8 control points.
5. Path: Is a very simple Nurbs,It can be used to create motion paths for objects when doing animations,It is very fast to edit.

Answer 2

Well in short it's two different approaches to calculate a line.

As you can see "bezier" provides some handles, while "path" always takes the smoothest path between two vertex points. your choice just depends on what you are trying to achieve.

As a side note: be aware that blenders Nurbs are not well implementation ... yet (2.77). And there is a huge lack of competition compared to other programs like C4D. But as long as you don't want to build a whole model using nurbs, they will work.