Hi Lemo - slightly raised type relief type shapes are pretty hard to do in MoI right now, except for the ones that work well with Rail revolve.

You might try making a bitmap file version of your outline and then fill it in with a gradient and use ZSurf to create a heightfield type surface from it, see here: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=602.7

I usually tell people that relief work is best done in a program like ArtCAM that has more specialized tools specifically oriented towards puffed up or bubbly type designs.


Since you have Rhino you could also give Rhino's Patch command a try for this type of thing. Either create some additional inside curves that you pull up in Z, and then patch through all of those, or extrude your outline upwards and patch the top open edge (instead of the original curve) so that tangency in the Patch will create some force in the z direction to make it bubbly. Probably the first way with additional curves is better though - the additional curves do not need to be closed, they can be a kind of center line running down the middle of your shape.

Patch will fit a single large surface that kind of curves and twists to pass through points sampled on the curves that you input.

It can be kind of fussy in several ways, like if you have a thin starfish arm it can tend to get kind of lumpy and imperfect in narrow areas that don't have enough fitted surface control points to make the surface flexible enough in that small area. Increasing the "Surface U spans" and "Surface V spans" will create a denser surface with more control points in it which can help with that.

I do plan on having a Patch type command in MoI in the future but it will be missing it for version 1.0 .

- Michael