Hi Jason, just some other notes and information for you on your first message there. This is all just to explain some current priorities and goals, stuff like that. Not everything will align precisely with your own priorities I'm sure, but some should!


> My leading request is a native 64bit version, but I'm sure
> it's been asked before.

This one unfortunately I don't think will be likely anytime soon, mostly because more than one bifurcated versions of the program greatly increases the testing burden. I currently just do not feel confident that I could handle the additional time required to manage multiple simultaneous versions. Right now I basically need to focus just on one version to make sure that I can get it to a very high level of quality.


> re: layout builder or UI rearrangement

It will probably also be quite a while before I can focus on making a full sort of drag/drop type UI editing mechanism.

However, the UI is actually extremely malleable at a kind of lower level than that, because all the UI is defined by HTML files that are under the \ui subfolder in MoI's main installation folder.

You can actually edit the UI definition files to change things around if you want. It is certainly not as convenient as a high level drag/drop type mechanism would be but if you want to pursue it here are some links of some discussions about it:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1173.1
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=844.1
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1290.1


> 2) Enhanced GL settings. I would find it being advantageous for MOI
> to use the extended GL for additional lights, reflections and shadows.

Yeah, this one is fairly high up on the priority list.


> 3) Zebra striping: does MOI support this yet or any other surface
> analysis? Zebra striping would be a great initial addition.

This kind of more advanced analysis stuff is kind of a lower priority currently though. I expect to get to these functions eventually but there are a lot more things that are more sort of "core" to get done first, like a few example are object organization tools and better history editing tools. For MoI it has not really been a huge priority to focus on stuff like "surface styling" type things yet, the focus is more on making simple things work easily first and there is still quite a bit to cover there first.


> 5) Scene manager: I know it's coming but it's a very much needed tool to
> support assemblies from other CAD tools.
> 6) Pervasive Layering: a layering system where any feature can be layered.

Yeah basically these areas are coming up next. There has been some recent discussion here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1944.1


> Selection:
> 1) A poly modeling technique showing through, but when I'm sculpting by
> editing points in the UI is there a way to 'paint' a selection of points
> rather than just picking?

You can use a rectangular selection area also. You can hold down shift+ctrl when you click to force a rectangular window selection to trigger if there is not a good empty space to click to make it happen.

In general surface control point manipulation is not really a fully fleshed out area in MoI yet. It's not a current high priority because I figure that typically many of the things that classically you might want to use control point manipulation to do are actually better done these days in a subd modeler system instead. So the focus for MoI has been on more of the things that are really different than subd, like more stuff driven off of 2d profiles and booleans, etc...


> Tools:
> 1) Convert curve: to be able to convert a curve between through-points or control-points

I would like to add an option for converting a particular selected point between being a "corner" or being "smooth", I'm not sure if that would cover what you are wanting here?


> Exporting & Importing:
> input for target number of polys so you can set baselines for mesh quality.

Unfortunately this would be quite tough to implement. Under normal conditions the number of polygons generated depends largely on the curvature of the shapes involved. If I tried to work with a limited "budget" of polygons it would be pretty hard for me to spread that budget out evenly, it is more likely that some areas would get nicely formed and denser and others be just really jaggedy.

If you have a particular target number that you need, you'll probably need to generate a dense mesh out of MoI and then use some decimation type tools in a polygon-focused program to reduce the mesh down to your desired number of polys.

I don't think that it will be very feasible for me to incorporate that directly into MoI's exporter.


> 2) <..> However I did note some graphics issues where the interior
> surface was showing solid exterior lines.

Yeah, that is a fairly typical display artifact - edges that are displayed have to be pulled closer towards the eye point or else they would frequently be partially submerged in the surfaces that are displayed. One side effect of this "pull towards eye" mechanism is that if you have a model with thin walls to it, the edges from the far side of the thin wall can get pulled too far and become visible.

It does not mean anything is wrong with your actual model data, it is purely a display artifact. I have some ideas that may help to reduce it in the future when I get a chance to work on it some more. But currently it is just something that you have to ignore.


Hope this helps give you some additional info, thanks very much for the feedback!

- Michael