Hi Wibble,

> * Looks around nervously *

:) No need to be nervous, please don't hesitate to post!


> re: Archipelis

I haven't had a chance to mess with this myself, but I've seen some of the demo pictures. It looks like a lot of fun! I especially like how it looks like if you trace a part of an image that it will use it as a texture map as well.

Unfortunately NURBS-type surfaces are a lot harder to construct in this type of a way than polygon meshes. With meshes it is possible to disperse the points of the mesh in a lot more random manner and put little mesh facets in at any location. But NURBS surfaces don't tend to be as tolerant of this type of randomization.

So I hate to discourage you, but I think that there are basically technical difficulties in getting this type of thing to work well as an automated process in MoI.


But I would like to let you in on my secret "Blob construction technique" that might be useful to you in MoI right now.

First draw the outline of your blob - here I have done a Draw curve / Freeform / Sketch:



Now select it and run Edit/Trim. At the "Select cutting objects" prompt, hit the "Add trim points" button - this allows you to pick some points to split up the curve into pieces. Pick these points:



Push "Done" to finish picking trim points, and then at the next stage where you pick which pieces you want to keep, press Done again to keep all the pieces.

Now your curve is split into 2 pieces - these are your rails.

Now add a cross-section - one easy way is to draw a circle from 2 diameter points, and check the "vertical" option. You want to draw it at an angle at a spot where the rails are matching up fairly well, so for example here is where I drew it in this case:



That looks like a line there, but it is a circle that we are looking at from the side.


Now select just the circle, run Construct / Sweep, select the 2 rails and here's your blob:



Sometimes you might also put in more than one circle to help align the sweep at strategic matching spots between the rails.

It's a bit difficult to automate this because it is hard for the software to have as good of a judgement as you for where to split the rails.

But this technique might get some blobs going for you!

- Michael