> Also, I can't recall if the Maya deformers operate on NURBS geometry--
> though I think they must--or only poly-meshes and subdivision surfaces...

Well, I'd imagine that they work on NURBS geometry, but only on surface control points, not on an edge, especially a trimmed edge shared between 2 adjacent surfaces.


> But I think that sculpting in a 3D-modeling environment is hard to avoid,
> especially when dealing with "freeform" and "organic" shapes. :^)

There is a certain "flavor" or level of freeform that can be achieved just through drawing and not sculpting - for instance you can create a swoopy "freeform" surface using sweeping by drawing rails and cross-section curves.

This is for a more man-made stylized manner of freeform. Completely organic like a monster's head is a different type of thing - that's when you have to use sculpting. The difference is if you have a type of "high-frequency" detail required.

Man-made stylized freeform surfaces don't tend to have really tiny bumps and wrinkles in them. Lots of tiny bumps and wrinkles means good for sculpting - smoother flowing freeform means good for drawing + construction (MoI) style.

So what I'm getting at is it really depends on the type of models that you're trying to build.


The thing is that there is a lot of new stuff out there right now focused on sculpting - I mean stuff like Silo, Modo, Cinema4D, XSI, ZBrush, Mudbox, ... But there isn't much that is focusing on structured drawing-style modeling and making that easier and quicker. So that's kind of a reason for that different focus for MoI. I just figure that if you want to do something organic with high detail like a monster head, you should just be using one of those other apps for that and not MoI.

Sketchup is definitely an interesting kind of hybrid between drawing and sculpting. They've got it tuned really well for architectural concept modeling, but it is difficult to do other types of stuff with it.


Anyway, I hope you don't think that I'm attacking your ideas or anything, I'm just trying to give a bit of an overview on some of the thinking behind MoI's design.

I'm glad that you like it! I think that one of the tricks to using it is to know when to use it for a particular kind of model that it is suited for, and when to use a different package for stuff that it is not suited for.

Re: Esc key, yeah I think that makes sense, I have been thinking of making it do that. Right now you can't program it because it is a special case key but I'll try to get this in for the next beta.

Thanks!

- Michael