Hi Andrei,

First off, thanks for your videos. They've been very helpful in learning how to use MoI.
FWIW, my name is Chipp, not Cheap. Cheap has a negative connotation in English. I know that wasn't your intention as ad hominem attacks really have no place on this, or any other forum.

Your cursory observation actually does have a bit of truth to it. I am not an expert modeler in any one single package. You can find plenty of better Industrial Designers who are better modelers and renderers for sure!

I feel that I could model this form easily *AFTER it is now designed* using Lightwave Modeler. I've been using it since version 4 (shows how much gray hair I have!) and am decent with SubDs. As you know, there is a huge amount of technical expertise which goes into proper SubD modeling. Building the correct cage with the correct Polyflow can be difficult and time consuming-- especially if you're trying to 'fake boolean' parts after creating a surface. But I digress.

I also know a bit about SubDs in SketchUp. I beta-tested Artisan (Dale Marten's Sketchup SubD tool, and even did the Artisan Lightcycle tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo3W23-5dgI).

The key part for me in this exercise was to be able to 'find' the correct shape. While SubD's certainly can CREATE this shape-- and I did use them to initially do so:



The shape just wasn't crisp enough for me. I know it's a subtle difference from the final MoI model, but it was important. Sometimes I can tell when a design *originated* from SubD vs Splines. Something about the lack of crsipness..

The designs on this page have a different 'feel' from the work I'm now doing in MoI.

In particular, the ability for me to be able to create a few intersecting surfaces, then play with them accurately to define the broad design elements and curvature, was what I wanted to be able to do. As you know, it's difficult to do that in classic SubD applications. I know you can drag around a bunch of points, but it's very hard adjusting a long surface curve *in the middle* of the curve– as you can do in MoI.

Certainly MoI isn't the very best piece of software for this sort of thing, it's just that it's easy for me to jump in and out of. My career is not only about 3D modeling. Sometimes I'm asked to program. Or build a website (I built Artisan's ). I've also served in several executive management positions, which means I can literally go months at a time before jumping 'back' into a 3D job. It is because of the superior ease-of-use and learning (***and RE-LEARING for old folks like me!***) which draws me to Michael's amazing program.

Here's what I finally delivered to the customer. It's not a complete design, but useful for discussion. The original design was created in SketchUp for roughing out the idea for review by the client, which was done in 1.5 days. Then it was refined, built and rendered in MoI in 3 days, including input from the client at every step of the way. For me, that's a pretty good pace.

One big reason I use SketchUp at first is because it's camera integrates well with KeyShot (and thanks to Frenchy, also Visualizer!), and I can use SketchUp's *linework* to indicate form over a finished render. I wish someone could figure out how to camera match MoI and KeyShot, then I could use MoI from the get go!.

FWIW, Client loved it. A few of the renders: