Full Version: V5 Wish List

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Hi Mauro, basically with the "fill in patch by patch" strategy it's a dying art form even in programs with multi-sided G2 continuity blending because it's so sensitive. Just having G2 continuity by itself doesn't do enough, even if a surface is G2 to another right at an edge, if the surface curvature changes too much in a localized area around the boundary it will leave some visible evidence of the patch topology in the model.

The other thing that happens is corners can be difficult, it's easy for the blend to have competition between different shapes right in corner areas. It's also difficult to make shaping adjustments with it.

It takes a great amount of experience to deal with these problems, so it's a very high learning curve type of modeling strategy.

In general it's a strategy that has been dropped by most people doing complex surfacing in favor of Sub-d modeling. It's a trend that has been going on for a long time, sub-d modeling was actually invented as an easier to use organic surface modeling strategy specifically because doing character models with NURBS patch by patch modeling is so difficult. "Geri's Game" back in 1997 was the big turning point for this in the "DCC" / animation-oriented modeling world.

So it's not an area that I'm particularly excited to put a lot of effort into. It can be useful in limited circumstances but it's not really a winning primary modeling strategy for complex surfaces.

You get better quality for things that are supposed to be smooth by making larger extended surfaces that get cut back rather than trying to fill things in patch by patch. If it's difficult to make out of one larger surface then Sub-d is better, it's more predictable and controllable. It has a learning curve too though, higher than 2D profile driven NURBS modeling but not as high as patch-by-patch surfacing type NURBS modeling.

2D profile driven NURBS modeling has one of the lowest learning curves so it's generally been an area I've been more focused on.

The Sub-d modeling method is a possible workflow now in MoI v4 with the converter which is currently the highest quality converter available. You construct your sub-d control cage in a sub-d modeler, not in Moi but it generally makes more sense for me to work on introducing sub-d modeling methods in MoI for advanced surfacing rather than patch-by-patch NURBS surfacing methods.

If I am able to, I would like to have more types of NURBS continuity tools in MoI too though, they can be useful it's just not a high priority because of all that I described above.

- Michael

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Thx for this in depth answer and yeah makes sense :)

Other simple things in terms of qol would be, as I mentioned in a different thread, a simple UI color changer inside the MOI prefs.

Another thing I would like to see if possible is smart edge selection so that in this case the program would be able to select all corner edges inside this e.g.

Image Attachments:
Screenshot 2021-01-17 131205.png 

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I would like to have a realitme subD-modeling like Rhino7 have now.... i think il will upgrade my RhinoV5 to V7.
And different linestyles (hidden, centerline, centerpoints) and width's
And a Block / grouping feature would be very nice

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Hi micheal

How long will we have to wait to see a set of Sub-d modeling tools in Moi? .... I was deciding to buy a polygon modeler but at this point I'm waiting for Moi with sub-D :)

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Hi Tony, I expect it will be quite a while before a lot of direct Sub-d modeling tools are available in MoI. When they start out they will be focused on pretty light duty simple shaping. I don't expect that they will be a replacement for a dedicated poly modeler anytime soon.

The SubD converter that is in MoI version 4 should enable you to have a good workflow using a separate dedicated poly modeling program to construct the SubD control cage and then importing that into MoI.

So if you want to do some sub-d modeling I recommend to go with a dedicated modeling program for that now.

- Michael

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Michael, i would like to know which polygonal modeler at this time being that most 'similar/compatible' with MoI's spirit?

Sorry my English.

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Hi Elang, a few ones you could try:

https://www.rocket3f.com/
https://www.nevercenter.com/silo/
http://www.wings3d.com/
https://metaseq.net/en/index.html

These ones are all focused just on modeling similar to MoI. There are a lot of other ones that are part of a larger package doing animation and rendering also but they will be more complicated (and usually more expensive except Blender) since they have a lot more stuff in them.

- Michael

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1) Analysis tools for curves, surfaces, objects build from many surfaces.
2) More easy way to search for naked edges and other errors.

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Circular selection tool

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Hi Michael,

first let me say congrats for the release of v4 and the new site design!

If possible, I would like to see in v5 zebra stripes analysis for continuity
and a crease edge function for the subd importer, if this can be somehow
solved. And yes, a grouping mechanism in the parts list.

Best regards
Stefan

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I would like to have a simple material editor and a better objekt manager.

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Hi, Michael.
We all want something here, but what's your plan?
When is the next version expected?
What will be the changes?
Or will there be a break for analysis?

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Hi WN,

> Hi, Michael.
> We all want something here, but what's your plan?
> When is the next version expected?
> What will be the changes?
> Or will there be a break for analysis?

I don't have any detailed plan as of yet.

- Michael

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1. waiting for a long time - fillet, chamfer
2 . better selection (lasso, hotkeys for 1,2,3,4,5: switch modes: blender approach is great 1,2,3 for poly, tab - object mode)
3. ogl improvements: reflections, mb other shaders, lines that are closed together ~ that makes buggy view, mb glass with transparancy
4. Bézier and better curve manipulation - SAI as example
5. Hotkeys: scroll up and down (adjusting radius: as designer i don't need to be precise)
6. scripting : points
7. instances

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Hi,
- a Pivot tool like in polymodeling software would be verry helpfull.
The gizmo in Zbrush works verry nice and is simple to use.
- Some of the addons or plug ins that are around should be integrated in Moi.
this might be not so exiting but usefull. Because many especially new user dont know much about them and how to install them.
It took me quite a while to find some of them.

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Apart from the fact that class A surfacing is a black art, it isn't a magical thing that the tools do for you. Even Alias with it's tons of surfacing tools requires a tremendous amount of effort from the user to help the software do its thing. I don't thing this should be an area that MoI should be focused at. OK, maybe some diagnostic shading/materials and a bit more robust fillet/blending tools are welcome.

On the other hand I believe that MoI lacks a proper industry standard layer system which will help with organization, selection and geometry visualization. It kinda works as it is with the styles, but I really wish there was a treeview control with drag & drop support and the concept of an "active" layer. In fact I experimented by using some javascript treeview widgets and treated styles as layers, but I ended-up abandoning my effort because it was a hacky way and nowhere near as robust as I'd wanted it to be.

The other thing would be more of MoI's internals exposed to scripting and proper documentation for it. The community has already done wonders with so little to work with. It's what every major software has done because it allows anyone to have a custom workflow, it lets you do any non-standard stuff you can imagine, and frees the developer from having to fulfill every little request. Not to mention that a powerful API will attract even more knowledgeable people to do even more complex plugins.

My 2c.

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Hi immortalx, there is a concept of "Active style" in MoI, it's the one that has the ring around its color swatch, right-click on a swatch to set it:



- Michael

Image Attachments:
activestyle.jpg 

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I know about that Michael! In fact that's what I used to programmatically set the active layer I was talking about. The thing is that MoI doesn't have the concept of completely hiding a specific style. I mean if you hide objects that have the orange style for example, and then generate a new object with that style, the last object would be visible. It doesn't align with the concept of a layer where everything in a layer can only be hidden or not.
Take for example Photoshop, where you're not allowed to draw on a hidden layer. That's what I attempted to do with scripting, but this thing was a show-stopper.

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Hi immortalx, yes MoI's styles are specifically designed to behave like that instead of how traditional layers behave. That's why I avoided using the term "Layer" there.

The big problem with traditional layers where the layer itself has its own on/off property is that it greatly restricts flexibility. You can no longer show just an individual object you have to show the layer and all other objects on it then get shown too.

That's a big limitation that I didn't want to repeat with MoI. In MoI it's individual objects that have a hide/show state, not the Style/Layer itself. The Scene browser lets you manipulate a set of objects with one scene browser item but you can use different types of sets in combination with each other, like "hide all curves" (Types section), "Show just the object named X" (Objects section), in addition to Show objects with Style=Red (Styles section). You can't do that with traditional layers.

> I mean if you hide objects that have the orange style for example, and then
> generate a new object with that style, the last object would be visible.

MoI back in version 2 used to emulate layer behavior a little more closely and would hide an object assigned to a style (by swatch click) where all of the other objects there are currently hidden. That changed in v3 to not do that anymore, I don't remember the specifics of why right now I'll have to review it.

... actually now that I have looked into it, that appears to be a bug that crept in when the selection dot was added in v3, not an intentional change. I'll see about restoring that behavior in v5.

- Michael

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Thanks for the reply Michael.

"The big problem with traditional layers where the layer itself has its own on/off property is that it greatly restricts flexibility. You can no longer show just an individual object you have to show the layer and all other objects on it then get shown too."

This has already been solved in most applications using nested layers.
In Blender for example the equivalent of layers are collections. You can have a collection with multiple objects, that you can individually show/hide, or show/hide the entire collection. Moreover, you can show/hide a single object's sub-geometry. And of course you can move objects between collections, or have multiple collections nested under another collection.
As you see, it adds tremendous flexibility for organization/selection/viewing, not to mention that it's the industry standard way for complex applications, and one that most people are familiar with.

All of that could work in conjunction with MoI's "types" concept, but with respect to the "active" layer. I'm not saying it's straightforward or easy to implement, but I'm sure that if you give it some thought it could turn out to be a very powerful feature.

Anyways, it's just a suggestion. Keep up the good work!

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