I did a search and see that there are many threads on the subject. I get the impression that MOI might not have best tool set for this type of work? Some people showed cars they have done in MOI but frankly they looked not very professional.
Now the ultimate software for car design (non engineering designers) is AD Alias. I can't afford it. That leaves Rhino and MOI for me. I already use Maya software and have made enough cars in it but to have 100% control over surface and flow Nurbs is better.
So my question is, if MOI is not the best tool for concept car design, do you think Rhino has better tools for that kind of work? or is there daylight between Rhino and Alias too? I am not talking about class A surface etc, it just needs to look perfect for renders.
Note- By concept car I mean, I already know how the shape of the car will look as I have sketched and explored the form in Maya.
MOI is much, much more potent as the first impression and the examples you mention suggest.
I come from polymodelling and, as you, needed a Nurbs tool to have "100% control over surface and flow"
Tempted by the very affordable price I decided to give MOI a try. It took some time to rewire my brain to get accustomed to the pretty different modelling approach of a nurbs modeller.
But the more I worked with MOI the more I got impressed and delighted by its absolutely brilliant architecture and worklflow and more than once while working the sentence "I love you Michael" (the mastermind behind MOI) escaped me when discovering one more of these little genious time saving functionalities which make it such a pleasure to work with this tool.
No other software allows me to manifest my ideas at such an effortless speed and in such a tidy enviroment as MOI.
If you want to model automobiles with hundreds of individual parts which need to be organized in groups you may miss a more elaborate object manager.
In your case I would just download the trial version and give it a try for a while. Maybe you will be the one who takes automobile design with MOI to a whole new level ! ;-)
Hi Curious - it kind of depends on the specifics of the individual design. But MoI is missing a few continuity related tools that are in Rhino, like Rhino's MatchSrf command. So if those are important for your particular design then Rhino could be a better fit.
Vehicles can kind of fall in a gray area between mechanical and organic shapes, and MoI is somewhat more focused on the mechanical side of things currently, mostly because organic shape design with NURBS is an advanced and difficult area of NURBS modeling and can be pretty finicky. It has a higher learning curve.
It can often be better to do very organic shapes using sub-d modeling rather than NURBS. NURBS modeling is very strong when much of your design can be defined by 2D profile curves and boolean operations, that's the area where MoI is more focused on currently.
>> MoI is missing a few continuity related tools that are in Rhino<<
Could you forward some specific details in which cases MOIs modelling toois are less capable
than Rhino´s ? Do you refer to a sort of enhanced blending modes or are there modelling
tools in Rhino which MOI is missing entirely ?
Cheap solution for really good surfaces you need virtual shape (VSR) for Rhino, unfortunately autodesk buyed it and now you must pay 10000€ a year instead of on time 1000 € for VSR and Rhino.
Now you must take Alias Designer, Solidworks or Catia....Rhino alone has the same surface problems despite the better tools.
>>I am not talking about class A surface etc, it just needs to look perfect for renders<<
It looks like Curious goal is not the ultimate software for hyperaccurat car modelling purpoeses but a Nurbs tool to build realistic render models. MOI may miss some very sophisticated surface blending functionalities but the brilliant worklflow and extremly fluid workflow, in my eyes. is a strong argument to at least give it an extensive test run.
Hi Tom, well like I wrote above probably MatchSrf is the biggest missing one. There are other techniques you can use though.
Building a patchwork of surfaces instead of using solids is a much more difficult and advanced type of NURBS use, which is why it isn't a big focus area for MoI currently. The place where NURBS really shines and is easy to use is for constructing objects from 2D profile curves and using booleans. MoI is currently more focused on that area where NURBS delivers the biggest benefits in comparison to sub-d modeling.
Modeling organic forms that are not easily expressed just by 2D profile curves tends to be an area that works better in sub-d modeling.
"Amazing what "normal" public progs can do today!"
And they are available for everyone ! I see problems at all to model cars like
in the video in MOI - on the contrary I doubt if there is another software which
could do at such a speed - surely no polymodeller ...
