I would suggest Blender. Yes....I know...most people hate the interface or think that it is too difficult, but it has been growing a ton in the last few years. If you invest a little time and do some tutorials, you can do amazing things. It has a pretty decent sculpt mode (ala ZBrush) and is a very capable subD modeler. Oh...and it's free.

Once you learn the workflow in Blender, you'll be very satisfied that you put in the effort as it is a very fast program to work with.

I use Silo regulalry for my production work, in the toy industry.
I build models for prototypes to show clients.
But as you would think, it is a bit tough to use for some solids type shapes,
like trains and cars where something like MOI3d would be better to use.

I have just recently added MOI3d into my production work, after a year of
practicing with the bets versions.

I think I'm now better off with both in my toolbox.

They don't work in exchange of one another. meaning if I start
a model in one, I cant import/export for any real use in the other
software.

How would you decide which one to use in the toy modeling situation?

And Blender does look good - I was checking that out for the renderer but thought Silo was the easiest, from what people say, modeler in subd. If Blender is just as fast it makes sense to stay with it, too.

Anyone else have any experience and/or recommendations?

Thanks again,

- A

I make the decision on what to use based on the object.
if its a character, then I usually go silo
if it is a hard bodied object, like a train, I will go with moi3d.
but I have used silo in the past for both character/organic and hard surfaced.

Hi angeliclight,

Definitely MoI and Silo can be a great combination because they have such different approaches to modeling and strengths in different areas.

As you seem to already know, Silo's strengths are in organic type modeling.

MoI's strengths are more in mechanical/industrial type shapes.

But from what you are describing (you say you aren't doing organic shapes at all), I would think that you would want to focus on using MoI for those types of models.

It is difficult to say for certain without seeing some images or sketches of the types of models that you want to construct. It would be easier to give you a lot more specific advice with some more specific targets.

you wrote:
> Would there be better solutions out there?

Well, SketchUp is really great for pretty normal style architectural type work. You should definitely check it out, probably at least some portion of your buildings would probably be easiest to do there.

But again, it depends on what kind of buildings you want to do...


Really your best bet is to pick some representative models and try building them in each of these different modelers that you are interested in, so that you can see which one suits you best. There is not really any substitute for that.

- Michael

Thank you so much for all the help so far!

Hi Michael,

This is interesting because I too have been pondering these same kind of questions?

I bought Silo awhile ago because it was supposed to be very easy to learn.
I'm sure that it is "if" you're used to doing SubD modeling, but I'm still unable to grasp the workflow & how to use it properly.
I think part of my "SubD learning problem" is because I've started out into CAD & 3D by learning with MoI & Rhino.
And because MoI is so straight forward, intuitive & easy to use, I found Silo tends to remind me of using Rhino, lots of Keyboard & Mouse clicks to do anything!
Wish there was a SubD program that worked just like MoI does!

In my CAD-3D-SubD ignorance I'd just assumed it'd be easy to somehow combine any MoI NURBS items with Silo made items.
This might well be true for those with more experience, but being so new to all of this, I still haven't managed to combine or produce anything as yet.

As a Jeweller, most of my work was hand carving designs in wax for casting into precious metal.
Here's some examples in wax of what I've previously hand carved.

My main aim now is to be able to produce similar designs, but by using just CAD/CAM.
Obviously these designs consist of both organic & geometric forms combined into one item.
The organic being the head or face section & the geometric being the accurate band dimensions & ring size.

I'm guessing that my answer is to just keep persevering with the learning of Silo & SubD?
So can anyone with experience in combining both MoI & Silo models together into one offer me some detailed advice on how's the best way go about it?

regards Colin

subd modelers are a really great tool for quickly designing basic volumetric shapes. You can often manipulate a shape faster in subd than you can in Nurbs. Then import the wireframe to Moi for use as a 3D reference to model your buildings accurately...

jonah

Hi Colin, yes I'm afraid that in general the "ease of use" of subd modeling tends to get rather exaggerated.

Subd tends to be quite heavy on a lot of fine tuning adjustments and point manipulations in 3D space.

Although the Silo authors have done a great job at their implementation, it is still by its nature a quite detail oriented thing and just takes a pretty substantial amount of time and especially practice before it will begin to feel more natural.

Actually the type of designs that you show there (which are very cool by the way!) are probably better to do with displacement-type brush stroke painting rather than subd vertex type modeling.

That's where you focus on painting-like brush strokes across your model, carving depressions or raising ridges with your strokes.

I believe Silo implements this as well, but ZBrush and Mudbox are different packages that are focused very much on just that style of modeling.

Possibly using MoI to model your base band shape and then exporting that into ZBrush for displacement painting might be your best approach for that type of thing.

- Michael

Hi Jonah,

So in this case, I'd be better off to first do the organic parts in Silo, then import their wire frames back into MoI & finish doing the ring design from there?
OK, Thanks for that, I'll give it a try & see how I go.

regards Colin

Which leads us to the question ..... will V2 have solutions to mesh export that make it easier to
carry on in Zbrush ? More subd able meshes ?
Peter

Hi Michael,

Thanks for that info, it kind of confirms what I'd suspected & had found so far.

I'd only recently been looking a Zbrush & had been wondering if it might be the better option for me?
Thanks again, think I'll download the trial version & see how that pans out for me.
If Zbrush works out easy enough for me to learn & use, then that'd save me a heap of mucking around within Silo.

regards Colin

Hi Peter,

> Which leads us to the question ..... will V2 have solutions to mesh export that
> make it easier to carry on in Zbrush ? More subd able meshes ?

So far several people have been using MoI export into Zbrush successfully.

Are you having a problem with your exports currently? If you could post an example I could see what is going wrong in your particular situation.

In general it seems like other people have had the most success with exporting from MoI as an OBJ file using Output: Quads & Triangles. ZBrush does not handle n-gon output quite properly, so make sure to switch that off and you should be fine.

As far as I know typically the mesh that is used in ZBrush is then painted on directly, it usually does not have sub-d applied to it first...

If you want to have a sub-d type smoothing applied to your mesh (which kind of shrinks things down and actually alters the shape of your model), your best bet is to manually create that particular type of mesh in a sub-d modeler instead of in MoI, that is not likely to change in MoI v2.

- Michael

Hi Colin, I kind of doubt that you will find ZBrush very simple to use neither, but probably the overall mechanism of painting type operations will be easier than 3d point manipulation type stuff.

It is probably a better place for you to spend time on than subd modeling because it should ultimately provide a much quicker and smoother workflow for the type of things you are showing there, once you do get comfortable with it.

- Michael

Hi Michael !
Yes I use the quad and triangle setup and the results are not bad at all..
It just needs an awfull lot of dividing and the resulting polygon count is pretty high !
I just did a fast example of a ring in moi and a fast render in Kerkythea... to show that
there is quite some deformation possible !
Peter

Hi Peter, it looks like that should work pretty well!

One other thing is you may want to use the "Divide larger than" setting when exporting from MoI to cause the exported mesh to be diced up into smaller pieces.

You can put a distance into that "Divide larger than" setting, and any polygons larger than that size will be broken down into smaller pieces.

So for example, if you set "Divide larger than: 0.5" - any polygon larger than 0.5 units in size will be further subdivided during the export from MoI.

- Michael

Yes Michael thank you !
I had that problem with the car too !
But its a good way of sub d ing things more into a zbrush friendly shape.... !
Thanks
Peter

Sorry. I wrote that just before you posted the images and description of those character rings. For something like that, i would do as Michael suggested. Model a single surface Nurbs shank, export as quads to Silo, then add extra geometry (extruding, spinning edges, etc) to build the basic volume of the face. Then sculpt the fine character details...

In a general way (and reading a post about using Silo/Moi for architectural purposes), then i suggest roughing out a shape in subd. Since you also have Rhino you have a another set of excellent mesh refining tools. So you could easily boolean a Moi mesh together with a Silo mesh, then use Rhino tools to adjust the transition area. Or even send it backwards to Silo again for smoothing with the sculpt tools...

jonah

My currently basic apps are--
PhotoshopCS3
Carrara6.1Pro
MoI
3D Brush (THE zb alternative!)
Hexagon(The updates currently due should be wow!)

Put into my "disapointed" list are
Silo
Amapi7.52
ViaCAD

Colin, definatly try 3DBrush out before you try ZBrush. much more affordable and easier to use.
http://www.3d-brush.com/