Hi Cal,

> I would think that polys, points, & edges give you more
> control over details(?)

Well, they pretty much do! But the problem is that you end up forced to work on that "detailed level" much of the time, trying to manage a large sea of points and edges.

If the object that you are trying to build has a strong 2D profile element to it, the NURBS modeling method allows you to do a lot of work with 2D curves and then cut your object with those curves. This is a very fast way of working for the kinds of shapes that are suitable for this kind of a thing, which tends to include a large amount of mechanical or industrial man-made type shapes.

An easy way to see this in action is to just look through the video tutorials here:
http://moi3d.com/1.0/docs/tutorials.htm

Those give a good overview of how quickly you can create industrial structured kinds of shapes using NURBS modeling. Try building any one of those shapes in a polygon modeler and you will be spending a lot more time wrestling with those details to get your final result.

For things like Character models, faces, stuff that is organic with a lot of wrinkles and things like that, those are things where the detailed control of polygons is very well suited for and they don't map well to a 2D profile driven type workflow, so those are things that tend to work better in a poly/sub-d type modeling system rather than NURBS.

Neither method is the perfect tool for every single kind of model - and that shouldn't really be a big surprised because the field of modeling is incredibly vast!


For mechanical shapes in addition to speed NURBS also gives you a high degree of accuracy since booleans and cutting operations work much more effectively and also accurately with NURBS models rather than with polygons.


But like I mentioned, the best method really depends a lot on your current task at hand...


- Michael

I am finding, more and more each day, the extent of "poly" type modelling one can actually do in MoI.

Ok, there are things where one can need to take the file into a poly app and finnesse still--especially with displacement painting---and, obviously render. But not a great deal.

Brian

Michael,

thanks for the insight, and MOI!
....I'm hooked....just need to save up. =)

I'm appreciating what I can do with it quickly.
Attached is a jar (300k .mov) I made in MOI, then rendered
& animated in C4D.


Brian, thanks for re-introducing me to this cool program!
I tried it 2yrs(?) ago, and didn't realize what it could do...
it looked deceptively simple...LOL.....now I know simple doesn't
mean incapable or powerless.....simple saves time & frustration.

MOI is simply great! =)

Cal

Hi Cal, that's a great result!

> now I know simple doesn't mean incapable or powerless.....
> simple saves time & frustration.

Yeah this is something that I kind of struggle against - it is easy to mistake that.

People are just accustomed to powerful programs also having a huge amount of complexity with them, that is kind of how things naturally drift towards. It took quite a lot of work to make MoI avoid this natural tendency.

- Michael

"that's a great result!" -Michael

Thanks! One thing just led to another...I'll
try to improve on it.

I hope you can continue to improve MOI while
still keeping it "simple". =)

Amazed that you are coding it by yourself.

BTW, if we have any requests, do we make them here
or is there a special link to a Wish List thread?

Thanks,
Cal

Hi Cal,

> BTW, if we have any requests, do we make them here
> or is there a special link to a Wish List thread?

You can either post them here, or if you want there is a wiki page for that which you can add to: http://moi3d.com/wiki/Wishlist, but you have to create a sign-in for the wiki to edit it (helps to cut down on spam).

If you post it here I can just put it on the wiki for you if you want.

- Michael

Brian,

great modeling, mate! What's the wingspan on that insect? =O
What's the genus & species, or the "common" name?

-Cal

It's a common name (on all 3D Forums)

It's a "Brinsfantasticaimaginitus"

Brian