That was actually fairly complicated and I'd never figured out that one by myself. Great stuff.

A whole big bunch of thank-yous to you, lyes. You da man! :-)

video links dead

Hi lyes,

Could you please describe how to setup blueprints in MoI.

Hi ket,

> Could you please describe how to setup blueprints in MoI.

You can use the View > Image command to place reference images into the viewport:




Some details on it here:
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference5.htm#image

And also see these previous posts for some descriptions on different ways to place the images:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2501.14
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2501.15
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1982.6

- Michael

Great tutorial. I gave it go, but could not follow along - got crap results and gave up. You got skills, man!

Too awesome - if it wasn't late and a Tuesday night I'd be stuck into this already.

The video download links do seem to be dead. Any chance you could fix this or upload to Vimeo/Youtube?

EDIT: for anyone wanting to download the videos, open the "network" panel in Chrome. As you press play, a working link for the MP4 will appear - you can visit this link to download. I would recommend downloading these and playing them in slow motion (e.g. using VLC) as it makes them much easier to follow.

I'm also wondering how you achieved the breaking up of the lines at 1:28 on the "bumper" video. I ended up using trim and inserting a trim point at the point where the lines intersected.

Sorry for the multiple posts, but I'm quite stuck.

For the "Front Wing and Door" tutorial around 2:59, my projected curve looks quite different from the tutorial.

Mine:







Theirs:




I'm specifically referring to the vertical alignment of the projected curve in the second image, which seems to be right off. Can anybody clue me in on where I might have gone wrong?

Hi Aaron, sorry it's kind of difficult to understand that - could you possibly post a 3DM model file of your model so far so that we can take a look at your curves directly and be able to zoom in and inspect them and so forth? That may help to better understand what you are seeing.

- Michael

Sorry about that Michael (and thank you for replying).

I have attached the file (with images etc.) for you as requested.

Hi Aaron, thanks for posting the file, that helps a lot.

So from what I can tell it looks like you've got a difference in the projected curve because your surface is kind of flatter than the one from the tutorial, I think the one from the tutorial kind of curves out more.

A projection on to a more curved and rounded type shape will make a different result than a projection on to a flatter type shape.

Here's an area where I kind of noticed the difference:



Your surface there seems to be kind of straighter and flatter than guide curve that you've got at the end there.

Did you possibly do a sweep using only the profile from the opposite side of the surface and not including the profile from the side the arrow is pointing to above to make the sweep result match that end curve?

- Michael

Hello Michael,

Thank you for the feedback. I think you're correct about this. HOWEVER - if you check out 3:36 on this video, it looks like the screenshot below:



This is quite close to what I have.

When I use a loft, how can I get it to take these vertical curves into account (i.e. so that the lofted surface would actually be touching these curves)?

Hi Aaron,

> (i.e. so that the lofted surface would actually be touching these curves)?

You can use the Network command instead of Loft if you want to have curves in 2 different directions be applied to the resulting surface.

Network is kind of like doing a loft through 2 directions at the same time - you select all the curves at once and then run Network. The curves need to form a kind of grid pattern.


Or you can also use Sweep in some kinds of cases as well - sweep drags a profile along guide rails, and you can select multiple profiles instead of only 1 profile and that will make the profiles kind of morph from one to the other as it is dragging along the rails.


But both Network and Sweep can use curves going in 2 directions while the Loft command only uses curves going in 1 direction.

- Michael

Hi Aaron,

> This is quite close to what I have.

So maybe the area where your surface is different is more in this area here, possibly:


But yeah definitely a change in the overall surface shape will produce somewhat different projected results.

- Michael

Thank you Michael.

Network definitely gave me a closer shape.



I have noticed that when I move the curves around it significantly changes the projection too. I haven't quite got this bit down yet, but it's getting there.

I just wanted to follow this up by saying I got it working in the end ;)




The problem was the second most curve from the top. After realising I could drag this around (and have the surface/projection update), I figured out that it was too far towards the top line, and was creating too much of a slope as a result (this was painfully obvious now that I see it).

Thank you again for your help Michael.

Sorry to bug everyone again.

I was going strong until about 4:15.

What I had been doing up until that point was moving control points around on the lofted curves. This was updating the surface so that my projections matched up nicely.

Then I tried to add another projection + trim and this happened (see attached image).

As you can see there is some weird artifacts being generated, and I'm not getting the trim as desired. I'm pretty sure this is due to me pulling the control curves in ways I wasn't supposed to. However, I can see BLYESS doing this as well (although not nearly as much). I also went back to using a loft with loose, as this seemed to be the option tat was used for the tutorial (see around 2:21).

Sorry to impose like this, but could someone take a look an recommend what I need to do (even if it's another tutorial to improve my skills)?

Hi Aaron,

> Then I tried to add another projection + trim and this happened

That's usually a sign that the trimming curve is not quite intersecting the edge of the surface you're trying to trim.

Zoom up to this area shown in the picture.


You can see the trimming curve is not quite there.


Make that end a bit longer so it intersects the edge of the surface and it should trim fine.
Another thing, if you're projecting those trimming curves along one of the x,y or z axis you can just
do a trim straight up, it's not necessary to project the curves onto the surface then trim.

Cheers

Yup, like Danny says if a curve does not extend all the way to the edge of the surface it will cause that kind of problem.

Basically it ends up kind of cutting a kind of infinitely thin slot in the surface instead of actually dividing the surface into 2 separate pieces.

Then the display mesher does not really expect to deal with edges arranged in collapsed slots like that and that causes those display artifacts.

- Michael

Bloody hell - I can't believe it was that simple!

Thank you again Danny and Michael.