I'm definitely THIRSTY for this now!


One question, Michael - how does the lighting look if you're inside the model??

A lot of my models - buildings, docking bays, etc., require me to be inside the model for some bits - will it be like it is now, still lit inside or out?


-Will

Hi Will,

> A lot of my models - buildings, docking bays, etc., require
> me to be inside the model for some bits - will it be like it is
> now, still lit inside or out?

Yeah, it's the same as currently - basically it works like that so that objects that are open surfaces will look proper rather than having an arbitrary half of the surface all darkened.

- Michael

Looks fantastic, Michael. I'm digging the soft specular highlights.

I just want to add that I second Danny's desire to see black surface edges. I thought it would have been a checkbox option or something, but making it available in a config file seems accessible enough. Wouldn't it be more functional to have surface curves black and free standing curves colored according to their style (especially if you add the option to display/alter isoline densities in the future)? Blah, this is probably a discussion that was held earlier on in the forums. I'll look for it. Anyway, great job!

Hi vodkamartini,

re: Black edges - yes there was some previous discussion of that earlier here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2801.28

But note that you can get black edges right now if you want, just select all edges (quick way is to go to the scene browser / Types and click on the text part for the "Edges" entry), and assign them to a style that has color=black.

In MoI edges can be assigned their own styles and names, and be hidden and/or locked same as a regular object.

You're probably not used to that since Rhino does not have the ability to do that.

The same thing applies to faces as well, for example you can assign different styles to face sub-selections without needing to break it apart into individual surfaces.

- Michael

Hi Ella - I've added another option called "Fixed light positions" which when enabled makes the lights stay fixed in place instead of moving along with the camera as they normally do.

I think that combined with the "Hemispheric" lighting option should give you a mud-like matte style.

Depth-cueing will have to wait for some future version.

- Michael

Oh, wonderful! I was assuming that that'd be a v3 thing. Great! And yeah, I understand depth cueing being a completely different issue, being, you know, not a lighting thing at all. :-) Thanks.

/Ella

Hi Ella, here is what that Hemispheric style + "Fixed light positions" looks like:





- Michael

Hi Michael,

> But note that you can get black edges right now
> if you want, just select all edges (quick way is to
> go to the scene browser / Types and click on the
> text part for the "Edges" entry), and assign them
> to a style that has color=black.

That's a possibility, the only thing is, every time you create new bodies and preform Boolean operations you have to go through the procedure again.

The reason for black edges is not purely for aesthetics, it gives a positive contrast between surface colour and edges, you could say it's a modeling aid, visually it gives a clear indication of the surface structure and shows up any minor discrepancies better.

I tend to find having the edges the same colour as the body colour a bit distracting. There is this option in other modeling programs.

Will we have the option to have default colour for edges, because I see your procedure above in reverse being easier, edges are default colour and if a style is wanted for some edges then you can isolate that body select all edges using 'type' and assign a style.

Just one more thing, I still can't think why you would want to assign a name to an edge, does anyone do it ?

Cheers

>>>Just one more thing, I still can't think why you would want to assign a name to an edge, does anyone do it ?


Could it be "Attachment_edge_1" in an assembly?

> The reason for black edges is not purely for aesthetics, it
> gives a positive contrast between surface colour and edges,
> you could say it's a modeling aid, visually it gives a clear
> indication of the surface structure and shows up any minor
> discrepancies better.

I can't really think of a case where black edges would show discrepancies better.

Do you have an example where you can show that?


> Will we have the option to have default colour for edges,
> because I see your procedure above in reverse being easier,

Yeah the way I was describing above is just how you can set it up right now if you want.

I am going to be looking next into some methods for overriding different attributes of the display so you could have the option to for example have all edges drawn in black instead of in their style colors.


> Just one more thing, I still can't think why you would
> want to assign a name to an edge, does anyone do it ?

Probably not right now, but if you find yourself needing to select the same set of edges many times, then you can assign them a name to more easily select them with the browser the next time you need to do it.

By having edges behave simliar to a full object (being able to have a name, style, hide, lock, etc...), it gives it this ability to participate as a "named selection set" if you need that.

Similarly it has been useful to be able to select edges and hide them to get them out of the way visually the same as you would hide other objects to get them out of the way. That's all part of having edges behave in a similar way as a regular object.

- Michael

Thanks, Michael. As Danny mentioned, the method you suggested requires one to constantly reassign new edges. I realize it was only a temporary solution and that you will allow us to override the edge display, so all's well in the end. The ability to do those kinds of selections is very cool, btw. I think you've done a great job with the organizer.

I agree with Danny about the lack of contrast when surfaces and edges share the same color. It would definitely be nice to show those edge colors in a wireframe mode, but with surface shading on it tends to distract me (it feels like the edges are highlighted/selected). I'm curious what you think the advantage is. In terms of functionality, I think it's nicer to have surface edges black and free standing curves/objects colored because I can immediately see where the generating curves are, or curves that I may have extracted off of surface edges via copy/paste, etc. I don't mind if surfaces are assigned the same color as their generating curves, but I think the edges of that surface shouldn't be. Maybe this could be a toggle? I dunno.

Anyway, I like the reverse methodology Danny suggested. Edges display as black until you manually assign them a style. It just seems like a better default, in my humble opinion.

Hi vodkamartini,

> I'm curious what you think the advantage is.

Check out this previous post for an example of an advantage when it comes to selection:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2801.28

Notice that having the edges colored, when an object is selected there is still some visual indicator of its style.

The same thing applies if you want to have a kind of wireframe view where the surfaces are hidden and only the edges are showing - if the edges did not show in the style colors you would not get any idea of the style when viewing in that mode.

It also just generally opens the door for more kinds of styling in the future like possibly being able to have styles that had additional stuff that could affect edges like brush strokes or sketch-like drawing styles. If edges stayed black it would make them sort of "dead". If they participate in styling in a normal way then it opens the door for more kinds of effects to be easily applied to objects in the future.


> Anyway, I like the reverse methodology Danny suggested. Edges
> display as black until you manually assign them a style.

That would have some bad side effects with other parts of the style mechanism - currently when you select a solid, the style property that is reported back to you is the combination of all the styles assigned to its sub-objects, which for solids is all of its faces and edges.

If edges did not get assigned the same style when setting the style of a selected solid, then the style property for that solid would be reported as "Various styles", since it would have faces on one style and edges on another style - that's not bad to be able to set manually but it is not a good thing to do by default.

It would especially be weird to set the style of a solid to something like "Red" in the style dropdown from the object properties panel, but then have it say "Various styles" instead of "Red" as the current property value. That would be the side effect from doing what you mention here.


Having edges participate in styles the same as faces makes things behave in a more uniform and predictable manner, and just sets things up better to have additional kinds of effects in the future. That's mostly why it is set up in the current way.


But today I should be working on some methods to override the default, so that you could have either faces or edges displayed in a fixed color of your choice rather than showing in their style color.

- Michael

I wonder if this could tie in with some sort of Parent/Child scheme? Along the lines of booleans and the reaction of the styles. I know you had already discussed this and didnt have any particular idea/method, like thinking through asking for a setting to enable some kind of parent/child interation, Just shooting it out there.

Just noticed that the boolean face retains the style of the original object!!! By bad.

Hi Burr, yup when you do a boolean the styles of the original objects are preserved.

That's so you can do things like construct a knob, assign it the style you want to render with at the end, then replicate the knob, then do a boolean with a larger base object and through all those steps the styles are preserved.

So because of that you can have a chance to set your style early on and have it replicate through various modeling steps so that you don't have to do it all at the end by picking possibly a whole bunch of little fragments, although you can still do it that way if you want.

I am going to try and put in an option so that you can turn that off if you want though, since some people are used to working in other systems that do not allow having different styles on child objects.

- Michael

I must have been mistaken. I thought I remembered a thread with Danny where the Booleans were taking on the style of "One", and merging....But I prefer the way it is, so no request from me.

Thanks

Hi Michael,

> I can't really think of a case where black
> edges would show discrepancies better.
> Do you have an example where you can show that?

I haven't got a copy of colored MoI to see the difference, so this is a rough indication of what I mean.
Small surfaces are easily seen in the model with the black edges.



> Notice that having the edges colored,
> when an object is selected there is
> still some visual indicator of its style.

Assuming the edges are black, Is it possible upon selection the edges show the style colour, same goes for wireframe display.

> It also just generally opens the door for
> more kinds of styling in the future like possibly
> being able to have styles that had additional
> stuff that could affect edges like brush
> strokes or sketch-like drawing styles.

That's all good stuff, that would be for a final visual static output, I wouldn't be modeling with sketchy style edges.
I think when you implement these thats when we can apply colors and line styles to the edges.

> If edges did not get assigned the same style
> when setting the style of a selected solid, then
> the style property for that solid would be
> reported as "Various styles", since it would
> have faces on one style and edges on another
> style - that's not bad to be able to set manually
> but it is not a good thing to do by default.

The way you have Booleans set up by default this will happen anyway, won't it ?

Just a quick question on this, when selecting multi coloured bodies will the edges show up the colour of the surface it represents ?
what happens to the shared edge of 2 different coloured surfaces ?

> But today I should be working on some methods
> to override the default, so that you could have
> either faces or edges displayed in a fixed color
> of your choice rather than showing in their style color.

That's great Michael, thanks!

Working with other 3d modelers, I hear their comments, especially when using new software, and maybe other users on the forum are reading this thread are saying, 'what's the big deal' but using something for 8 to 12 hrs straight, the little things start to stand out and then become annoying. Having those options will please a lot of users, I think.

Can't wait for the release, It reminds me as kid when we got rid of the B&W TV and got a colour :)

Cheers

Hi Danny,

> I haven't got a copy of colored MoI to see the difference, so
> this is a rough indication of what I mean.
> Small surfaces are easily seen in the model with the black edges.

I guess it could possibly be a problem in a few particular areas, but it doesn't seem to be that bad with the default lighting, which looks like this in MoI:



Selecting an object causes the surfaces to become much brighter, which changes the contrast with the edges by quite a bit:




I'll make the option available so you can switch it if you want, but it just does not seem to be a big enough problem to have it set up that way by default though.

Also in the 3D view as you move around shading will change, which helps to make the edges to be seen.


> Assuming the edges are black, Is it possible upon selection
> the edges show the style colour, same goes for wireframe display.

That sounds kind of strange, it would probably be difficult to come up with a sane UI for controlling options for that level of things mutating and changing with different states.

It's a much more simple situation when wireframe looks the same as the current edge display.


> That's all good stuff, that would be for a final visual static output,
> I wouldn't be modeling with sketchy style edges.

Even so you'll probably want to be able to see something close to the final rendered output in a real-time view so you can do things like adjust lights, fine tune the view angle, etc... which are good to do in a real time display.

So there are definitely benefits to having things able to be set up in the working view to display like that, even if you are not going to be using it for full time modeling.


> I think when you implement these thats when we can apply
> colors and line styles to the edges.

It's better to have things set up now to support it, that way when it comes time to add those things they will fit in more naturally rather than needing to kind of rip out an incompatible system and replace it.


> The way you have Booleans set up by default this will happen
> anyway, won't it ?

It will, but at the boolean time. It would be very strange for it to happen at "style assignment" time instead. (to get back a current style property of "Various styles" after having just assigned Style = Red to a solid for example).


> Just a quick question on this, when selecting multi coloured
> bodies will the edges show up the colour of the surface it represents ?
> what happens to the shared edge of 2 different coloured surfaces ?

Edges don't really "represent" a surface, they are another kind of entity that makes up a solid just like surfaces are one kind of entity.

Edges in MoI have their own style properties assigned to them, so when you edit a face and change the face's style, it doesn't change the edge style, those are separate things.


> Having those options will please a lot of users, I think

Yeah, I think with the options that I am adding now you should be able to get what you want.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

> That sounds kind of strange, it would probably
> be difficult to come up with a sane UI for
> controlling options for that level of things
> mutating and changing with different states.

This is how it works in NX.



-

Hi Danny, what happens in NX if you hide just some of the faces? Do some of the edges change color but not all of them?

What happens in NX if you have some faces colored differently than others, what does it do for the wire colors in that case?

- Michael