add: Silhouette command

This new command doesn't seem to be very reliable... Also note that it generates incomplete or no result when using it on solid primitives (cylinder, cone; box).


Petr

Thanks for all your hard work Michael! Still my favorite modeler, now even better! Looking forward to working with it.

Michael !

It is unbelivable ! This is an big present. Thanks :D

Yes!, HooRAH!

-Will

Feels great! I can hardly wait to dive in.
thanks,
eric

Can't wait to get home and download it!

These are fantastic and great new sets of tools Michael G.!

Cool, thanls Michael !!!

Not really sure what's the silouhette purpose, but I'll find :)
(get same kind of result that tyglik is talking about)

As the V2 beta cycle nearly end, I suppose surface continuity options will be 'only' added in the V3 ?

Wow! That's a lot of work, thanks!!

As Petr mentioned, the silhouette feature doesn't seem to work in the 3d view.
It appears to be working ok in orthogonal views though.

Marc

Lets remember we are beta testing it. The silouette command seems to not like "Sharp Edges" at this point. It will perform on smoothed silouettes. If you put the tiniest fillet on the box it sil's:

I suppose it is used for creating 3D "Plan views" of your objects for Illustrator or something. If I have edges, I dont need the tool to get that. :O

Hi Petr,

re: Silhouette

> This new command doesn't seem to be very reliable... Also
> note that it generates incomplete or no result when using
> it on solid primitives (cylinder, cone; box).

Actually, what you show there in the screenshot looks to be the correct and current expected result.

Right now the Silhouette command does not create duplicates of edges that are silhouettes, it only calculates "brand new" silhouettes that are internal pieces of curved surfaces.

The reason why is to avoid making duplicate curves when using it for AI format export.

The way AI export works, is it exports all curves and edges in the model as curves in the flattened AI file. If silhouette generated copies of edges in addition to the internal silhouettes, it would make it pretty easy to get duplicate curves if you just did a SaveAs to AI format.

I can probably put in an option for whether to duplicate edges that are silhouettes or not though, would that be useful for you? I don't think that it would do anything useful for AI export though so probably that option would be off by default.

- Michael

Hi BurrMan,

Yes I get the illustrator stuff, but I'm sure I can use it for other stuffs, like a quick way to add sci-fi details using silhouette as sweep rails etc ;)

Hi PaQ,

> Not really sure what's the silouhette purpose, but I'll find :)
> (get same kind of result that tyglik is talking about)

It's mainly for helping to get better export to AI format to 2D illustration programs.

Since it will be a while before there is a complete hidden-line vector generation in MoI I wanted to get this function in there to help out in the meantime.

For example if you export a cylinder to AI format, it exports existing edges in the model, so that means your AI file for a cylinder looks like this (this was done by drawing a cylinder, exporting to AI and then opening the AI file back into MoI):



So notice there that having only the model edges in the 2D output does not make for a very proper 2D illustration.

However, if you use the new Silhouette command on the cylinder first, it will generate the silhouettes on the curved parts of the cylinder. Then when you save to AI format after that (without moving the view in between silhouette generation and saving!) it will produce a 2D drawing like this:




That's still not a completely proper 2D drawing, you've got the seam edge in there which you probably don't want and it does not have things broken down into hidden and visible portions. But it is a major step forward because at least it has all the "raw parts" of the drawing in there so you have stuff to work with.


> As the V2 beta cycle nearly end, I suppose surface continuity
> options will be 'only' added in the V3 ?

Yeah those tend to be finicky things to work with, it is not going to be possible to have that included for v2 other than where it already exists like for Fillet and Blend.

- Michael

EDIT: looks like we posted at the same time!

But there seems to be some general questions from many people about what silhouette is for, so I wanted to have a more full explanation here with some examples anyway.

Hi Marc,

> As Petr mentioned, the silhouette feature doesn't seem to
> work in the 3d view.
> It appears to be working ok in orthogonal views though.

Actually it was working correctly in the screenshot that Petr showed there.

It does not currently try to duplicate edge curves that are also silhouettes, it only generates "new" silhouettes for the internal parts of curved surfaces.

See this previous post for a better description:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3000.18

If you do have an example where it is not working in the 3D view, could you please post it?

- Michael

Hi Burr,

> The silouette command seems to not like "Sharp Edges" at
> this point. It will perform on smoothed silouettes.

Yeah the part that seems to be confusing people is that it does not attempt to duplicate edge curves that are also silhouettes.

That's because all edges of a solid are already being written to an AI file if you do a "SaveAs" to AI format.

So if the Silhouette command added in curves that were duplicates of existing edges, it would be pretty easy for someone to end up with duplicate stacked up curves in their AI file.

But it sounds like I should probably put in an option for whether to extract silhouette edge curves also or not, that should be pretty easy to do.

- Michael

Hi PaQ,

> Yes I get the illustrator stuff, but I'm sure I can use it for
> other stuffs, like a quick way to add sci-fi details using
> silhouette as sweep rails etc ;)

Yeah the main purpose is Illustrator export, but maybe it could come in handy for generating a bunch of curves along a surface for other purposes.

The curves can tend to be somewhat chaotic in their actual 3D shape though.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I guess I did not understand it was meant to complement the AI export mechanism results.
I think I get it now, I will try this!

Maybe it could have been included directly in the AI Export command when solids are selected?

Very cool to have the camera angle adjustment in perspective!!

Marc

Hi Marc,

> Maybe it could have been automatically included directly
> in the AI Export command when solids are selected?

I've thought some about that, but there are a few complications.

First of all, silhouette generation on a complex model can be a somewhat time consuming process so it needs to be able to be canceled. Things that are like that tend to be more technically difficult for me to incorporate into the saving mechanism rather than having it as a separate command. So it would take me additional development time to make that happen.

Also there are actually some other uses for silhouette generation such as generating parting lines for mold making.

Finally, I'm still just not completely sure yet about how the UI for a full hidden line generation should be structured. I have some idea that there probably needs to be a process where you generate a line drawing and get to see it and possibly edit it in a special 2D "printed page" type display rather than only having it baked directly in to AI export.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the new beta!

>V2 is very close to being wrapped up, but I still have a little bit
>of work left for Sweep (for mitered corners) and probably Groups
>before it is all ready so there will still be at least one more beta
>to come after this one.

This is the bit that really interests me. Looking forward to groups if you can get it done.

Hi Michael,

Can't wait to give this beta a whirl!

> Also there are actually some other
> uses for silhouette generation such
> as generating parting lines for mold making.

Exactly what we use it for in our industry, maybe I could post an example.

Cheers