Michael.

> These are not in yet but I am definitely trying to target them for v3. I've put in a fair amount of research time into N-sided blend already but it is a finicky area and I do not yet have anything that gives good enough results yet.


So if Solids++ doesn't get updated fairly soon, where does this leave things?

It sounds like too big a task for just one person to take on (you) :) and it seems to me that the only other option would appear to be a change of kernel within MoI, or is there some other way to get around this?


Martin (2).

Hi Martin, there is some work currently in progress in this particular area by Solids++, but I'm waiting for bug fixes to it before I'll know whether it's going to work well enough or not.

If it doesn't work well enough then I'll probably work on developing my own. That's not impossible, just quite a bit of work.

- Michael

Hi Michael!

I'm not sure I asked for this request before:




You know how you can control the 'start position' of a Blend or a Loft surface if they are made between closed surface edges.


I run into the need for this often, especially on more complex shapes. And by complex, I mean sometimes a simple bend.

I say to myself: First, wouldn't it be nice to be able to control some point in the middle of a Blend or Loft result surface - on an open surface?
And second, wouldn't it be nice to say, add any amount of control to-and-from points along each edge to tweak the result a little more?

This may already be part of your plans to add things like dual-bulge control and whatnot to Blends.

I think I saw a guy add this extra control to a blend or loft in a Rhino tutorial one time - and I did a double-take and thought "what the heck did he just do?".

This would have good uses... say a particular lumpy area or bump wants to appear but the rest of the Blend looks great... add a little tweaking point-set (like on the closed surface Blends) and thus a little control on the result. :-)

It's okay with me if this goes somewhere deep in the suggestion box. Because I'd still like to see Blending between edges made up of multiple (separate, but joined) surface edges, and that dual or Blend-bulge control thing...


Okay... idea done.



BTW, if I have time, I'd like to make this WIP my next tutorial: :-)



A plastic institution chair, but it's more subtly complex than it looks.

A special color for the generator curves
or maybe this is yet existing in the moi. ini ?

Hi Pilou,

> A special color for the generator curves
> or maybe this is yet existing in the moi. ini ?

I try not to use special fixed colors for objects in MoI to convey special information other than for selection, because there is already a feature where you can control curve and surface color yourself by assigning styles to them and using the styles as a way to visually distinguish different groups.

Every kind of special color that is used for a different purpose then makes it hard for that color to be used as a style color, and also if a curve would use a special color in some circumstances would it override the style color?

So that would kind of come into general conflict with the already existing feature that you can control curve colors by their style assignment.

- Michael

Hi Pilou, one thing that I do want to do in the future though is to have some different "display modes" that you could switch between which could override the regular display. Stuff like zebra stripes, and showing backfaces might work like that, and maybe a special color for generator curves could be set up as one of the things that you could have in one of those display modes.

- Michael

> display modes...


And.... something quick and easy to store and recall all those cool lighting mode combinations I use. ;-)

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!" (angels singing)


Hi Michael, hope you had a good Memorial weekend - just thought I sneak this one in (again.) ;-)

Hi Mike, well shearing and rotation are kind of different operations, so I'm not so sure about grouping it under rotation like that...

I think that there eventually be a "cage deformation" tool under Transform > Deform, and then you'll be able to do a shear by doing a minimal 4 point cage and then sliding 2 upper points over.

You can get that same effect right now by using flow, draw a base plane using Draw solid > Rectangle, then duplicate that and turn on control points, shift the upper 2 plane control points over to make a sheared rectangle, then you should be able to use Flow from the regular plane to the sheared plane to make a shear happen right now.

- Michael

Thanks Michael,

Whoa! You actually could foresee a "Cage" deformation tool in the future? ...that would be the next best thing to Flow.
Would we be able to re-orient the "cage" in 3D space separate from the object?

Yeah, didn't think the Rotation and Shear types were too related.
And yes, I tried the Flow method of shearing today just for fun, works great!

However, as I've seen in a demonstration (by another app), having a Shear tool that works like MoI's Rotate and Move have the potential to yield ungodly amounts of precision.
Plus you could use it within a structure, such as on a selected bunch of control points, or use it just on a shape, say in the middle of a Loft while it has history.

Hi Mike,

> Whoa! You actually could foresee a "Cage" deformation tool in the future? ...that
> would be the next best thing to Flow.

Yeah I think it will eventually be the third tool that goes under Transform > Deform.



> Would we be able to re-orient the "cage" in 3D space separate from the object?

I don't know any specific details about it yet, it's still a ways off from being designed.

- Michael

Thanks Michael, good luck!

I'm still holding out for a circular selection function...

Hi Michael,

I think you mentioned that it may be possible to add or remove isocurve control elements (or row of grid points) within a surface, basically allowing for more or less definition in that surface.

With that idea, I realized that it might be possible to move the position of the "seam" on a closed surface without disturbing the surface... or maybe I saw this somewhere.

It's not possible now, but would be useful for times when you needed to use Blend to close the open end of a closed surface, among other things.


Could this be a feature nestled within some other feature?


So, a way to re-adjust the position of the seam on a closed surface... possible?

Uh oh... I think I just asked for the '3D' version to moving the (start/end) seam point in a closed curve.

(back-burner, just an idea)

Thanks

Hi Mike, I do want to add a "relocate closed surface seam" mechanism, but it will probably have to be a specialized tool to do it, I don't really see how it would be bundled in to some other already existing function... Or do you have a particular feature that you were thinking of that would include this as some kind of extension to it?

- Michael

Michael,

I do see where it could use a specific tool command. Especially if you could apply it to closed curves as well as closed surfaces.

Not sure which menu beside 'Edit'.

Maybe it would start life as a text command like "Rebuild"?

Thanks,
Mike

For background, I am coming from Rhino, I am actually going alternating between them. And I am very used to use the keyboard to type commands instead of clicking them. In that sense, MoI is a bit more a hindrance to me.

To add to this wishlist:

1/ The "Offset Curve" command could accept negative numbers for inward and positive numbers for outward direction.

2/ Long shortcuts: Some commands, either builtin or addon scripts, have the same name as Rhino commands, and I happily hit Tab to use them. It would be fabulous to be able to assign long shortcuts to commands. For script files (in the command directory), this is obviously a no-brainer, but the key to "script:..." lines in the options could be longer.

A format like: "Key | Long | Command" would be ideal. The Key works as usual (and can be empty), and Long would be searched in addition to the commands directory if Tab is hit.

3/ Just to ask for too much : A list drop down as in Rhino for the possible commands would win extra karma point for Michael.

Thanks for considering these ideas!

Ditto


** And I hope this thread, and my posting, still gets some attention and much support ;)

Hi Ditto,

re #1 -
> The "Offset Curve" command could accept negative numbers for inward and positive numbers for outward direction.

The problem with that is that open curves (like say a line for example) do not particularly have any specific "inward" or "outward" directions to them.

So that's why it asks you to pick a point on which side you want to offset to, that makes the command work with all kinds of curves and not only on closed curves alone.


re: #2 -
> 2/ Long shortcuts:

I think you're asking for the equivalent of a "command alias" in Rhino, is that correct? That's like a short name that you type in but that can internally expand to a longer name.

I wouldn't really see putting a type-in alias right in the shortcut keys UI since just in general MoI is not so focused on typing in command names, but I can probably set up a section of the moi.ini file where you could enter in some aliases.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Sorry, my mind was spinning tonight after discovering some new Lighting Options... ;-)

- I know you may have plans for enhancements to the lighting mechanism as well as for UI control in the distant future...
aside from the possibility of environment mapping, are there any other possibilities, like additional lights, specular additions, ambient occlusion or anything else that the standard DirectX engine may provide. Of course, all things optional to allow MoI to work well with older cards as well as exploiting the limitless powers of new ones.

- I notice that MoI's Viewport rendering is done with polys, as you can see the triangles within certain surfaces.
When I go to export to a non-NURBS format and choose a non-lines view while using the option for 4-sided N-gon output, the viewport image looks really nice!
So it's there and it works... Would you ever include a standard viewport option for rendering quads or poly+quads in normal use?

- The New and Improved-Improved-Blend... with the ability to add control shapes along the surface-route and those "rolled pencil" (?) perpendicular control shapes you were talking about. Hmmm. (just keep it on your list)

- Shearing... it's not just for sheep anymore. I've put a little thought into the viable need for this transformation, still - I keep finding myself wanting to go for the "shear" tool (or handlebar), with objects, yes, can be done with Flow, but I find myself wanting to do it with selected control points... It think it's a thing AI, PS, & Corel users are spoiled with.


Okay, all backburner, I'm actually anticipating being able to cut and paste (or export pdf and import) the MoI viewport as you've been working on. Now that is going to be cool!

Thanks.

Hi Mike,

> aside from the possibility of environment mapping, are there any other possibilities, like additional lights,
> specular additions, ambient occlusion or anything else that the standard DirectX engine may provide.

Could you maybe clarify by what the "additional lights" part is about? MoI does currently generate a environment lighting map using 12 light sources to generate the map, it could be possible to have some other methods for generating the light map in the future, but it takes quite a bit of effort to do nice quality lighting and also figure out good controls for adjusting it.

Other stuff like ambient occlusion are difficult to do without using shaders and requiring kind of higher end cards.


> So it's there and it works... Would you ever include a standard viewport option for
> rendering quads or poly+quads in normal use?

Yeah it could be possible in the future to do some work for bringing in polygon models. But having rendering of them in place is I'm afraid only one small piece of the puzzle, selection interaction, UI and workflow planning and things like that are much more problematic than just display itself. One general problem with having mesh geometry at model time is having 2 very different kinds of models which don't interact with one another really well. It leads to problems like someone opens a polygon model file and then draws a sphere in MoI and then wonders why those 2 objects won't boolean with each other.


> The New and Improved-Improved-Blend... with the ability to add control shapes along the
> surface-route and those "rolled pencil" (?) perpendicular control shapes you were talking about.
> Hmmm. (just keep it on your list)

Yup, it's still on the list!


Re: Shearing
I'm still kind of hoping that a flexible enough cage edit command would be able to do this job rather than having a totally separate shear command.

- Michael