Yeah, cage edit would be awesome!

Marc

> MoI does currently generate a environment lighting map using 12 light sources

Holy cow... And I would lovingly tweak every one of them! ;-)

So even I can admit to not understanding the process behind it all. Since MoI is intended to be easy-to-use and user-friendly straight out of the box, fancy lighting and rendering should, of course, not be a worry for anyone. Since Dinos' script and my tweaking, it's been nice to see more user screen-shots with certain familiar 'glossy' configurations.
Despite the use of more 'chromey' UI's in Rhino - which use the more power-card dependent OpenGL, MoI still takes the cake as far as overall visual appeal! I mean, the anti-aliased lines are worth every penny.

I'll leave it to you though. My main desire, of course, is for a bias for improvement in modeling tools over UI.


> 2 very different kinds of models which don't interact with one another really well. It leads to problems...

I remember you talking about that 'selection map' thing. Oh... It wasn't the inclusion of poly data (mixing of NURBS and Polys) I was thinking about, but the actual use of quads in MoI's vid-card view rendering of the NURBS objects...

Here's what I was getting at:


The screen capture on the left is from the actual editing viewport. You can see where the triangles are more evident... Phong shading can only do so much here.
The middle pic is what you see when you go to the export dialog to choose the tessellation details of the object. (same viewport, just different arrangement of polys sent to the vid card) But here, the option for wires+shades are active.
The capture to the right is with the shades showing alone. The triangles are gone because MoI is using squares. Since squares can better define the contour flow of a surface as far as lighting is concerned, it looks really smooth.

But if this also makes selection maps trickier to deal with, I can understand. I think this was what you were talking about.
So using triangles is easier on the selection interaction mechanism? Interesting.




> Yup, it's still on the list!
Kewel! :-)

>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.

I wish you the best of luck on the Cage Edit thing.
Would it work on a random selection of control points and not just objects?


Thanks Michael!

One small request for me (quite simple I think) would be the implementation of a section tool. In any ortho view, you draw a section line. Then you choose a maximum distance for the elements that you want to be projected in the section (the new hidden line and silhouette mechanism will be necessary). For the elements intersecting the section, a simple intersect command will do it.
This request is all I ask.
M

Hi Mike,

> The capture to the right is with the shades showing alone. The triangles are gone because MoI is using
> squares. Since squares can better define the contour flow of a surface as far as lighting is concerned,
> it looks really smooth.

It's actually still using triangles for the display in the second case too... The video card inherently only understands triangles, a square is sent over to the video card as 2 triangles.

The difference you're seeing there is not because of squares versus triangles but just that the one on the left has fewer triangles than the one on the right.

The one on the left is done for realtime display purposes, while the one on the right is done for a mesh export to a rendering program. It's important for the realtime display to be fast, so there are various shortcuts taken in order to speed things up which can have an adverse effect on quality. If this was not the case and it instead put an emphasis on quality instead of speed the bad side effect from that choice would be that you'd have to spend extra time waiting around for the display to update every time you did any change to a model.

It's just not practical for the real time display to try and have the qualities of a non-realtime final quality render.

Do you have "Add detail to inflections" turn on under Options > View > Meshing parameters? It can help to put in some additional triangle density in areas like that, that's basically what it's for. But it only tries to add in a couple of more subdivisions than what it would otherwise have.


> But if this also makes selection maps trickier to deal with, I can understand.
> I think this was what you were talking about.

No, I had misunderstood your question, I thought you were talking about quads and triangles because you wanted to have mesh object editing.



> I wish you the best of luck on the Cage Edit thing.
> Would it work on a random selection of control points and not just objects?

I'd think that it would be possible to do it that way.


- Michael

Hi Max,

> One small request for me (quite simple I think)

If only it was actually simple for things like this!

One of the most difficult things with new features is to figure out where to put the feature in the UI so that it does not cause "feature bloat". When too many features pile up all over the UI it tends to make the UI become more complex. It's a big focus for MoI to avoid this kind of complexity and that means that it is a big issue to figure out where to put new features. If it's possible to incorporate the new feature as an option or natural extension of an existing command, then that can help a lot.

So some of the big questions for a "simple" feature like you're describing there (which is likely very much not as simple as you might think, you already mention needing to incorporate hidden line and silhouette display in it...) would be even just where to put the button in the UI to start with.

There are all kinds of complexities involved with this.... How is it exactly that the hidden line mechanism would come into play? I'm probably not really understanding the full scope of what you're asking to have here.

- Michael

> One of the most difficult things with new features is to figure out where to put the feature in the UI so that it does not cause "feature bloat".
In the View Panel.

> I'm probably not really understanding the full scope of what you're asking to have here.

It's a section tool. Now I have to use Rhino to make sections out of my models, using plugins like the free "Section Tools" or the not-free "VisualARQ". But I don't own Rhino, I am using the trial version, and I'm using it just for that. Here:

1) I draw the section line.


2) I generate the section and export it in .DXF for linework editing and presentation.


But this is not just an architectural need. I am working for designers as well, and they always ask for sections. Plan, section, elevation: it's the design process.

I do not ask this question to be mean or a j-hole but to be serious so please don't read into it anything beyond my curiosity.

Many times throughout the forums people ask for some pretty complex features to try to make MoI more fit what they need. This is a $300, but awesome, design tool but I get the impression that with many of the people asking for extra features, or a better way to do some surfacing such as the automotive model that someone wanted to make but the tutorial book that I used was pretty much ignored because the output surfacing would not always be automotive quality. Well, the tutorial is to learn the techniques and not design a car. An automotive engineer does not design in a $300 tool.

Similarly with the thread regarding line weights for outside edges for drawings. Sure it would be nice but there are multiple low cost, free, or professional tools that can take care of this very issue.

Now, when you are asking for the section feature, which is a nice idea, but then you say that you are working with other designers that are always asking for something that is difficult to do in MoI, why not just buy Rhino. Do you initial work in MoI and then send it to Rhino for completion?

MoI is such a great tool for most work, up to a point like what you are running into, and at a price point where a hobbyist can justify using it. MoI also plays so well with other tools that you can do quite a bit of work in MoI and then port out to your finishing package. If MoI gets too complex it will lose its focused power and the price will eventually have to move up in order to have the amount of presence that it would take to support MoI.

I just fear scope creep with all the wants (most of which would rock but there are reasons why things sometimes require separate software packages) and the MoI starts to slide away from what makes it the shiz-nic. Simple, clean, plays well with other tools.

Best thing for MoI is to keep working the 2D and 3D design and feature sets (3D solids, surfacing, etc) which it already excels at and make sure to keep those areas at the top of the scale. A Rolls Royce that does a few focused things very well at a price point that allows anyone access to the tool is much more valuable than too many "I wish it could..." creeping in. I say this from the perspective that it sounds like many people requesting features are already working as designers which implies access to more funds and other tools from what a hobbyist would have.

Sure, I think it would be nice if I could do other things in MoI but I just finish in Rhino or spit files out for (God help me) GeoMagic (puking in the corner).

Back to wastzzz - if you are doing designs like this and being paid for it pony up and get Rhino. There are many other free / paid for addons that rock with Rhino but this does not mean that MoI gets displaced at all. MoI is an awesome tool for 70 to 95% of most design projects, in my tiny opinion.

Hi Max,

> In the View Panel.

I'm kind of unsure about putting what's really a geometry generation tool inside of the View panel.


> It's a section tool. Now I have to use Rhino to make sections out of my models, using
> plugins like the free "Section Tools" or the not-free "VisualARQ".

Please keep in mind that both of those tools have been extensively worked on by developers whose main jobs are just doing those tasks.


> But this is not just an architectural need. I am working for designers as well, and
> they always ask for sections. Plan, section, elevation: it's the design process

There are a couple of different ways you can generate a section line already, you can draw in a line like you've shown there and then use Construct > Curve > Project to project the line onto the object, the result will be a section line:






Another way is to make a plane for where you want the section and then use Construct > Curve > Isect to generate intersection curves between the plane and your object.

- Michael

Thank you Michael, I already experimented with the Isect command and it works fine for sectioned elements, but what I need is to project the elements that are far away from the line\cutting plane

Hi Max,

> Thank you Michael, I already experimented with the Isect command and it works fine for sectioned
> elements, but what I need is to project the elements that are far away from the line\cutting plane

I guess I need a more detailed explanation from you - I'm just not familiar with the type of sectioning that you need. What kind of additional projection do you need, can you post an example with some simple objects?

- Michael

I think what Max means would be like cutting a model and then perform hidden line removal on the resulting geometry.





The result would deliver something like that:




Marc

I was about to make a similar drawing to explain.. Thanks Marc, it's exactly what I mean :)

Thanks Marc for the visual explanation.

So Max I guess you'll be able to get that kind of result by doing a boolean difference with the line to slice the object up, delete the half you don't want to see and then use the new hidden line removal to get the view of it that you want.

It would be a pretty complex feature to try and bundle those things up into one single command. Things like this are usually a lot more complicated than many people guess.

Are these things you want to generate this on always solids?

You probably also want something like a hatch pattern placed on the sectioned plane too. You might also look into SpaceClaim for generating something like that also.

- Michael

Yes I could just use the boolean difference when the hidden line feature will be ready. But still I have to select by hand all the objects to delete. The problem is that this method is geometry-destructive, I mean that I always have to make a copy of the model or the file before doing it. What I was looking for, was an automated process for plane creation (from a line), difference, delete objects, generate drawing, and then undo the boolean operation! No need for hatch patterns, I always do hatching in Archicad or illustrator. But it's ok I can do it manually, I really want to try this new hidden line feature!
thanks,
m

Hi Max,

> But still I have to select by hand all the objects to delete.

It should just be one window selection in the plan view...


> The problem is that this method is geometry-destructive, I mean that I always have to make a
> copy of the model or the file before doing it.

Why is that? You can just do something like open the file, do the operations you need, close the file and push "Discard changes" when it asks you if you want to save changes or not.

If you are super concerned about accidentally hitting save and overwriting the file, you can right-click on the Open button instead of left click. The right click does an "Open Template" instead of a plain open, and that does not set the current filename so it will prompt you for a filename if you hit Save that way.

- Michael

Ok, that will do. Any ideas of when the hidden line thing will be out? I really want to delete Rhino from my PC :p

Hi Max,

> Any ideas of when the hidden line thing will be out?

I'm still in the process of working on it... Maybe another week or so.

I think that probably the kind of section tool that you were talking about will be further out in the future - at some point I'd like to have the concept of a "Sheet" or 2D paper drawing view that you could generate and that's probably where an option for generating that type of section could come into play.

It doesn't fit into the UI very easily until there is some general category for managing 2D generated drawings like that.

- Michael

Thank you. Can't wait to use that to produce my project sections :)

How is folders inside the browser going? Thats a feature I would really appreciate.

Hi Ed,

> How is folders inside the browser going? Thats a feature I would really appreciate.

That's not going anywhere at the moment, I've been focused on the new hidden line removal stuff for quite a while.

I definitely want to to have a folder organizer mechanism for the browser but I'm not really sure when it will happen.

- Michael