Hi Michael,
Yeah, the V3 was set to arial.. Setting them both to match made them equal...

Is there anything you want to know about my century gothic?? Like there are different values for display and embeddability attributes.

For arial I have "text" and for century I have "display" for the catagory and for font embeddability I have "editable" for arial and "installable" for century gothic...

Anyway, lett me know..

Hi Burr - re: century gothic - maybe what I will do is send you a couple of small test programs through e-mail and if you can run those to test if your Century Gothic is detected or not with a couple of different techniques.

But I'm not too worried about this issue at the moment, maybe we can wait until next week to try that?

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Re: fonts
What Burr is getting there is the same as on my computer I think I prefer century gothic.

BTW was your server down for most of the day ?

Cheers
~Danny~

Yeah, the whole day I tried MoI Forum but looks like server down :(

Good to see the site back up and running. Downloading V3 beta now. Looking forward to having a play with it.

Nigle / 3DKiwi

Word got out about the V3 beta and everyone tried to get it at once! (Oh to be so popular!)

Hi Michael,

I use flip on the rounded surface and the ring appeared on the right side of the curve but it is still stretch in V direction. I assume as you mention, it because the UVs are orthogonal from the base to target surface.

Since you already have the orientation picker would it be possible to use that to orient the UVs of each surface as you like (as an option maybe), this would provide maximum flexibility, ie. the UVs of base surface could be setup say north/south and the target UVs could be oriented north-est/south-west or whatever. If HISTORY was available one could even modify the original object by whatever mean. (control points, move, scaling, etc) and see in real time the effect on the final object. This would give us awsome creative potential.

Thanks,
Felix

PS. I tried history and it doesn't apply (unless it's me) and I tried to orient indirectly the UVs by rotating the surface, it works only in 90 degree steps sort of speek. Conclusion: history would be a big plus.

Hi Danny,

> Re: fonts
> What Burr is getting there is the same as on my
> computer I think I prefer century gothic.

I should be able to get that figured out for the next beta.



> BTW was your server down for most of the day ?

Yup, power outage in the data center. I guess they had to go to every machine in the whole facility and manually reset them so it took a while to get things going when the power returned.

- Michael

Hi Greg,

> Word got out about the V3 beta and everyone tried to
> get it at once! (Oh to be so popular!)

At first I thought maybe my poor web server was getting overloaded like that! But actually it was sitting there without any power due to a power outage in the data center...

- Michael

For avoid that! :)

lol Frenchy... "I'll peddle!!!"

Hi Felix,

> Since you already have the orientation picker would it
> be possible to use that to orient the UVs of each surface
> as you like (as an option maybe), <...>

I don't think it will be feasible to do that - for things to work well it needs to map from one full UV space to the other UV space and although it will be possible to do something like map U to V or U to negative U or things like that it won't work to do something arbitrary like a 30 degree angle which is what the orientation picker is set up to allow currently.

I think the way I'll be able to make it work is that it will pay attention to which corners you click nearest to on both the base surface and then the target surface and then flip or swap UVs as necessary so that those 2 corners align. Then maybe a checkbox for flipping the surface normal direction.

That should give you some control over how the base surface and target surface will align with one another without needing to worry so much about which particular directions are the U and V directions.

If you want to rotate something by some arbitrary amount, you would need to do that by either rotating the object or the base plane how you want it first before doing the Flow.


> PS. I tried history and it doesn't apply (unless it's me)

History is not on by default for Flow but you can turn it on by selecting the output object (the deformed result) and then using the Edit > History command, and click the "Enable update" button.

When history update is enabled on the result object then it will recalculate when you edit either the original object or either of the 2 surfaces.

- Michael

Thank Michael,

I tried history as you mention and it works fine. It give you quite a bit of possibility.

At least the idea of flipping the normal using a check box wasn't a bad idea after all.

Thanks again,
Felix

Hi Felix,

> At least the idea of flipping the normal using a check
> box wasn't a bad idea after all.

Yeah that part should probably be fine.

The thing that could get sort of messy would be if there were 3 checkboxes like "Flip U", "Flip V" as well as "Flip surface normal". That's getting to be kind of a lot of flip options and you may not even know in advance which particular direction is the U and which is the V.

So that's why it could be better if the U and V alignment could be done by paying attention to where you clicked on each surface to - it could flip U and V directions as needed so that the corners that you clicked on would get aligned to one another.

That's what I think I'm going to try anyway, we'll see if it will work out ok or not.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

>The thing that could get sort of messy...

that's why I though of the orientation picker as a mean to setup the UV's like you want but maybe, instead, if it's possible of course, would it be possible (completely outside the flow command) to kind of see the normals orientation and or the UVs orientation? We could setup thing before hand.

I've done another test and I think it's easy to figure out what I'd like to have instead of the result I got (see file). I would like (if possible) the flowed object to keep as much as possible it's roundness. Though I can see other ways to do that, I wonder if I could still do it using flow which would be much less work especially when the object to be flowed is much more complex than the current one?

Edit: I got it, I created a trimmed surface from a projected circle (on the original target) of the proper diameter and I needed to shrink the trimmed surface and the result look much better now. But the roundness is still distorted, to a much less degree though. I'll try another mean to create the target surface, maybe a bool intersection??? No, still have the same untrimmed surface. Is there a way out???

Thanks,
Felix

Hi Felix,

> instead, if it's possible of course, would it be possible
> (completely outside the flow command) to kind of see
> the normals orientation and or the UVs orientation? We
> could setup thing before hand.

That could be possible but many people might not know that they would need to use that separate u/v/normal reorientation command in order to control the result that they were getting with flow, so that could potentially be more difficult to use.

Just in general with various commands I've tried to make directional things more controlled by selection actions - for example if you do a sweep with "auto place" mode for placing the profiles, the end of the curve that you click closest to when selecting the rail will be the one that is used to start the sweep.

So matching surface to surface by paying attention to the selection area would fit in pretty well with how some other things operate already.


> I would like (if possible) the flowed object to keep as much as
> possible it's roundness. Though I can see other ways to do that,
> I wonder if I could still do it using flow which would be much
> less work especially when the object to be flowed is much more
> complex than the current one?

Well, your target surface is flared out wide on one end near the bottom and compresses down near the top, so that's going to cause a kind of squishing distortion in the area near the top.

There isn't any way for the flow command itself to avoid that squishing - squishing things is basically fundamental to how it operates.

If you want a non-squished looking result you may want to try some other construction method like use just on a circle curve to place a path on to your target surface using Flow and then do a sweep of a circle along that path curve to make a more uniform tubular type shape result, rather than including the tubular surface directly with the flow which will squish it.

- Michael

Michael,

I understand your point of consistency throughout the various function and command. I'll wait and see when this thing about selecting the corners one wants to match.

As for the "roundness" thing I tried to fit the button in only the top part of the profile curve (I trimmed it and sweep it alone). The result is much better, though still not what I would like but close.

I think I'll try somekind of 2 pass flow using curves instead of surfaces maybe the result will be exactly what I want, I'll let you know.

Regards,
Felix

Hi Michael,

I tried the 2 pass approach using curve instead of surfaces and though I had to figure out how to do it, it was a bit tricky , I managed to create the button the way I wanted and position it on the target surface.

This idea of creating a kind of 2.5D object (basically a flat object (2D) with a little thickness) bending (flow) it in 1 or 2 of direction and kind of applying it where I want is an operation I would use quite often in my work.

In the joined file you'll see in front row the setup I've created, from left to right, the button, the base lines, the target curves and surface and "crossair" where the final flowed button will be positioned.

The second row shows the setup for the first flow, you'll noticed that I rotated (top view) the button in the center of the target curve.

The third row shows the setup for the second flow, you'll noticed I've rotated the button 90 degree in front view before using flow.

The fourth row shows the button rotated back to its proper orientation.

The fifth row shows the button properly "oriented" on the target surface.

I suppose all this can be automated in the future and I hope I'm not the only one that would use such a series of operations. Maybe you have already something in mind to facilitate this kind of 2 curves bending.

Even if this specific application never happens I believe it's much easier to do then having to create the button in place directly on the surface. Imagine a much more complex shape like something out of Zsurf for example.

This flow command is simply awsome, I'm sure many user will find many use for it. Excellent work!

Thanks,
Felix

Hi Felix, that's a great result!

Yes, using flow mapping from a base curve to a target curve can make it a bit easier to apply a bend only in one direction at a time and minimize distortion.

> Maybe you have already something in mind to facilitate
> this kind of 2 curves bending.

Well, just using the flow command twice in sequence seems like it does the job for this case quite well already.

Do you mean having some special option just for the convenience of a couple of less clicks?

It's not generally very good from a UI design standpoint to stick in a whole ton of custom options for doing specific things that can already be done pretty easily with just a couple of actions in sequence - that tends to lead to UI bloat making the UI get overly filled up with specialized stuff and a UI that is totally chock full of stuff is more difficult to use.

See this previous post for some more explanation on this UI problem:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4442.19

The philosophy of "more is better" does not really apply very well to UI design, at least in the case of trying to keep things easy to use which is a big focus for MoI.


So if you are able to get a good result for this case by using the technique of using flow twice in sequence, then that's what I would consider to be a successful setup already.

What you're talking about there should amount to only a few seconds to apply the flow command a second time, right? Shaving a few seconds off of a construction technique like this is not really a significant improvement. Compared to all the other setup that you're already doing it's not really a significant stumbling block and all together the overall technique is saving a whole lot of time compared to constructing the warped object directly without any use of flow...


But you could probably use surface to surface flow to expedite this if you made a target surface that was not pinched together - that would be something like take these 2 crossed curves that you have here:




You can use the Sweep command to build a curved surface from those that is more uniformly shaped and not pinched near the top or bottom, that should help to minimize distortion in surface-to-surface flow.

Select one of those curves for the sweep profile, then run Construct > Sweep and select the other curve as the rail, that will build a curved but not pinched surface that looks like this:



This kind of surface that does not have pinched together areas in it will reduce distortion when using it as a flow target.

Basically if you want to do a 2 directional flow, that is what the surface to surface flow will do already, just try to make the surface have a more uniform semi-rectangular layout to it and don't pinch parts of the surface to be narrower or wider than other parts.

- Michael

Hi, I dont know if anyone asked this before but I think an optional color-coded-normals could be useful, cause when I export surfaces to modo sometimes they're seeing the wrong side, just a suggestion.