My modelling skills are not up to that kind of accuracy yet - This project is to get a good body shape only and for me to test MoI on file sizes and ability to cope with medium detail level - I am dreading the wheels but at least i know where to come to for help if i get stuck. Once all the modelling is complete then it's export and import time with Blender Cycles as the target rendering engine to see how good that is too!

Martin

"""""""""File size is now approaching 20mb in size and the screen is beginning to stutter on rotations even without the grills - """"""""""""""

Crank up the view angle time..... 20 or 30.

Upping the mesh angle works fine too for looking around - might pay to script up some function buttons to adjust mesh angle on the fly - lol

Martin

Hi Martin, see here for some scripts about toggling the mesh angle by shortcut key:


This one lists the shortcut you can use to set it to a specific value (the default is 10 degrees and 25 degrees is coarser but helps speed things up on heavier models):
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4736.5

There's also one later in that thread that will toggle through 3 different values when pressing the same shortcut key:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4736.16

- Michael

Sorry for the lack of updates - Purchased a new system to build and have not finished tweaking it but the i5 3570K is way better than the AMD and the new n560TX has been tested on the old Bedford van which is a 50MB file and there is no burping and f*rting from the screen at all - so i might be bale to push this model further when i get the chance - and i have the wedding to get organised too!!

Martin

Been trying to get the spokes on this wheel sorted, anybody feel like offering me a helping hand on this, i can get the shapes fine, but then i cant fillet them up ... :(

Martin

Hi TpwUK!

Fillets can be tricky for the program to work around funny seams and the complexities of angled surfaces.

You can see here how I tackled a model's inability to fillet in particular areas by fitting customized Blends:


Please see my tutorial to get a better idea on how to use Blends to solve problems that auto-Fillet cannot:


http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4607.5


You'll use an intersected representative curve to sweep a circle on. You'll subtract the swept object from your surfaces, deleting the un-needed material. Then you'll use Blend to painstakingly patch small sections of edges together to form a custom fillet. Of course, you also have to manage the edge curves by adding trim points and using the "Merge" command to join segmented edge curves together that are not separated by an intersection.

I hope that you are able to understand what I am talking about. It's just a complex fix around an often too-present problem.

Hi Martin,

> i can get the shapes fine, but then i cant fillet them up ... :(

Did you possibly post the wrong attached file? I can't see any spokes or things to fillet in the one that you posted so I'm not quite sure what particular fillet problem you might be running into there.

- Michael

I took a look at the file. The spoke curves are "pre-cornered" or rounded.. Any type of blend will be "lumpy". I put an arc on it and swept it along the 2 paths, and it created the same lumpy output.. (Lumpy meaning, there was a smooth blend or arc fillet, but it's height changed as it swept around)

I think you may need to change the input curve to be hard edges, then fillet after, or even to seperate pieces for each angle direction, then put them together later....

Sorry Michael, I should have provided instructions to get to the shape - But here's the spoke ...

Hi BurrMan i have been pulling it apart filleting and blending for hours and still can't get to go right - When this happens i know it's my fault again, I have goofed somewhere, but I don't know where, then you get the added problem of when fillet has been used the edges get uneven edges on two faces so you start adding trim lines again and then other edges end up as fragments and it just get real messy real quick - :)

Martin

Thanks for the reply Mike - I have been trying for hours to get the spoke looking right - I thinks it's time i slept on it - 2:44 am here and i have a 7am start, but feel free to have a play, I don't want to cheat and use some one elses work, but need a pointer as to the order of doing things.

Martin

Hi Martin,

> Sorry Michael, I should have provided instructions to get to the
> shape - But here's the spoke ...

Ok, but I don't entirely understand where you're trying to put fillets in that model right there - in this new file that you've attached the spoke is a separate object and the wheel is in some separate pieces from it, which are not solids.

So it's definitely not ready to fillet as it currently is, being in all separate pieces like this.

I can see several problems with the geometry that you have so far here though, which will make things really difficult to fillet - one right off the bat is that there is only a very teeny-tiny amount of space available in this area here:





The way filleting works is that a fillet can only fit in the available room immediatley surrounding the edges that you are trying to fillet - it won't be able to cross over some nearby edge that is not actually part of the fillet chain where a fillet is trying to run along. So that means for example in your case here there would only be room to fit a super tiny sized fillet radius along that area before it collided with the nearby edge above it that you see highlighted in the second image.

If you want to get fillets on something like this you need to have a construction configuration that allows enough room for fillets to fit between pieces, so basically you can't have edges from different pieces coming so extremely close to one another where the pieces intersect with each other.

There just is not much chance that stuff like that with narrowly grazing pieces is going to be filletable in MoI at least.

- Michael

I abandoned the photo and went for artistic licence instead, sadly the result still causes me some problems but as long as i don't do a close up render they should be fine, but i definitely need more practice with these rimms!

I was meaning to get this off to you to see if it would spark something, but it looks like I'm too late.



But also, the rim you got looks great too!

Thanks for the post, I need to watch that again soon - There were some things you did with the little pointy bit that I didn't get, also with the arc at the beginning too. But I am going to be rushed off my feet this weekend, so probably won't get the chance to try it again until after the marriage. I like your style though, you make it look easy, so i must be over-thinking it.

The moor i like at the photo the more it seems to be that the spokes are like a sleeve fit over the rim and the end parts attach to the hub, but then the blends and fillets unite it all together there after. If you look at the rim, and the section between the spokes, you can see how one seems to be lofted and the other appears to be a blend or fillet. I will hone my skills some more and have another go in the future, but for now, it will do. The file size is 71mb so far when combined and there is still the tyres to detail and more grills to do so I am guessing it will end up 100mb plus in size and then I will know how well MoI can cope with my crabby style, which is not clean enough to keep the file size down, but i will master it at some stage!

Once again, thanks for the video, it will help, by the way does it have audio this time, or am i a plugin missing from my new install ?

Martin

Hi tpwUK,
There is no audio. I think audio was on and recorded, but I didnt speak in it, so you arent missing anything...

I dont know if I would pay too much attention to the arc rotation in the begining... I think it could be drawn correctly to start, but I kindof just slopped through it and did the rotation thing.

I don't normally do this, but since i have posted a tyre design on here before, you can see i know how to do one already, but i found a wheel rim and tyre from another modelling site and it was in iges format so I thought why not indeed, test MoI with its iges support, the result is pretty good. The original tyre was modelled by joze dwardo, so i thought i had mention that !



With these parts in place the model now grows to 99.7Mb

Martin

I will get round to this again soon, it's not abandoned, I just dont get much time since my wife has had her medications shuffled a bit.

? Michael G. - Has there been any changes in the mesh generating from this v3 beta to the April one. Silly question to ask but, if it's changed then perhaps I should re-start the project again to give the new beta more of the surfacing to do since there is very little to do here now ?

I will try and get this finished by next weekend. Nearly forgot to mention but the new Beta does indeed handle the screen quicker. I cant get frame rates to display so can't measure any other way than by how it feels to me with mouse rotations etc.

Martin

Hi Martin,

> ? Michael G. - Has there been any changes in the mesh generating from this v3 beta to the April one.

You mean in the Network command? Nope, no changes recently but there might be for the next one depending on how some experiments turn out.

- Michael