Hello Michael!

How are you ? I hope fine :)

Inspired by the last post of James, I want to ask you something related to "2d workflows".

I don't know what you're currently working on, but I want to remind you a very important area that need to be improved: tools for curves.

Especially:

1) A new and improved "rebuild" command
2) New API methods that can give us at least the access to the inner structure of the curves (knot points, control points)
3) An improved "offset" command
4) The chance to easily pick one or more control points of a curve and easily change their "type": from "sharp" to "not sharp"

...other things that now I can't remember :)

As you can see I didn't specify details for the points from 1 to 3 but I know that you know what I'm talking about ;)

Thanks a lot and have a nice day!

Hi Marco, #1 and #3 are pretty difficult areas to implement well, I'd need more information about how you'd expect an improved version of those to behave.

#4 is something I've been meaning to do for some time, I'll see if I could address that in v4.

- Michael

Hi Michael.

@You : "...Hi Marco, #1 and #3 are pretty difficult areas to implement well, I'd need more information about how you'd expect an improved version of those to behave..."

Hmmm...pretty difficult now to remember all the things said during last two years about these things...
I can assure you that many times we have talked about them...they are scattered over many forum threads...

@You : "...#4 is something I've been meaning to do for some time, I'll see if I could address that in v4..."

Ok. Got it.
I hope not to be "pushy" but...what are the new things you're working on for the next beta?

Thanks a lot and have a nice day.

Marco (mkdm)

Hi Marco,

> Hmmm...pretty difficult now to remember all the things said during last two years
> about these things...
> I can assure you that many times we have talked about them...they are scattered over
> many forum threads...

Ok, but probably in those same scattered threads I've also previously explained why they work as they currently do. An offset curve of a NURBS curve cannot be represented exactly in NURBS form itself except in special cases. So the offset mechanism has to go through a fitting/refinement process and will not have the same control point structure as the original curve.


> I hope not to be "pushy" but...what are the new things you're working on for the next beta?

At the moment I've been working on some bugs that have been reported through e-mail and doing some experiments.

- Michael

Hi Michael.
Thanks for replying me.

@You "...At the moment I've been working on some bugs that have been reported through e-mail and doing some experiments..."

Good to know :)

And regarding the previous point (from 1 to 3)...ok I remember the discoussions about "offset" and, ok. No problem, all is clear.

But I also remember that I talked to you some times in the recent past, about the improvement of the "rebuild" command, along with the opportunity to improve also the "merge" command, that actually works only on "edges" and not on "curves".

This second behavior could be a great improvement for "2D workflow" related stuff.

What do you say about that?

I stay tuned :)

Hi Marco, you're probably remembering that I mentioned that at some point I'd like to figure out how to combine Join and Merge together into a single Join command possibly with the option to do rebuilding at the same time as well.

I'm not sure when that will happen though, there is a lot of workflow and UI design that will go into that.

- Michael

Your rock Michael!

That's exactly what I wanted to remind you :)

This is a very important improvement for 2d stuff.
I hope that you want to rate It pretty high in your todo list.

Ciao!

Hi Marco, it's not really something that can go high on the todo list because it probably needs a new UI method for it that has to evolve a bit first.

- Michael

Hello Michael.

@You : "...it's not really something that can go high on the todo list because it probably needs a new UI method for it that has to evolve a bit first..."

Thanks for the reply.

I'm not lucky with my requests.... :)

Have a nice day.

Hi Marco, if you happen to have a more detailed idea for how it would work like what the UI and workflow would specifically be like that could certainly increase the priority!

Those things can often be the most difficult though.

- Michael

Hi Michael...I have some idea but actually no time to write to explain...

But I suppose that, at least regarding the unification of Merge/Join/Rebuild, you should have some use-case scenario in your mind.

Anyway...I stay tuned.

Have a nice day and best wishes for all.

Marco (mkdm)

Hello Michael.

How are you? I hope all is ok :)

Just a quick reminder of one of the things I asked some times ago for this V4...

Please, give us a way to easily edit a control point (or edit in one shot the bunch of selected control points) of an existing curve to toggle it (or they) from corner to smooth and vice versa.

Thanks.

Hi Marco, yes that's still on my list. I'm not sure if it will be in the next beta or the one after though.

- Michael

Ok Michael, good to know.

I hope to see it soon :)

As you may already know I'm a big fun of all is related to "2D workflow" and I think that with only a little bit of extra effort you could improve the already very good 2d arsenal of Moi, because with just two or three improvements in the right place Moi can be a serious "all-rounder" 2D vector tool, combining the precision of a Cad with its easy of use.

Many times I leveraged on Moi to create my 2D works/experiments (vector art but also graphic elements for addictional digital painting).

Hi Michael,

It would be useful, if possible, for control points appeared in Types browser after show points operation, so that they may be isolated for selection. Either, a dedicated Control Points list item or alternatively a second mode of existing Points type. My apologies if this has already been suggested.

Also, & this is a more a query than a request, but would it be a relatively simple* task to include point objects as profiles for extruding, rail revolving, and sweeping resulting in curves rather than surfaces?

Thank you for all your hard work, it is much appreciated
James
* By simple, I mean not insurmountably difficult

Hi James,

> It would be useful, if possible, for control points appeared in Types browser after show points
> operation, so that they may be isolated for selection.

Unfortunately this is difficult to set up currently because control points are not full fledged objects that have their own properties like ids and hidden/locked states. They just have a selection property only. Maybe this is something I can change in the future but it may have some major performance side effects since some surfaces may have many thousands of control points in them.


> Also, & this is a more a query than a request, but would it be a relatively simple* task to
> include point objects as profiles for extruding, rail revolving, and sweeping resulting in curves
> rather than surfaces?

The geometry library that MoI uses for these functions does not currently have an implementation of handling points like this. It could be possible in the future for me to add it but it will require adding a custom function for each of these cases.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thank you for getting back to me.

> control points are not full fledged objects that have their own properties like ids

Does it follow then, that this would preclude control points from being addressable
(ie selected and manipulated) in node editor?

> may have some major performance side effects since some surfaces may have many thousands of control points in them.

Could this issue be avoided if control points only appeared as an object type for selected items (curves or surfaces). Essentially as exists now. Perhaps there could be menu option Selected Objects (default) / All Objects (alternative)

Thanks again,
James

Hi James,

re:
> Does it follow then, that this would preclude control points from being addressable
> (ie selected and manipulated) in node editor?

Not necessarily but it would probably need some combination of object + point index value to address them.


> Could this issue be avoided if control points only appeared as an object type for selected items
> (curves or surfaces). Essentially as exists now. Perhaps there could be menu option
> Selected Objects (default) / All Objects (alternative)

I'm not sure - this wouldn't address that it is not possible currently to hide or lock points so that part of the scene browser wouldn't be able to work with control points currently. They are just not set up as individual objects like all the other things that the scene browser works with.

There is currently a way to enable scene browser types for selected objects, you can enable it in moi.ini under:

[Scene Browser]
EnableSelectionSubTypes=y

If you enable that there will be 2 additional "Selected" and "Unselected" expandable areas in the Types part of the scene browser which will target only selected or unselected objects.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

One thing that has remained high on my new features wishlist is FFD / Lattice deformation. It'd be great if that could be non-destructive, but I'd already be very happy with the functionality.

Hi Michael,

I have not really had a need for this before, but I'm designing some cabinetry
and am flipping between perspective and parallel 3D views.
Going into Options to change them is a little awkward.*

What do you think about the idea of the 3D button toggling between them (3D perspect / 3D parallel)?
I combed through the forum to see if this has been raised before; apologies if it has.
This of course is a very low priority, even if you agree it has merit.

James

UPDATED:

* OK I found the script for doing this, which achieves just what I needed.
Still think it would be good if it was tied to 3D button