It's an old experiment in Houdini, where everything is created by combining the parametricaly created elements, one frequent element is 'bubble' in pic (it starts from modified circle). Then there are interpolations in NurbS blend style between them, projections to mono-wing (also defined by arcs and blends) or these 'bubbles', so on. In Blender world this could be more in Sverchok category (at least I believe). IMHO, not really approach for meeting the deadlines, because in R'n'D style approach one has to take care about hundreds of additional parameters, conditions and such.
Regarding 'mesh cut and blend' approach, while this is possible mission (and btw I did one for Houdini), I wouldn't count that much on them, anywhere. There's immanent problem of highly subdivided mesh, needed to get the cuts smooth enough. For ratio between bounding box and detail, typical for plane or car, that's really, really unpleasant polygon count. While Nurbs easy can go in such challenge, surfaces are meshed just at the end of the day.

Thanks for the reply! : - )

I believe that you can ask something like that to the lovers of Elephant by Max Smirnov! ;)

Here are some steps to repeat a bug that I don't remember being in V3.

Open a 3DM file and select some curves.
Click the Export icon and notice that the 'File name:' box isn't filled in with the currently loaded file name.
From the list of files in the folder, choose the currently loaded file name.
Change the 'Save as type:' to DXF and click 'Save'.
A warning 'Confirm Save As' box appears stating "xxxxxxx.3dm already exists. Do you want to replace it?"
If you happen to click 'Yes', then your 3DM file is replaced with just the selected curves.


Martin.

Hi Pilou,
Could you please explain the process you used to prepare the demo soldier as an obj for MoI SubD? How many polygons did you convert it to, and how?
Thank you!

<< explain the process

Hello

Very simple ;) (this object .OBJ is start quadrangulated)
Use the plugin integrated inside ZBrush call Decimation Master : so you can take any number of polygons as result.
1/10 is normally sufficient - 50 000 polys seams reasonnable
If you have not ZBrush take any free prog like MeshLab: http://www.meshlab.net
Menu Filters / Remeshing, Simplification & Reconstruction... for Decimation
menu Filters / Polygonal & Quadmesh... for Quadrangulation

I don't remember the exact number i will remake it so be patient 10 minutes! :)

32 544 polys as result : loading in 18 seconds inside MOI 3.0 (on my latop Windows 10 - I7 4 years old)
(I must verify if it's vertices, edges or faces because it just write number during the process inside moi! ;)
Verified : it's 32 544 polys! ;)

I will put here the file decimated !
So you can load it directly inside Moi with _importObj by Max Smirnov for make your own test! ;)
http://moi.maxsm.net/media/files/

http://moiscript.weebly.com/uploads/3/9/3/8/3938813/demosoldier.obj

(points = vertices)

Bump: Just in case it's been overlooked:)

Hi Martin, sorry I haven't gotten to that one yet, but now with v4 MoI is using the dialog through Qt which should hopefully behave in a standard way.

I was wondering if that's intended behavior or not. I need to check out what other apps do to see if MoI v3 was not doing it as expected or if it's MoI v4.

- Michael

The nudge keys are not working. Specifically, the arrow keys and the page up/down keys for moving the selected objects by the grid quantum. When I press the right arrow, for example, I get an alert that says:
SyntaxError: Expected an identifier but found 'Right' instead
line 1
1: >> Nudge Right

I imagine that these functions are implemented with a script, but even so why is this script failing?

Thanks for making v4! FYI, I've got a file with over 5K objects. V3.2 loads it in about 29.5 seconds. V4 loads it in about 3.2 seconds. Wonderful!

Christopher

This can be used by a trial version ? Seems there is much jaggies for a big size ...

script: /* Print screen to Clipboard */ var prev_background = moi.view.viewportBackgroundColor; moi.view.viewportBackgroundColor = 0x000000; moi.view.lineWidth = 4; moi.grid.display = false; moi.grid.showXYAxes = false; moi.ui.getActiveViewport().renderToClipboard( 2560, 2560 ); moi.view.lineWidth = 1; moi.grid.display = true; moi.grid.showXYAxes = true; moi.view.viewportBackgroundColor = prev_background;

for beta V4
script: /* Print screen to Clipboard */ var prev_background = moi.view.viewportBackgroundColor; moi.view.viewportBackgroundColor = 0xFFFFFF; moi.view.lineWidth = 1; moi.grid.display = false; moi.grid.showXYAxes = false; moi.view.showAxisIcon = false; /*moi.view.meshAngle = 3;*/ moi.ui.getActiveViewport().renderToClipboard( 4000, 2500 ); moi.view.lineWidth = 1; moi.grid.display = true; moi.grid.showXYAxes = true; moi.view.showAxisIcon = true; /*moi.view.meshAngle = 8;*/ moi.view.viewportBackgroundColor = prev_background;

Hi Christopher, you'd get that kind of error if the Nudge script is not installed. For v3 you must have installed it at some point by copying it into v3's commands folder. You'd need to do the same for v4 to get it to work.

For v4 you can also install commands into a commands sub-folder inside MoI's user data folder, you can find your user data location by using Options > General > Edit .ini file button, a dialog will pop up and tell you where your moi.ini file is located at which will be in your user data folder.

Copy the Nudge.js file from your v3 commands folder into the user data commands folder and v4 will look for it there and you won't have to keep copying it into new versions anymore.

- Michael

Hi Michael.

I quite like the way MoI V3 handles it as you can look through the list of files, select the name you want and then choose the type of file extension you want to save it as. It allows slow/lazy/forgetful typers like me to have indentical file names with multiple extensions with near zero effort.


Martin.

Michael, thanks so much for reminding me that I installed a script for this. (Sorry I forgot.) I copied it into the Application Support subfolder as you suggested and I have my nudge keys again. Yay!

You might want to change the code that looks for scripts to have it output something like, "Script ____ can't be found. Install scripts in Application Support." :-)

Christopher

Hi Christopherm I'm glad you've got it working now. Yes, I have it on my todo list to make a warning message like that. Currently if a script file can't be found it tries to execute that text directly as script code which makes the kind of error message you were seeing.

- Michael

I have a quick question about v4, I'd like to test it but I'm only using the trial for v3. I see a lot of meshes that have nice quads, if I model something from scratch in Moi does that mean it can export all quad meshes? Or is this kind of export only possible when a polygon mesh is imported in and converted? Sorry, it's a bit of an odd question I guess.

Hi Foxfire - sorry no MoI does not have any function for exporting all quad meshes. MoI has an exporter that makes N-gon meshes but that's not the same thing as "all quads".

You would generally need to open your exported mesh in a polygon modeling program and use retopology tools there to end up with all quads.

But why are you trying to generate all quads from your MoI model? If you want to render your model it doesn't need to be all quads to do that, you only need all quads if you wanted to apply sub-d smoothing to the mesh but that would be kind of unusual to do to an object created with CAD modeling.

- Michael

The reason I wanted all quads was to make the mesh work better with Blenders bevel modifier. For some surfaces the Ngon export works fine but curved surfaces tend to be hit or miss, I can clean the mesh up to have it work better but having all quads would be a nice workflow improvement. I know I can bevel in Moi but the flexibility having the bevels as a modifier in Blender is very useful and I find that the edge selection in Moi to be a little tedious (when beveling the whole object isn't wanted) where in Blender it can be almost automatic. This way I could export a triangulated mesh out of Moi as well and use the beveled version from Blender as a high res for baking, at least that's what I was thinking for my workflow.


Would it be possible to implement an all quad export for Moi? It would be a great time saver and the models would be more flexible with other software outside of CAD.

Hi Foxfire, yes typically in CAD modeling the beveling is done on the CAD model itself and so the polygons that you export are all in the end shape already.

In the future I would like to work on an all quads export for MoI but it will likely be a quite difficult task and take a considerable amount of effort to develop. It needs a much different approach than the current mesh export.

Currently the way you would get all quads would be using retopo tools.

- Michael

I can heartily recommend ZBrush ZRemesher or 3D-Coat Autopo for automatic quad-retopology of meshes exported from MoI:

https://www.metinseven.nl/blog/Ag4W/3d-coat-vs-zbrush-auto-retopology-comparison

Tried it out with the corvette tutorial model from cgmasters. Imported both the underlying clean reference surfaces as well as the detailed parts to review at which point it makes sense to convert to nurb. Both come in beautifully!
https://cgmasters.net/training-courses/master-car-creation-in-blender/

It is a little on the heavy side but this should be huge for my team- We have been increasingly using SubD techniques for concept modeling. This will be extremely useful for downstream communication with Engineering teams- even though the surfaces are heavy it is still something that a Mech Engg team member can open and evaluate component clearances general design intent etc: