Hi Michael,

I don't know how well you get on with the guys at McNeel these days ... but

I love MOI and I love Rhino. MOI's clean interface and stunning display mode ... the FAST hidden line+shading+AA (all on my humble Intel Mobile 945 graphics chip) is so good, I've kinda fallen in love with it! Now I'm trying to pressure the guys at Rhino to do the same.

Unfortunately, MOI doesn't have the feature set like Rhino, so it cannot replace Rhino for me (Besides, I've been a loyal Rhino user since the first beta)

I guess I'm hinting at whether there is any communication between you and McNeel and whether any kind of deal could be struck between you and them to implement your display mode in Rhino (and whether you'd be interested in doing that anyway).

I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Kind Regards
Gavin

+1

Hi Gavin, I'm glad that you like MoI's display! It took quite a lot of effort to get it to work the way I wanted. That combination of high quality + high speed + running on older or more limited hardware is pretty unusual, normally you have to pick just 2 or even one of those... :)

> I guess I'm hinting at whether there is any communication between you and McNeel

Well, I chatted with them for a few minutes at SIGGRAPH... But they have never inquired about licensing any of my code.

I guess that it would be theoretically possible for me to try and extract the display code from MoI and attempt to package it up as a Rhino plug-in... But I don't have a whole bunch of extra time to spend on writing code - if I spend time working on that it would mean sacrificing other stuff that I would like to add to MoI. This makes it pretty difficult for me to justify going that route, sorry.

One thing to mention - you can share objects between MoI and Rhino just by doing Copy / Paste. This can make it pretty quick to bring stuff back and forth between the 2 as you use each one for particular things.

- Michael

the copy and paste thing is the coolest thing yet!

seems the technical display plugin for Rhino is further along than we thought ... the file on their labs page was way out of date.

MOI is still cooler (and faster), although Jeff Lasor thinks you are using DirectX built in AA, and that its nothing special. hehe. I think its special!

Kind Regards
Gavin

Hi Gavin - Jeff seems to be confused. There is a kind of primitive anti-aliased line calculator thing built into DirectX called ID3DXLine (it actually isn't quite built in directly to the D3D core, it is part of the supplemental D3DX library). Apparently he thinks that is what MoI is using... It's certainly not.

I spent about 4 months creating the custom curve display engine for MoI. It's definitely a special state-of-the-art thing, I don't think that it is actually matched in the display engine of any other CAD program out there, even $30,000+ ones.

I developed a custom engine to get greater speed, and also to get some special effects that weren't possible with the basic DX one.

Here is one example - mitered corners. Notice how the corners of this polyline are extended to meet in a sharp proper corner:



Another one is the selection halo that puts a kind of glow effect around the outside of a curve to let you know it will be selected if you click down:



You've already seen the subtle hidden-line effect.

Here is one of the early tests of the engine to give you an idea of what is possible:



The best thing is the blazing speed, quite a bit of the development time was spent in heavily optimizing.

I'm not personally aware of any CAD engine that comes close to this.

So "nothing special".... ? I definitely disagree! :)

- Michael

Amazing hidden things !
Seems so normal than we don't see the task!

+1
i have used StudioTools, ProE, SolidWorks and i must say none of them has it.

Maybe moi3d is a Rhino Killer...?

I tried Rhino 3D on the MACBOOK and I thought that it looked good,... but moi3d looked better on the PC.

That dashed all my hopes of moving all my workflow to the MAC....
I thought I could finally be free of Windos. . . the tyranny continues.

I think moi3d looks a lot like Alias Studio ver 2....no?
well in my mind it does, so I wanted to change the shaded view color from neutral grey to a rich indigo, is that possible?

_Maybe moi3d is a Rhino Killer...?

(Nov 92 - Michael Gibson hired as an intern. He brought Sculptura, a mesh modeler that he had done as a class project.)
The the rest is history: http://en.wiki.mcneel.com/default.aspx/McNeel/RhinoHistory.html
I will personally buy into MOI phenomenon cause Micheals creativity + Very Good Support.

_I tried Rhino 3D on the MACBOOK and I thought that it looked good,... but moi3d looked better on the PC.

+1
Rhino guys say they doing some UI tests for V5...I think that it is extremely difficult to bolt on new technology to an existing product and maintain the same level of quality, performance, and usability... lets wait and see, NO SORRY I DONT HAVE THE TIME.

_That dashed all my hopes of moving all my workflow to the MAC....
I thought I could finally be free of Windos. . . the tyranny continues.

You read my mind hehe. lets hope that Micheal sees the potencial of OSX and how much MONEY could be rolling into his bank account.

You read my mind hehe. lets hope that Micheal sees the potencial of OSX and how much MONEY could be rolling into his bank account."

I agree

> well in my mind it does, so I wanted to change the shaded view color
> from neutral grey to a rich indigo, is that possible?

Hi Nuri, you can change the shade color by editing moi.ini . It is usually located under
c:\Documents and Settings\ [your login name] \Application Data\Moi\moi.ini .

Close down MoI first, and then open up moi.ini in a text editor like notepad. Inside the [View] section there is an entry:

[View]
SurfaceUnselectedColor=255,255,255

This is an RGB value that you can change, so something like 200,200,255 would be kind of a lightish blue.

- Michael

Hi
First time posting here. I will be using a 3D LCD monitor called iz3d. It can display stereo images of DirectX driven renders. I want to model while seeing stereo.The choice of programs that use DirectX in their viewports that I could be using are: trueSpace, XSI 6, 3D-Brush (new ZBrush-type of program from Russia). From the discussion above, may I ask if I would be modeling with a DirectX display in MoI? I apologize if I have asked before in an email to the company... I have been asking about DirectX all over the place :)
Thanks,
Peter

Hi Peter - yes, MoI uses DirectX to do the 3D rendering for its viewport display.

- Michael

> [View]
> SurfaceUnselectedColor=255,255,255

Hi Michael, is there some way to show selected objects in a different color than hovered ones?

Regards,

Marc

Hi Marc, you can tweak those colors too if you want. In moi.ini these are available:

[View]
SurfaceUnselectedColor=255,255,255
SurfaceUnselectedTransitionColor=255,255,208
SurfaceSelectedTransitionColor=255,255,128
SurfaceSelectedColor=239,239,0


The "Transition" ones are the ones for hovering. SurfaceUnselectedTransitionColor is the one used when you hover over an unselected object, and SurfaceSelectedTransitionColor is the one used when you hover over a selected object, where clicking it would unselect it.

They are used for more than just hovering directly over the surface though, they are also used in some other situations where clicking down would change the selection, like if you move over an edge.

- Michael

Thank you Michael for pointing out these adjustments. If I understand correctly these are only for surfaces, there is no adjustments for edges and curves hover state?

Regards,

Marc

Hi Marc, you can adjust the color of curves and edges by using these 2 entries:

[View]
LineUnselectedColor=0,0,0
LineSelectedColor=255,255,32


Hovering for edges and curves works slightly differently than for surfaces. When you hover over a curve, the curve itself doesn't change color, instead there is a halo type glow that is drawn around it as an extra thing.

If your curve is unselected, the halo will be in the selected color, showing that if you click down that curve will become selected.

If you curve is selected, the halo will be in the unselected color, showing that if you click down that curve will become unselected.

So for curves, those 2 settings above control both the normal appearance and hovering.

- Michael

Thanks!

Marc