Hi Rainer, do you possibly have a sketch or something? That might help me understand the kind of shape that you are looking for a bit better.

Fingers and toes tend to be things that work better in a subdivision surface type modeler, but you can do them in MoI if you are looking for a kind of stylized type thing.

This one might be a good one to try and build most of the foot using a Loft through cross sections.

Here I drew some cross-section curves, stacked vertically. I drew the bottom one with the toes in it first, and then copied that up and started to edit its points to kind of melt the toes down more for each profile:



These can now be selected and then Lofted to get this result:



I used the Loft Style: Loose option for this one, that tends to make less wiggles back and forth when lofting.

Then you can fillet the top edge to round it off. That will still leave you with a flat plane at the very top part though. One thing that can work well to have a fully rounded top is to model a small revolved cap like this:



Then boolean the main piece with that revolved cap surface to cut it, and throw away the top part. Now you have a rounded top instead of a flat top, and then you can fillet the edge:



I have also attached the curves that I used here as toe_curves.zip .

You can get a lot of variations on this by changing the profiles, the amount of change beween each profile and also the spacing between each profile will have different effects.

I'm not sure if this is the kind of 3 toes that you were looking for, but I hope this may give you an idea!

- Michael

You can also add vertical curves as well, and then use Construct / Network. This can give you some additional control:



Like for example here I can control how the pieces get connected to one another, so I can make one vertical curve that runs along the point of the toes, and then joins it to the front part of the top curve - when lofting this will just get evenly spaced and kind of twist around the side a little bit, creating some torque in the resulting surface.

That network will give this result:



At first I had some bad bulges that were kind of sticking out in the top part, so I added a couple more vertical stacked layers that were smooth to control it some more.

Also Network is kind of basically like doing a loft in 2 directions - so you have to kind of imagine that each set of curves in one direction will be lofted. So for example it would not work well to only have vertical curves running down the front part of the foot along just the toes, you need to have enough curves that go all the way around to the back part as well.

Curves are attached as toe_network_curves.zip.

- Michael

This is exactly what I was looking for. Again, I caught myself within my own creative limitations... sighhhh....
I was stuck with the loft and the resulting need of vertical curves to create the 'body'. Thinking along 'topographic' iso lines is the solution to the puzzle.
The top can also be beveled.... an additional bonus for taking the right path. This time I will post a result very shortly. I think I got my workflow together for moi model 8).
Thanks again for the inspiration!
Lemo

Hi Lemo, I'm glad that helped. If you get stuck or run into problems, please post your curves.

One thing that can be a problem in general with that lofting method is getting unwanted ripples and bulges. After you mess with it a bit you can develop more of a feel for how to gradually change the shape of each progressive section to try and reduce those.

I adjusted those curves in and out and up and down to get that result. Also Loft Style:Loose can help reduce wiggles.

This kind of topo-lines lofting approach can work well when you want some small protuberances. If you wanted to make longer toes then you would have to switch to a different method, probably trying to model the toes separately and then blend or fillet them into the foot part. But that's also where a subdivision surface style modeler starts to work quite a lot better.

The other general tip is that it can get hard to try and control too many aspects of a shape all in one shot with Loft. So for example in this case, I did not make any attempt to try and make a rounded top all with this same Loft. That would likely have introduced additional rippling as the shapes changed quite a bit more in size. So leaving that going fairly straight up (and rounding out the top in a later step) helps make the Loft more controllable.

- Michael

Once again I'm hoping tips like this make it into the docs or onto the Wiki pages!

MOI is so easy to use, it only takes a handful of hours to learn how to use the program.

BUT, it's tips like this that show you how to WORK with the program!

It's similar to say your grandmother and a race car driver; she knows how to drive the car, but probably not at the speeds that a race car driver handles on a regular basis!

I need the speed tips like this and the few other gold nuggets of usage information to make me more proficient with MOI!


I typically try to do everything in a single shot but I see that yes, sometimes you have to break up an object's creation using multiple steps and not try to get say a Loft or similar to do it all in one command!

Great info here!

-Will

Hi Will,

> Once again I'm hoping tips like this make it into the docs or onto the Wiki pages!

I kind of view the forum as another piece of documentation in addition to the help file and the Wiki.

But the part that makes it work as documentation is having it indexed, which is what I plan on using the Wiki for - so I just added a link to this post from the Wiki resources page, under the tutorials section.

That way someone who is starting out browsing the documentation will be able to find it instead of it being buried in the forum as new posts arrive.


> I typically try to do everything in a single shot

If your shape is simple enough this will work, but if it has many changes in shape it will be difficult. What happens is adjustments in one area will tend to have a kind of "ripple effect" and influence other parts of the shape in ways that you might not want.

Splitting into pieces tends to increase the amount of control you have over each piece.

Sometimes it can be difficult to judge where splitting should happen, there is not always a single rule that determines it, it is kind of a judgement call.

- Michael

Hi Michael, welp I'll be waiting for your book "NURBS Modeling for Dummies" - I can see the black and yellow bookcover now with the lightbulb and totem! ;-p

-Will