Michael, that Shift/Ctrl selection offers some good solution.
Not in the shortcuts?

(Mostly I don't know what I am talking about so do not worry too much!)

Hi Brian,

> Michael, that Shift/Ctrl selection offers some good solution.
> Not in the shortcuts?

Nope, the shortcuts are for custom actions that you can assign to a keystroke, like Ctrl+A.

This Shift+Ctrl option goes along with a mouse click, not a keystroke, it isn't the same thing as a shortcut key.

This option is documented on the wiki here: http://moi3d.com/wiki/Hidden_Secrets

Don't forget to check the wiki (http://moi3d.com/wiki) for additional supplemental information and documentation, it is kind of like a dynamic part of the help file.

- Michael

"Nope, the shortcuts are for custom actions that you can assign to a keystroke, like Ctrl+A.

This Shift+Ctrl option goes along with a mouse click, not a keystroke, it isn't the same thing as a shortcut key."

Michael thats about as questionable an answer as I have ever read? I guess age has something to do with it.

Also,---In relation to the future Area Select/Rebuild solution I guess thats right----but I have to do a mind twist to understand that also---semantics of my world and the 3D world I guess?.

Hi Brian,

> Michael thats about as questionable an answer as I
> have ever read? I guess age has something to do with it.

Maybe we're talking about different things?

I thought you were asking why this wasn't under the Shortcut keys section in the Options dialog.

It's not there because that whole section is about shortcut keystrokes and not mouse click or mouse drag actions.

I don't currently have a place to edit mouse-driven actions like this selection mouse drag.

- Michael

Hi PaQ - getting back to your original question at the start of this thread, I have been taking a look at your unexpected result there and it does appear that the "Avoid smaller than" parameter is not working correctly.

It is making that odd result in the fillet because when it is kicking in due to one direction being smaller than that distance, it is deciding to do the subdivision in the direction that has the biggest angle to it, even if that direction was the one that was under the "avoid smaller than" distance. So that's why it divides more along that more tightly bent fillet direction.

It looks like it should have a pretty simple fix, if you send me an e-mail (moi@moi3d.com) I can send it to you.

However, even with this fixed it isn't really the best way to create a regular spaced mesh, really the best way to do that is as in Steve's example where you try to avoid a tight angular parameter and instead drive it primarily off of the "Divide larger than" distance.

The "Avoid smaller than" is really more intended to prevent heavy meshing of little tiny rounded features in a larger model. It can help avoid some subdivision, but driving it primarily in the other method tends to make a more evenly spaced starting mesh before any subdivision is attempted, which I think is what you are really looking for here?

- Michael

Michael.
I don't want to belabour the point, but, to an old fogie like me, a "key stroke shortcut" and "keystroke plus mouse/or/etc click" are all the same thing--keystroke shortcuts.

I have put that Shift+Ctrl---Area Select onto my desk printout and it looks like a shortcut to me.

The English language and semantics are enough to make one go bald!

Hi Michael,

Thanks a lot for fixing this parameter. I didn't expect that, you're really amazing !
(And I understand the point about using manz' tip, but I'm a fillet addict, I'm creating fillets everywhere hehe,
so it will greatly help to lower the polycount on huge object :))

Is your fix particular for this model or for any model?

Hi Brian,

> I have put that Shift+Ctrl---Area Select onto my desk
> printout and it looks like a shortcut to me.

I guess another way I can describe it is: that particular method of using a modifier key with the mouse is not editable in MoI right now.

That's why it does not show up in the shortcut key editor.

The shortcut key editor only contains items that are made up of all keystrokes and nothing else, not stuff for mouse clicks.

- Michael

Hi Pilou,

> Is your fix particular for this model or for any model?

It's more about the combination of a denser angle setting along with using the "Avoid smaller than" setting. That particular combination doesn't work properly.

If the small polygons are on a shape more evenly curved in both directions like a sphere, then the problem won't happen, that's why I didn't notice the problem before.

If you are running into this problem with the "Avoid smaller than" setting (which does not tend to be used very frequently typically), then go ahead and e-mail me and I can send a fix for it.

- Michael

This is EXACTLY the subject of a thread I was going to start "MOI at the Polygon Level"...

I was going to ask HOW to control the mesher when generating mechanical shapes (spaceships in my case) that contain fillets.

It's like the polygon pattern on one part of the mesh would be fine but at a fillet, the "crossing" lines instead of connecting to one another, would be "off" by small amounts similar to the original poster's picture.

I know it was said that unjoined parts would have non-matching edges when meshed, but I'm talking a SINGLE object here and hardly none (if any) of my fillet's topologies match the main surface(s).

At one point I was in XSI moving edges around and merging points ("Push and pull points until your eyes bleed..." - I forget who said that but I totally understand the sentiment!)

I'm glad to see perhaps a bug was found (I'd like a chance at any patches put out as well!)

But Michael, is there ANY way that you'll be able to get the mesher to join major cross-sectional edges around fillets and curves without all of the dis-joins?

I don't mind doing some tweaking at the edge/polygon level but it can get rough and very time consuming at times.


I know perhaps MOI isn't the right modeler to use when your target might end up being a game engine and clean geometry is a high priority but you can't help but love how quickly MOI lets you get your shapes created!

-Will

Hi Will,

> I know it was said that unjoined parts would have non-matching
> edges when meshed, but I'm talking a SINGLE object here and
> hardly none (if any) of my fillet's topologies match the main surface(s).

You should end up with all matching points along every joined edge.

But let me clarify what this means exactly, it is not the same thing as having only quads touching other quads which I think is what you are asking for.

Here's an example output mesh - I'll focus on this highlighted polygon:



This is between joined surfaces, so extra work has been done to make this shared edge between the 2 surfaces get meshed with a matching point structure so that there are no gaps or holes in the mesh there.

The highlighted polygon is a 6-sided n-gon, here you can see some red lines for each edge of it:



Note the circled vertices above - these are the "matching" ones - the n-gon has a vertex at every spot of a vertex on the mesh of the upper surface.

Now take a look at what happens if the surfaces are not joined:



In the above case I separated the object into individual surfaces, so there is no knowledge of the "shared-ness" between those pieces. Each one gets meshed and optimized in isolation, resulting in different mesh structures. You can see that the polygon that used to be a 6-sided n-gon is now only a 5-sided n-gon, those lines show the edges there - notice how they do not match up to the other surface's mesh? That means that there are little holes and gaps between these 2 mesh objects, this is what I mean by "not aligned vertices".

When you have joined objects, the vertices of each piece are aligned so that there is a "water tight" alignment with no holes between each piece. That's the kind of matching that I am usually talking about.

The kind of alignment that you are asking for is another step yet beyond that. You want the u/v layout of the underlying quad grid of 2 adjacent surfaces to match.

I have done some work to make that kind of matching happen in certain circumstances, like surfaces of revolution that touch each other like a sphere touching a cylinder, will get that kind of extra alignment now:



But it is a lot more difficult to make this happen between more arbitrary surfaces that have different UV layouts to them.

> But Michael, is there ANY way that you'll be able to get the mesher
> to join major cross-sectional edges around fillets and curves without
> all of the dis-joins?

I do have some ideas on making this extra alignment happen in some more situations in the future.

But it is a really difficult job to provide it especially in cases where the pieces join at trim edges in the surface that are not aligned to a natural uv line of the surface.

If you want to post an example model where you wish the alignment was better, I could tell you whether it might be possible to improve that, or whether it won't be.


> I'm glad to see perhaps a bug was found (I'd like a chance at any
> patches put out as well!)

Right now I don't have a patch distribution system set up for the web site. I can send it to you if you e-mail me though. However, it does not improve this kind of alignment, it is a fix for using the "Avoid smaller than" parameter in combination with a tighter angle. I don't expect it to give you any benefits for what you are looking for right now.


> I know perhaps MOI isn't the right modeler to use when your
> target might end up being a game engine and clean geometry
> is a high priority

I am actually very interested in developing as clean mesh geometry as possible! MoI is really on the cutting edge of this already right now, but I do want to try and improve it even further.

If you can post some examples of your current results and describe a bit more what you wish that you got instead, that would help give me more test cases to work with for future tune ups.

- Michael

Thank you very much Michael, you touched exactly on my problem - exactly what I was talking about!

Yes, I agree that the surfaces are actually joined but perhaps a coined term is they're not aligned?

What I typically do as in exactly the vertices you circled is to move them around and merge them together, add additional edges where required etc., but obviously it becomes very time consuming when you try to dense up the model at export to make the matching a bit better...

I noticed that selecting quads/tris DO seem to help get better alignment between the edges of varying topologies but then you end up with more work.

I definitely understand how complex this issue is but I've always held the opinion is that the value in MOI is FIRST its mesher and second, its GUI!

If you can conquer this delima then I'll definitely expect to see you stealing awards from ILM, Pixar and others along with all kinds of magazine and blog articles! ;-)

-Will

Hi Will,

> Yes, I agree that the surfaces are actually joined but perhaps
> a coined term is they're not aligned?

It is tough to create terminology for this stuff. But this problem here:



seems to be described pretty well by an "alignment" problem - in this case the vertices that were created are shifted in position from one another, in other words not lined up or not aligned...

I guess that one is a "watertight vertex alignment", and the other one that you are talking about is a "quad to quad alignment", where you're talking about a situation where only quads are created along a shared edge and that you want matching quads between the pieces instead of n-gons.


> What I typically do as in exactly the vertices you circled is to
> move them around and merge them together, add additional
> edges where required etc.,

Can you describe a bit more the reason why you would be moving these around or adding more of them in?

The more concrete things and actual example models that you could show would help me to understand what you are trying to do better and also give me some better test cases for trying to improve it.

- Michael

Hi Michael, yes absolutely I wanted to send you what I was working on and get some of your advice - I was going to email you but any info here will certainly be helpful to anyone doing similar work.

As you know I love to gather reference material and practice by modeling and thereby improving my skills.

I started working with this image (of course, all props to the creator of this gorgeous model!):


After various attempts creating the main shape, I got to this point:



Since the ultimate goal for the majority of my models is for a game I'm working on (think Wing Commander type game) I'll probably have to go back to direct polygon modeling but of course I can't help but love how MOI lets you get your ideas and concepts modeled really easy!

You can play around with meshing parameters for a good amount of time trying to "balance" the resultant mesh but this is what I settled on.
You can see how the fillet edges wonderfully matches the front edge on the "barrel" (however the main body's edges dont' line up at all):






But to show the kinda things that make what's left of my hair fall out, while the front of the barrel is perfect, this is what I get at the back:


You'd think that the mesher would continue around to the rear end and give results similar to the front!


Of course rendering the model in Cinema 4d gives smooth results:



However with my models ultimately targeting a game engine, ngons will most likely not be an option anyway requiring me to either clean up the mesh or retopologize the model - this is where I started merging points and added edges to better match in certain areas:


But that quickly turns into hours of work...


-Will

Hi Will, thanks for posting the example, that does help a lot.

> You'd think that the mesher would continue around to the rear end
> and give results similar to the front!

If you line each of those fillet pieces up with each other, you can see that they are different lengths:



Due to the curvature of the hull part, one of these pieces got chopped down to be smaller than the other side.

That difference in length will right now create a difference in the generated mesh as well - that's currently the reason why one side has a different mesh structure than the other.


But this is the kind of situation that I think I can improve, because it has a plane on the other side of it. It won't be exactly easy, but I should be able to come up with a method that will align quad structures better in this case.

When there are 2 just general curved surfaces on either side of the fillet, that case will be way more difficult yet to try and align because there will be kind of 2 different alignment pressures on the same surface. With a plane on one side, it can kind of "relieve" the pressure for alignment on that side, allowing me to focus on aligning to just one other structure (that's currently my theory anyway).

I'm not exactly sure when I will be able to accomplish this, it will require a fair amount of restructuring of the mesh processing since things will be more dependent on being meshed in a certain order as well.


re: Game engine - sorry, I didn't quite pick up that was the final goal for this before.

Of course, that is one of the most difficult types of meshes to create, typically those are done by someone using great care in the placement of every single point... It's pretty difficult to set up automatic processing that replicates that exactly.

But I think I should be able to get one notch closer to it, and the specific example that you mention here should be doable. Your model here will be helpful as a test case when I work on that, if you run across other examples that you wished created different mesh structures, please send those when you run into them.

- Michael

Thanks for the explaining what's happening Michael.

Of course I created the barrel and performed the fillet and mirror first before the boolean with the ship hull but yes, I see that the result did shorten the rear side as you have shown.

Thinking a bit, perhaps it might be easier if instead of attempting to create a complete model in MOI, I can use it to create subassemblies which I can piece together back in my poly app, hmmm...

I'd still have to be careful how I create the individual parts though!

While more work, hopefully it would be less work than trying to repair the whole model as I attempted before.

It's just looking at that model, it just seems like something you'd totally want to create in MOI! (And of course you can, it's just the resultant topology is not going to be game engine friendly!)

-Will

Just wanted to say I really like the look of your ship, sorry for off topic!
David W.