Hi there,
My last model I created was first done here all in patch modeling and yes it is a lot of work to re-combine the objects when bringing it into another program, but it really keeps a very smooth looking curvature as detail which I notice lacks in a lot of other Sub-D programs. I think my way of modeling has changed for the better at this point with Moi as the first building blocks. I would request a few thing if possible in the next upgrade as a time saver if possible can you make the exporter give an option to either separate each of the patches or be able to say combine each patch this way you don't have to cut a 100 objects into 1 layer such as in Lightwave or Modo. Last exporter thing would be nice would be to make the exporter also only export 4 point polys, I am sure this is a much harder thing to program but it would save a lot of time when trying to recombine the objects back together. Thanks for such a wonderful program though, the Boolean operation is out of this world in how it works! :)

Hi Moe,

> I would request a few thing if possible in the next upgrade
> as a time saver if possible can you make the exporter give an
> option to either separate each of the patches or be able to
> say combine each patch this way you don't have to cut a 100
> objects into 1 layer such as in Lightwave or Modo.

I would like to add some more options to the exporter, but there is also a way you should be able to get this type of separation more quickly right now.

Start by exporting to the .obj format (instead of .lwo for this particular task), and make sure you have "Weld vertices along edges" turned off (expand the dialog by the little arrow to see this option).

Then after you export the .obj file, run the SeparateOBJ utility on it, which you can find here.

That will edit the OBJ file to mark each smoothing group section to be a different object, if you export with welding turned off each surface should form its own smoothing group so that will have the effect of breaking each surface into its own individual object and end up on its own layer inside of Modo.

If I understand what you want correctly, that should get the job done with just a couple of actions.


For combining instead of separating, you can use the MergeOBJ editor instead, which will combine everything in one obj file into just one single object.


> Last exporter thing would be nice would be to make the exporter
> also only export 4 point polys, I am sure this is a much harder
> thing to program but it would save a lot of time when trying
> to recombine the objects back together.

Yes, I have definitely heard from a lot of people who would like to have this. Unfortunately it is a quite difficult thing to program, it is going to be a while before I can attempt it.

- Michael

Thank you for the feedback Michael, I really like the timely answers. I will try the suggestions you gave and it should make my cleanup much easier thanks again.

Hi Will,

> It's okay Michael, I think we're all just marveling at how
> Jinn was able to model so wonderfully using NURBS.

It's definitely very impressive!

But you have to be careful of a pretty big trap - just seeing someone's impressive result may prove that it is technically possible to achieve something, but it doesn't prove that it is practical to achieve it.

By which I mean if it takes you 3 years of training your skills and then a week of full time work for each model, that is just not going to be very practical for many other people even though it will get great results.


> I don't think we're expecting you to make make MOI into a
> crazy do everything modeler.

:) But that is a pretty natural thing to want. I just have to kind of try and reign in expectations a bit because it's just not practical for that to happen all of a sudden, it will take a fair amount of time to get stuff like new toolsets for different modeling styles implemented.


> I was just voicing that it would be nice for MOI to have
> something that really separates it from Rhino but I guess
> being that you also created Rhino, trying to seperate the two
> may be impossible since they're both your work! :)

Well, not only that but they are both NURBS modelers so certainly that will make for some similarities.

But MoI's interface is different than Rhino's by quite a bit. Things like selection, the display, how you activate tools and set options, all that stuff is different. That's not like a small amount of stuff, those are things that come into play for most every thing that you do...

I guess all that interface stuff seems like a big difference to me.

- Michael

And what about this t-spline techno ?
http://www.tsplines.com/rhino/video.php

Is it as promising as it looks ? 3*times the price of MoI Oo (+ a rhino licence) ... The obj cage conversion to nurbs looks sweet
to quickly create advanced organic shape ... just wondering how far you can go after that (booleans, fillet, holes, etc ...)

Hi Michael,

>>I guess all that interface stuff seems like a big difference to me.

Be sure it is a big difference, I've been using 3d cad for the past 10 years, I've used at least 4 and tried another half a dozen and the learning curve is always where to find the commands and once found what are they capable of.
Finding MoI was god sent. Seriously, the first time I launched MoI it took a matter of minutes to find where everything was and start modeling without looking at a single document and I have never achieved that with any other 3d software.

I watched a tutorial on modeling a car on NPower's 'Power NURBS' and as soon as the dude RMB a menu poppet up that looked like a frigging phonebook listing it scared me :o

It matters to me too, keep going the direction you're going.

Cheers
Danny

Thanks Danny!

Hi PaQ,

> And what about this t-spline techno ?

It is definitely very promising, it is the kind of SubD/NURBS combination type approach which I think will start to be seen more often in the next 5 years or so.

I don't think that Rhino is really the best environment for creating brand new subd models, it just is not focused on that kind of toolset either. Probably something like Silo or Modo is more likely to be where you would create the models originally.

But Tsplines lets you do some very interesting conversions from SubD to NURBS. Once you have all NURBS surfaces, you can do regular NURBS operations like booleans, fillets, etc... and you could bring those NURBS models into MoI as well.

- Michael

With all this "options" stuff around!!??

Really, if you do all you can basically in MoI, then take the say .obj file version, to finness, into the, say, Carrara6Pro Vertex Room "Displacement Painting" option----or, maybe even better, doing similarly in the brilliant 3D Coat app---does one really need more?

>I guess all that interface stuff seems like a big difference to me.

It is a huge difference to me too. The first time I tried your 'on the fly' construction lines I was hooked ;-)

I've done some interface design in my time and I agree with Danny that this is what makes an application 'work' for the user. Most developers don't understand this and underestimate both the importance of it and the time it needs to design and develop. What I find great is the fact that the first thing you're working on for V2 is a new interaction for scale, rotate, etc. Brilliant!

Please keep up the good work.


> I don't think we're expecting you to make make MOI into a
> crazy do everything modeler.

I do :-)

But not at version 2. Maybe by version 5 or 10 though. I'm prepared to wait.

"But MoI's interface is different than Rhino's by quite a bit. Things like selection, the display, how you activate tools and set options, all that stuff is different. That's not like a small amount of stuff, those are things that come into play for most every thing that you do...

I guess all that interface stuff seems like a big difference to me."


Yes, absolutely! Owning Rhino v2 myself, I think I see mostly their similar command sets.

MOI's GUI is so transparent that I guess I sorta take it for granted but yes, the work you've put into the GUI is superb!

Even though I feel it's MOI's exporter that brings the most value for me, I have to say that it is most likely MOI's GUI that has me doing way more that I've ever accomplished in Rhino even though they do have a similar command set!


"> I don't think we're expecting you to make make MOI into a
> crazy do everything modeler.

I do :-)

But not at version 2. Maybe by version 5 or 10 though. I'm prepared to wait"


Actually I do as well! :-) (But I didn't want to tell Michael that just yet! :-P )

-Will

PS - I'd love to see what Jin would have to say about MOI since he's such a great NURBS modeler! Perhaps a CGTalk PM to him with a link here is in order... ;-)

Wow !! top mod model export as obj, then convert into t-spline and finally exported in MoI.
Having some trouble with booleans>merge to slice the model ... however it was easy to trim il by hand and doing some cool fillet :)

Incredible modeling perspective for me, but a little bit to much expensive :'(

And here's a model coming with modo :)
So cool :)

Having a patch modeling toolset is not a "bad" idea. But honestly if you are hoping to make something which handles organic modeling better than subd, i don't think you will achieve it just by using patches. It needs to be something more sophisticated than that if you are to overcome the limitations of working in Nurbs. TSplines is a huge improvement for organic Nurbs, and the poly-Nurbs conversion is awesome. I've used it on a few projects that we are now in process of making the injection moulds. But admittedly there is no modeling toolset (coming in version 2!) which compares to the ease and speed of using subd. However TS for Rhino does have a very nice tool (called tsSkin) that allows the input of a minimal set of curves and can output a smoothed solid model from it. you can define very complex forms with very few Nurbs curves. It's a fresh approach to Nurbs modeling. And i think new concepts like this are needed to make Nurbs a viable organic modeling solution...

jonah

Hi jonah,

>> i don't think you will achieve it just by using patches.

Now I'm confused, what method was this Jinwoo dude using, is'nt it Nurbs patches ?

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=307349

Cheers
Danny

Hi PaQ,

> And here's a model coming with modo :)

That one is particularly cool!

You can see that this method has a lot of potential for certain kinds of models where you have some organic / mechanical pieces that need to interact more directly. For example if you needed a face like object that had 100 circular holes drilled in it. Do the face in SubD, bring it over as a NURBS model and drill the holes using NURBS.

However, a lot of times the combination of organic + mechanical is not quite so totally mixed in one single piece like that, like the horse and helmet that you showed earlier seemed like they would work ok with just doing each as separate pieces (organic and mechanical). That seems to be more common.

- Michael

A certain program called 'Animation Master' by Hash Inc., has been doing patch-based modeling from it's inception. A:M uses a patch modeling method that's more akin to Bezier curves than NURBs. Mathematically, they are related since B-Splines are just a generalization of a Bezier curves but the differences presents itself in how we interact with/manipulate them.

The following are links to organic models created with A:M and while they are far from the quality seen in Jinwoo Lee's works, these are done (mostly) by non-professionals and some are actually quite good (note links tagged with a WARNING):


http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=197
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=202
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=229 (WARNING)
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=233
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=231
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=232
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=241
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=250
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=251
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=311
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=365
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=369
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=394 (WARNING)
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=422
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=522
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=592 (WARNING)
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=601 (WARNING)
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=649
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=831
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=888
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=888
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=931


A modeller named Teyon (Alexander) used to do a lot of organic modeling using Rhino. Nowadays, he prefers to use Silo but samples of his earlier work still exists out on the Web - I suggest using Google to find some of his earlier (NURBS-based) work. At one point, Teyon even discussed his workflow and I remember being shocked at the limited number of commands (from Rhino) that he uses to get the results he was getting.

Hi Danny,

> Now I'm confused, what method was this Jinwoo dude
> using, is'nt it Nurbs patches ?

Well, the final output is NURBS patches, but he never goes into very much detail about the specific methods used during modeling.

I had previously assumed that the T-splines plugin for Maya was used for that, but I guess that was not the case. Maya actually natively has some SubD to NURBS conversion capabilities within it as well, for some reason they are not very well known or widely used though.

I think there is a lot of control point manipulation of single patches there, for example in this post:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=3192749&postcount=105

> I made type c with just One patch <....>

> <..> Nowadays I mostly use type C because its light and efficient I guess. <...>


So for example that one type of ear is made up of a single surface that probably was deformed by moving its control points around. That's kind of an older style organic modeling workflow that people used before SubD was available when it was difficult to make curved objects out of polygons. NURBS modeling used to be the leading technique for character modeling back then.


So with this kind of thing you're usually looking at the result of a lot of very particular adjustments to control points to sculpt the shape how you want it.

It takes a pretty large amount of time to get enough practice to understand how the resulting surface is going to behave when you move points in a particular way.

SubD tends to be more flexible for this type of thing since it is easier to insert more points into just one spot instead of always having a uniform grid of points like a NURBS surface always has.

- Michael

Just keep in mind - the main ingredient for producing any of these kinds of really cool detailed organic models is a very high level of skill and fluency on the part of the artist.

It involves the artist spending many many many hours often over the course of many years perfecting their technique so that they gain an intimate understanding of how to adjust points in 3D in subtle ways to get the results they want.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that any of these things are "easy" !

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I 'C' and ear you :)

>> Do not make the mistake of thinking that any of these things are "easy" !

I realised this when I surfed around on this subject, plus I think if it was easy you need to have that artistic flair like a sculptor with clay.
We can all get our hands on some clay which will form in any shape you desire but to turn it into art you just have to have that gift.
Thanks for the clarification.

Hi Ambi,

Thanks for the links, and you know that most males still have that 'little boy' tendencies to push the button that says WARNING on them, first ;)
The Manga style is what I'm interested in and I think ? this is achievable in MoI, I've started something along these lines but just need more time and
study as my career involves mainly mechanical parts.
That's part of the reason for the NPR thread. http://moi3d.com/forum/messages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1553.1

Cheers
Danny