Hi

I'm a brand new Moi user. My main interest is aviation so I'm hoping to use MoI to create aircraft.

I've decided to start off with a relatively easy subject to see what MoI can do and how well it transfers to my poly modelling/rendering software.

After a couple of hours getting used to how things work, here is where I'm at.

Kevin

You seem to have a good start Kevin. MoI is a great tool for aircraft!

Thanks Len

Lots of trial and error with this one to figure out how things work in MoI...what it likes to do and what it doesn't. Browsing the forum has helped alot especially with Michael answering nearly all users questions.

Little bit more progress as it begins to take shape.

From my limited experience so far MoI definitely needs a layering system to control the complexity of the model....hide is alright for simple models. A construction plane that you can orientate to the direction you want to work in would be really great too. Something similar to max's grid or modo's workplane.

Hi Kevin, it looks like it is coming along well!

Definitely a type of layering/object organization set of stuff will be coming for v2, it won't be much longer before I start to work on that.

re: Workplane - the v2 beta that I just recently released now has the ability to draw on any existing surface in your model, and will use planar surfaces automatically as a construction plane when you place points snapped on to it.

The idea there is to get the same kind of functionality as a custom construction plane but without the need to do any extra steps to activate it and align it, etc...

I am planning on adding a more normal type of construction plane as well, that will still be useful for particular things like if you want to draw something at a rotated angle, stuff like that.

But for simple stuff the direct surface drawing should do the job with less messing around.

- Michael

Thanks Michael

Your plans for layering and workplane additions sounds great. Both will definitely help users a lot when working on their models.

I'll download v2 beta and give the drawing on a surface a go. It should make a lot of modelling tasks a lot simpler.

BTW Great work on creating MoI.

Hi Kevin, Thanks!

There is a brief description of the new on-surface drawing here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1621.21

But you should probably get the hang of it pretty quickly, it just kicks in automatically if you snap your points on to an existing surface while you are working in the 3D view.

If you pick points in the Top, Front, or Right views it will not kick in - things will still align to those planes while working in those views, it is just when working and picking in the 3D view that it will kick in.

I'd certainly be interested to hear if it provides what you needed for workplanes or not!

The idea there is all about providing some of the basic functions of a construction plane in a quicker and less formal way.

- Michael

After converting the work done so far to a mesh and bringing it into my 3D rendering software. I'm impressed with the results I'm getting. Some of the posts Michael has made about the best way to convert to a mesh were really useful in understanding what to do and getting good results.

Michael

I have tried the drawing on a surface command and it is really great. I find I'm using it constantly. Two thumbs up from me the way you have implemented it.

I'm still finding it would be really handy if it were possible to set up a construction plane for new objects that I need to create that are at odd angles to existing objects. I believe this would be a heavily used feature if it were incorporated into MoI.

As my model had become more complex I'm finding the lack of being able to put objects onto layers so that I can hide them a problem. I should be able to get around this limitation in V1 and current V2 by have multiple versions of my file. I would definitely like to see layers incorporated into V2.

Anyway just my thoughts on MoI so far which I hope helps you in your further development of this pretty cool little program.

Hi Kevin, very nice result on your plane! You know things are going to turn out nice when just the plain untextured rendering looks as clean and smooth as that.

I'm glad the surface drawing is working well for you, that's good news!


> I'm still finding it would be really handy if it were possible to set up
> a construction plane for new objects that I need to create that are at
> odd angles to existing objects.

Yes, I am intending to add this, hopefully pretty soon here.

It will definitely be useful in cases where you want to control the angle of the drawn shape.

The general thing that I'm hoping for is that the direct surface drawing will work for many common cases, and that is faster since you don't have to do any kind of setup or restore type steps for it. But there will still be a construction plane command that you can use in the cases where the quick simple one is not what you want.


> I would definitely like to see layers incorporated into V2.

Yup, this is definitely going to be a major focus area coming up in v2. I will most likely start working on this area once I have the next beta release wrapped up, it shouldn't be too much longer for that.

It will be a fairly involved area so it will probably span across a couple of months and a few beta releases before it is all complete (the object organization type tools I mean).

- Michael

I am remembering Ashlar Vellum's Cobalt has similar stuff to draw directly on surface while keeping the surface like temporary cplane, but you seem to implement more coherent approach to this. -Petr

Hi Petr - interesting - I did not remember this part of Cobalt.

I just downloaded the latest demo version of Cobalt to give it a try, and it looks like enabling the "Face on" snap works for snapping the point location on to a surface, and some "center-point" based commands like circle are aligned as you would expect, but other commands such as polyline aren't. Like the x-axis and y-axis type ortho snapping does not happen aligned to the local plane's x/y axis. Rectangle corner/corner is not aligned, etc...

Yeah, the new function in MoI is much more comprehensive than that, it actually literally becomes a temporary construction plane including straight snaps for polyline, angle constraint will be in that plane, etc...

One thing I need to do is to maybe re-organize the x and y axis directions to be in a more expected direction, right now it uses the literal u and v parameter directions of the plane, which can possibly have stuff like the cplane x axis pointing up vertically, stuff like that.

- Michael