Hi Michael!

Hope your Siggraph trip was great and turns into solid sales for you :)

Just a couple suggestions for V2.

There are a lot of settings that can only be accessed by editing the ini file or by using scripts. Many of them are really useful. An example would be to change the light angle. It would be nice if some or most of these could be put into the options window. I'm no programmer but I don't think that would be too hard. Just a more comprehensive preferences list.

On the example of the light angle, it would really be nice to be able to pick from a few different pre-set angles with just a click. Also, a little ambient light would be nice. For me, the dark side of an object is just a bit too dark.

It would be nice to be able to turn on or off the popup navigation windows with a click.

Just ideas. Love V2 so far!!! Great work.

Cheers!

Hello,

About the lighting, I do agree the dark area are way to dark, it's a bit 'tiring' (is that correct ?) for the eyes.
I often use this script to switch the light direction during modeling :

script:var dir = moi.view.lightDirection; if ( dir.x == 1 && dir.y == 1 && dir.z == -1 ) { dir.set(-0.5,1,0); } else { dir.set(1,1,-1); } moi.view.lightDirection = dir;

If I get it right, moi is using some kind of 'one light' trick to lit the scene, to assure full compatibility with old gfx card and speed-up the viewport.
Maybe a more advanced lighting solution will come with the v2, with a control on the ambient, key and fill light :)

Hi Len,

re: lighting - I guess to control the current lighting by angles it would really take 2 angles, one for left-to-right rotation and then one up-and-down rotation.

But instead of focusing in on that, I would really rather add a variety of different lighting schemes that you could choose from, some of which will be focused on not having those kinds of dark areas. I think that will do more to solve the actual problem more than an angle option setting.

But I'll probably not be able to focus on this until after I've got some progress on object organization tools.


> It would be nice to be able to turn on or off the popup
> navigation windows with a click.

Do you mean the ones at the bottom of a viewport that has the buttons like "Area, Zoom, Pan, etc..." ?

- Michael

Hi Michael,

The lighting could easily be a few presets. Most programs I work with have the light about 30 to 45 deg up and 30 to 45deg to the left. Then there is just a bit of ambient light to fill in. I find it easier to work with and it's kind of a standard.

You're right, the organization tools should come first, this is just something to think about.

Yes, I do mean the ones at the bottom of the viewport. For me, they get in the way and I had delete the image file so they don't load up. It would just be nice to be able to turn them on and off, that's all.

Cheers!

Len

It would be nice if we could eventually assign icon shortcuts to scripts, and place these in the layouts.
There are a few scripts I use all the time, such as for isolating objects.

There is the plugin Gallery from Petr's MoI page. One shortcut, All script icons.

Burr

Hi Len,

> Yes, I do mean the ones at the bottom of the viewport. For me,
> they get in the way and I had delete the image file so they don't
> load up. It would just be nice to be able to turn them on and
> off, that's all.

For the next beta I've added a checkbox option to control this under Options / View / Show view controls.

So with the next beta you'll be able to go there to turn them on and off, and that setting will be saved to the moi.ini settings file.

- Michael

Hi okapi,

> It would be nice if we could eventually assign icon shortcuts to
> scripts, and place these in the layouts.

I do want to add a kind of "plug-in" menu so that you can have a list of scripts that show up in a menu instead of only on a shortcut key. But I just haven't had time to focus on that yet.

In the meantime, that plug-in gallery dialog that Burr is mentioning may be a good option for you, Petr's page that has the links discussing that are here:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#PluginGallery


It's also possible to edit the UI definition files which are text files in the \ui subfolder inside of MoI's main installation folder.

For example to add an "Isolate" button to the bottom toolbar, you would do the following:

Open up the CommandBar.htm file in notepad, you can find it inside the \ui subfolder inside of MoI's main installation folder.

All the various controls on the bottom toolbar are defined down here, and you can insert a new one by adding some text in here.

Just before the ending </body> tag near the bottom of the file, add this:

<moi:CommandButton onbuttonclick="moi.geometryDatabase.invertSelection(); moi.geometryDatabase.hide(true);">Isolate</moi:CommandButton>

So it should look something like this near the end of the file:

			..... more stuff up here .....

			</moi:StateButton>
		</nobr>
		
		<moi:CommandButton onbuttonclick="moi.geometryDatabase.invertSelection(); moi.geometryDatabase.hide(true);">Isolate</moi:CommandButton>
		
	</body>
</html>

Now when you run MoI the next time, there will be an "Isolate" button on the bottom command bar, next to the Object Snap toggle button.

You can add in other buttons in a similar way.

The main problem with this is that every time you get a new beta release, you will need to repeat this procedure, so you may want to keep a link back to this message so that you can refer back to it.

I do want to make this easier in the future, this is just a way that you can make it happen with your current version if you want.

- Michael

That's fantastic Michael, you're the best!

Just a couple other suggestions. It would be nice to be able to lock the zoom level of all 4 windows together when working in a quad view. Sometimes I find it's hard to work with an object that is a different scale in every window.

Also, is it possible to put a switch in to orient the work area so Z is depth and Y is up? That's how all the programs I use are set up and it would be nice to be able to be consistent.

Cheers!!!

Len

Hi Len,

you wrote:

> It would be nice to be able to lock the zoom level of all 4
> windows together when working in a quad view.

For the next beta I've added a new "Link ortho views" option which will show up under Options / View / Rotate/Pan/Zoom options:



When this option is enabled, when you do any zooming or panning in one ortho view the remaining ones will automatically update to center in on the same spot and same zoom level.

By default this will not synchronize the 3D view though - the 3D view by default uses a perspective type display which handles zooming and the field of view in a very different manner than the Top/Front/Right views, and it just is not really possible to make its zoom scale exactly equal to the others because of the perspective foreshortening where objects that are far away will be smaller in the perspective view.

But if you turn off perspective for the 3D view (which is another new option for the next beta under Options / View) then that view will also synchronize with the others.


> Also, is it possible to put a switch in to orient the work area
> so Z is depth and Y is up?

I'll take a look... I'm not so sure about this one though it may require tinkering in too many places. But it may be possible to do a kind of superficial "display label" type change.

- Michael

A magician as always Michael, we ask, you create!
Well, let's hope that all our crazy wishes won't make MoI too complicated... I mean not only the UI but the application itself.

Thanks a million Michael! That just great!

I'm looking forward to starting another major project with MoI soon.

Cheers!!

Hi Len, I was able to get in some options for changing what directions are labeled as x, y, and z for the next v2 beta.

The way it will work is first there is a new button on Options / View:



If you push that new "Axis labels" button this new dialog will pop up:



That dialog will let you set the labels to use for the right, forward, and up directions - to try and clarify them they are labeled here as "Top view horizontal" for right, "Top view vertical" for forward, and "Elevation" for up.

The default is the same as before, with the Top view using x and y making a kind of "blueprint plan" with z being the elevation up from the "tabletop plan", that is pretty much the standard for CAD programs.


To use the kind of animation-style x/y in the front view, you will want to change this to be like so:




Then I think it will behave like you are more accustomed to, here is a shot of how the axis icons look when changing that setting:




When you change this option, it doesn't really change how data is stored internally or written out to any files, it changes a few specific areas though to give you sort of feedback and UI using your label preference. The optional axis icon in the lower left corner will show up using your label choice, the label on the base point of straight snap will display using your labels, axis snap will show "On x", "On y", etc... using your labels and also the x,y,z point readout and x,y,z typed-in point input will use your labels as well.

There are a number of things that will not change though, like technically that coordinate system above there with x/y on the front view is a "Left handed" coordinate system which is supposed to handle rotation directions slightly differently - that will not be different but that detail is probably not likely to affect you very much, it just means that the rotation that you get by using something like the Rotate axis tool will not be technically correct for your custom coordinate system, the "positive" angular direction will still be determined by the right-hand rule instead of a left-hand rule.

But I think that having all the x,y,z coordinate feedback using your labels should do the trick well enough and I doubt that you will notice the parts that are technically incorrect for rotations and angle measurements.

- Michael

That'll do the trick just fine! Thanks so much!!