Thanks Danny,

Thats a handy tip that does work while the surface is still planar and before you started manipulating/moving points on the surface. After you've moved a couple of points on the surface around, adding additional control points to the original curves doesn't have any effect on the number of points on the surface.

I'm now finding that once I start molding my surface to shape I sometimes need additional rows of points to refine the shape a bit more. Is there a technique that could be used to add the additional points ?

Burr

I like your thinking on this but I'm lost.

I've created a surface of 4 points by 4 points and started moving some of the points on the surface around. I've then trimmed the surface with another curve. All good so far. I've then selected all the edges of the trimmed surface and deleted them but all I get is the original surface back before trimming with no additional points.

Are you able to elaborate a bit more on your suggestion, it sounds interesting ?

Hi Kevin, there currently isn't any way to add points to a surface after you have already been messing around with its points.

You have to add enough points to your original curves.

It is on my list of things to make "Add pt" work on surfaces as well as curves though.

- Michael

Kevin,
After thinking about it and reading your reply to Danny, I realized what I was talking about isnt quite what you were asking. My method only adds more rows and columns to the outside of the shape your using. I'll post a vid as it may work for you in another area though.

Burr the video king :)

---------

Thanks Michael for clearing that up. Being able to Add point on surfaces would be a great addition.

Burr given what Michael has said if I can't add additional points between existing rows then being able to tack some more rows onto the edge of my surface would be a good work around.

The voice Danny...The Voice!

Thanks Burr for putting that together

I now understand exactly what you mean.

It's a very good tip to create a much larger array of points and then just use trim. I should be able to work with that reasonably effectively until the addition of add point to surface gets included in MoI sometime in the future.

I know this thread is sounding a lot like sub'd modelling for nurbs but sometimes that is the best way to create some of the more tricky organic shapes that occur in some subjects rather than trying to patch the shape together with multiple individual surfaces and maintain surface continuity etc

Theres a tute on the resources page of a guy who made water cans out of spheres. I think you could also use a sphere as a base shape, do some pulling around, then trim or bool off the piece you like to add to the model. It only becomes an issue when you go to "add" the pieces together...You want to keep the "Punch through" "boolean together" theory in tact instead of trying to model the surface to "An exact dimension" then try to get a bunch of little patches to join.

perhaps something like that? http://integrityware.com/tutorials/Max/Release20/FaceGrids/FaceGrids.html

Like Sinatra ;)

Is it me or does just looking at that user interface make your head hurt?

Burr

I did consider using a sphere as a starting point for a lot of shapes I want to create but a simple plane is quicker to manipulate. So that is all sorted now how to create this. Thanks for the assistance.

Yep, I've always understood the punch through boolean theory and understand that is the best way to work with nurbs which is great for fantasy objects most people create but unfortunately when trying to accurately model real world objects such as cars and aircraft & keep them looking accurate a panel by panel approach often is the only way you can maintain accuracy of the shapes you need.

From what I've seen of the Rhino guys who have the ability to create very accurate looking cars http://www.cg-cars.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1271, they pretty much use the panel by panel approach with lots of point pulling & matchsurfing to maintain continuity. Although don't get me wrong, what they are doing looks extremely tedious and time consuming.

On that note, its time for me to start putting into practice the ideas put forward in this thread and seeing if I can advance my F9F project.

Thanks for the input everyone.

yannada

Yep, powernurbs looks really powerful but as a hobbyist could justify the expense.
I should be able get most of what I need from MoI and the stuff MoI doesn't do well I can use my Poly modellor for that.

Hi yannada,

> perhaps something like that?
> http://integrityware.com/tutorials/Max/Release20/FaceGrids/FaceGrids.html

Actually no - as far as I can tell that is making a kind of curve grid on a surface I guess for snapping on to?

That is a different type of thing than inserting or removing surface control points.

Surface control points are a kind of "hull" of points that define the surface, you can see them if you have a single surface (use Edit/Separate if you have a joined surface) and then use Edit/Show pts. You can then manipulate these points to edit the shape of a surface, it works in the same way that editing the control points of a curve changes the shape of a curve.

Surface control points are not normally used as a snapping target, but rather as a way reshape the surface by moving them.

- Michael

Hi Kevin, yeah basically control point manipulation of surfaces is not really a fully finished area in MoI yet.

For the most part I kind of assume that if you are really interested in 3D point grid manipulation type modeling that you'll be using a sub-d type modeling system instead of MoI because the mechanism that is used in sub-d lends itself really well to that particular kind of thing.

But there certainly can be situations where NURBS control point manipulation can be useful, so I do want to tune up this area. It just hasn't been a priority initially in MoI, instead the priority has been in the areas where NURBS are particularly strong like booleans and cutting operations for example.

The big limitation with NURBS surface control point manipulation is that a NURBS surface is defined by a kind of 2d UV grid of points. That means when you want to add points (when that is working in MoI) you can't just add 1 single point in somewhere, you have to add in a whole row or column of points at a time. Sub-d on the other hand lets you add in just individual points where you might want them, that is kind of the key reason why it tends to be used more often for this kind of thing.


It sounds like you understand all this already, I just wanted to confirm that what you were mentioning is accurate.


- Michael

Burr
Re the movie tute
(OK--Brian is stupid and dumnnnnnn and having a bad day, and the Coopers are not cold enough!)

Please----In this point in the movie--HOW did you RAISE those points like that ( and later, perhaps, doing a bit of lowering)--I can do some of that with no trouble with say a sphere with points!

Brian
(I can only get an edge raise)

Hi Brian,
It's not dumb when you cant see the whole screen.

I'm actually using Petr's "Nudge Tool". So if I show points, then select a single point, I can "Nudge it in any direction". In the Video I used "Nudge zup" which moves in the Z up direction. Also "Nudge zdown".

Thanks Burr
((?see whole screen))

Can you understand why I am spitting blood though?
(In what other app would I have to go through through the complexity of finding that and installing it into my working proceedures?)

The gap in understanding really surprises me.

Sorry if I appear such an old grump.

Brian

Hi Brian, I have been thinking of probably adding Nudge in as one of the default shortcuts.

But we did recently (yesterday??) just have a pretty long discussion about keyboard shortcuts, if you need to refer back to the answer, you can read it again here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2333.60

I'm really not quite sure why you are showing screenshots of other app's keyboard settings managers.... If those other apps work better for you, then there is an easy solution to your problem - just use those other apps and you should then get what you need.

- Michael