Ok here goes another request/suggestion! For all Archicads issues it does have a good system for drawing lines.






When you click to draw a connected line you get a little pet pallet that pops up near your mouse which lets you switch between straight and curved lines on the fly as it were which makes for speedy drafting. Also it has a good curve feature that automatically creates a smooth circular blend from one line to the next which really helps to get smooth tangents.

Also is it possible or will it be possible to adjust tangents (handels) as well as just moving a lines points?

Last question but more layer related. Im assuming different layers will have different colours but will it be possible to adjust the transparency of a layer - say for glazing?

EDIT: Can I bolt on another request for a camera that rotates around the camera axis - like standing still and looking round. It makes it easier to view internal spaces, which im finding a bit of a nightmare just now!

Also having a loop or auto edge connect feature: Say I have extruded a shape and I want to then extrude it some more at a later date, currently I select each edge of that shape and then extrude again. Could there be a way to have the edges conected by default and if selected the separate command could be used if only one or more edges were required?

Cheers
Rob

Hi Rob,

> When you click to draw a connected line you get a little
> pet pallet that pops up near your mouse which lets you
> switch between straight and curved lines on the fly as it
> were which makes for speedy drafting.

In MoI you can use a Ctrl+click to place a corner point, which allows you to draw some straight segments mixed in with curved pieces within the same run of the Freeform curve command, here is a quick demo:



Just hold down Ctrl when you click to place those corner points in and if you place 2 corner points in a row it will make a straight line between them.

Does that help to do what you need?


> Also is it possible or will it be possible to adjust tangents
> (handels) as well as just moving a lines points?

Actually when you are moving those points you are adjusting the tangents as well, the start tangent of the curve is formed by the direction between the first 2 points, and the end tangent of the curve is formed by the direction between the last 2 points.

MoI uses a system called NURBS curves which work a little differently than Bezier curves - Bezier curves are limited to kind of small fragments that are kind of pasted together. With NURBS curves you can have that if you want (with each curve segment being made up of 4 points like a bezier), but that tends to create a lack of curvature smoothness between each of the segments.

NURBS curves were basically invented to improve the smoothness of the interior parts of a curve by allowing it to be made up of more than just 4 points for a single curve piece.

So I'm not really planning on going back to that kind of internal handle system, it would kind of mean going back to a more primitive level of technology and running back into some of those smoothness issues.

The lack of smoothness tends to be something that is hard to detect in a purely 2D drawing, but when you start having things punched out into 3D and with shading and especially reflections on them, that lack of smoothness tends to become more noticeable.


> Im assuming different layers will have different colours but will
> it be possible to adjust the transparency of a layer - say for glazing?

No, I'm not planning on having this for v2, just shooting for simple colors to start with.

re: Glazing - do you mean for producing a rendered output or something? For now this kind of colorization in MoI is just going to be oriented towards helping you organize objects into groups, not really for any rendering or presentation type output yet...


> EDIT: Can I bolt on another request for a camera that rotates
> around the camera axis - like standing still and looking round.
> It makes it easier to view internal spaces, which im finding a
> bit of a nightmare just now!

Any ideas on how this would be controlled? Right now the basic mouse operations are sort of pretty well filled up, so I'm not quite sure where I would put the access to this kind of a thing.

You're talking about some kind of control similar to the way one of those "first person shooter" video games works, is that correct?

- Michael

Hi Rob, I missed this part:

> Also having a loop or auto edge connect feature: Say I have
> extruded a shape and I want to then extrude it some more
> at a later date, currently I select each edge of that shape and
> then extrude again. Could there be a way to have the edges
> conected by default and if selected the separate command
> could be used if only one or more edges were required?

I'm not sure if I'm following this correctly, but if you want to change the extrusion height of something that you have already created, I do want to make that possible in the future by being able to edit some of the history of how the object was created. Currently in MoI there isn't a way to edit that particular type of thing, you can only edit input objects like the curve. But I do want to provide a way to edit these other kinds of values like a height later on, hopefully in v3.

You may be able to use the Transform / Scale / Scale1D command currently to change the height of something in just one direction, that may work for adjusting an extrusion height for now.


Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you are describing about having the edges connected by default... Maybe you mean have them grouped to select together? I think something along those lines will end up being possible with some grouping work that still has yet to be finished for v2, we'll see how that goes.


- Michael

Hi Rob,

> Can I bolt on another request for a camera that rotates around the camera axis
> like standing still and looking round. It makes it easier to view internal spaces,
> which im finding a bit of a nightmare just now!

A Spaceball/SpaceNavigator helps in achieving what you want, you can lock rotations so it only rotates in one plane.
Once you've used one there's no turning back :)
http://www.3dconnexion.com/

Cheers

Thanks Michael + Danny,

Yeah I had a go on one of those when the allplan rep came round afew months ago and found it a bit tricky but I hear loads of people swear by them so think i'll give it a try - they seem to have come down in price quite a bit. Does moi offer full functionality then - i see the options and it seems like it is well supported. I think it could be the answer for me, going to order one today.

With the native implimentation into moi the rotating the camera about its axis (looking around) would work well like it does in Cinema4D when the camera option is switched to camera rotation. C4D uses the same gizmos as moi and works well. Basically use zoom and pan to move the camera and then rotate to look around.

Shame that there won't be any transparency in v2, i wasn't meaning rendering (not expecting anything like that) really just to inform the design process during the modelling process, so we can see through 'glass' but tell where the glass is rather than having to switch that layer off all the time. I mean its almost there as it is with the show hidden line option but everything is semi transparent with that on.

It was my mistake I had overlooked the ability to select a face on an object and extrude! I have been selecting the edges and extruding not the face, as I thought that would be more of a poly modelling technique! Excellent. But yes more history options and live boolean subtraction for negative extrusion would be great too.

Hi Rob,

> Does moi offer full functionality then - i see the options
> and it seems like it is well supported.

Yup, MoI fully supports the Space Traveler type device for handling view rotation as an alternative to using the mouse.

But the rotation style is still similar to the mouse action, that it is a kind of "focused on object" pivot where the camera point revolves around a specific target point.

You seem to be asking about a way to do the reverse - to pivot the target point around the camera rather than the camera around the target point. (Didn't you ask earlier about having the view stay focused on a specific point though?)

I tried the Cinema4D method, and it seems like that same kind of option could work well in MoI too - what I would do would be to add an additional option under Options > View > Rotate/Pan/Zoom options > Rotation style.

Currently there are 2 styles available there - "Rotate around world z axis" and "Free rotation" which are different methods of pivoting the camera around the target point. I think I could add another option there for "First person" which would then make view rotations operate in this other sort of "staying in one place and looking around" style.

I'll give that a try and see how involved it is to make that.

- Michael

Hi Rob, in the next v2 beta there will be a new "First person" view rotation style here:



That will make the view rotation work more in the style of one of those "first person shooter" type games, sort of like a kind of walkthrough type method more than a focused-on-specific object mode like the current ones.

This mode will keep the camera in the same spot and instead pivot the target point around the camera, which is the reverse of how it currently behaves.

Hopefully that should get you the kind of navigation that you were looking for here.

- Michael

BRILLIANT!! Yes I assumed the option would go in the view options alongside the free rotate etc. What I was asking about before was a way of righting a camera that had got twisted in a funny orbit and ends up upside down with me spinning wildly which sometimes happens! But think I will use this new rotation option a lot - I think it will help moi loads for architectural work. Also ordered a space navigator yesterday so if i use it in first person mode will that unlock the full rotation options for the space navigator? I know you are wisely hesitant to add to the UI but perhaps it could be an option to have the view mode switching option in the UI by the snap options for quick access rather than having to go through the main options each time? Im never satisfied am i!!! ;-)

Hi Rob,

> What I was asking about before was a way of righting a camera
> that had got twisted in a funny orbit and ends up upside down
> with me spinning wildly which sometimes happens!

Do you have the rotation style set to "Free rotation" ? If you switch it to the "Around world z axis" method instead, it may help you to stay more oriented upwards when rotating around.

Another thing that may help is that you can set up a keyboard shortcut which will let you re-orient the view to point right-side up when you press a key.

To do that, go to Options / Shortcut keys, and add in a new entry. For the key part, put in whichever key you want to trigger this action, and for the command part paste in this:
script:var vp = moi.ui.mainWindow.viewpanel.getViewport('3D').tiltAngle = 0.0;

Then when you hit that key it should twist your view around so that it is going in the normal world z upward direction, it may possibly help you.


> Also ordered a space navigator yesterday so if i use it in first
> person mode will that unlock the full rotation options for the
> space navigator?

Yeah when you switch that mode it changes how rotation works both with the mouse and with the space navigator as well.


> I know you are wisely hesitant to add to the UI but perhaps
> it could be an option to have the view mode switching option
> in the UI by the snap options for quick access rather than
> having to go through the main options each time?

Usually setting up a keyboard shortcut is the best way to provide quick access to something like that, it will be possible to set up a keyboard shortcut that will switch back and forth between 2 modes, rather than going into the settings UI.

- Michael

Or setting one of the buttons on the navigator as the mode switcher which would be sweet so you could control all your camera moves with your spare hand without needing to take it off!

Thanks for the script - sounds like just the thing i was after.

Hi Rob,

> Or setting one of the buttons on the navigator as the mode
> switcher which would be sweet so you could control all your
> camera moves with your spare hand without needing to take it off!

Yup, that will work too. The way you set that up is to make a keyboard shortcut to do the action you need, and then in the Space Navigator driver you can tell it to send a keyboard combination to MoI when you hit a particular button on the controller.

The Space Navigator has 2 buttons (one on either side of the device) which can be assigned in this way.

- Michael

Great - so next question is how do i work out the code for the shortcut or is that something that you have to write?

Hi Rob, usually it is easiest for me to write those, I just didn't mention it yet since the shortcut will not work until the next beta is out.

But here is what you would use when the new beta is out:

script:moi.view.rotationStyle = (moi.view.rotationStyle == 'World' ? 'FirstPerson' : 'World');


That will do a toggle switch between the regular or first person view rotation modes every time you hit that key.

- Michael