I don't think this is possible at the moment but would be nice if it was......can we have an option to sweep a profile along multiple curves at once rather than having to do the sweep process for each spline. This probably wouldn't work with a 2 rail sweep in its simplest form as it would confuse things but if there was a button for a multirail sweep (below the 1 or 2 rail sweep option' which you pressed and then selected the rails then pressed ok it could save time for single rail sweep objects. It could be made possible for 2 rail multi sweep by selecting your pair of rails then pressing a 'next' button then select your next pair etc.

Does that sound like a feasible suggestion?

Currently im modelling a standing seam roof and having to sweep each seam as loft isn't appropriate in this case, and it's a bit of a chore!

Hi Rob, check out the "Pipe" plug-in from here:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1463.9
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#Pipe

That is an extra command that you can download and install into your copy of MoI which will give you a "Pipe" command which can take multiple rails in one shot for producing many one-rail sweeps at once.

That may help you out if you need to do a lot of circular sweeps.


For the regular sweep command, I do want to update it so that a selection of 3 or more rails will get the one-rail sweep applied to all of them individually. I think I will be trying to do that when I get a chance to work on some various sweep updates here near the end of v2.


> It could be made possible for 2 rail multi sweep by selecting
> your pair of rails then pressing a 'next' button then select your
> next pair etc.

This part I'm not so sure about, since it means increasing the complexity of the sweep command by adding another UI control for it - it is already one of the most complex commands with many options so that is kind of bad to make it even more cluttered for the regular case...

Also it tends to be a more unusual situation to want to apply a large number of 2-rail sweeps, it tends to be a more common situation to need to do a larger number of tubes with 1-rail sweep instead.

One thing you could do instead for this if you need to do a large number of 2-rail sweeps is to install the altered version of sweep from this recent post:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2435.2
which will deselect the rails after the sweep is finished, this will make it easier to just repeat the command several times with the regular right-click.

- Michael

wow, great i'll give them a go. Yeah multiple 2 rail sweep would be pretty low on the priority list i guess. Glad to hear that you are intending to do the single rail multi sweep hopefully for v2. can't wait.

Cheers

Oh here is the model I was working on - probably about time I posted some of my work after all the request posts I've made. Sorry for all the construction lines!! Couldn't have done it without MOI!

Looks like a render for the gallery!

Looks very interesting Rob, are you going to be at a stage to do some renderings of it pretty soon?

At the moment it kind of reminds me of one of those sails that a kite-boarder uses for zipping around in the water!

- Michael

OK here are some photomontages hot off the press. They're not perfect but needed to get them out for a meeting. The more I use moi the more im getting addicted to it and wonder how I coped before! Cheers

Country-style!

Wow! I like it!

eric

I wish I was there!

What app did you render it with?

Thanks

Nice!!

Really slick integration of the render with the scenery!

And it interesting how the canopy anchors in the water, very cool!

- Michael

Love the design, the color scheme and the location.
Good job Rob!

Cheers

Cheers guys, thanks for the positive feedback. It was rendered with vray (via cinema4d). Used riptide pro to bring it in which is a great plugin. Can't take any credit for the design though, i modelled it from a sketch by one of our architects - I haven't asked if i can show it yet so please don't add it to the gallery just yet, im sure it will be ok buried in this thread though! It was fun to model in moi but really need that layer management system asap!!;-) Im currently modelling a building and modelling all the bolts and junctions on the gluelam frame so there is about 1000 objects so far - all of which need a material applying!

@Michael - if you look closely at the underside of the canopy the uv mapping of the plywood changes towards the bottom. I would think this is because of the way i created it (a loft with the arcs in the side booled out). Do you have any aspirations for easy to use UV manipulation tools, not talking about full render solutions just a checkerboard material for visual adjustment. I find bodypaint a bit lacking in quick easy unwrapping and remapping tools, and 3d coat is yet another app to buy and master when all i want is the UV stuff not the sculpting/painting jazz! Just looking for something which specialises in hardsurface models not monsters!!

Cheers
Rob

Hi Rob, I'm not so sure about UV manipulation stuff - it may take quite a while before I will be able to focus on that, it can be a pretty big area of work.

However, I do plan on making at least some improvement in certain areas, like I want to "pack" the regular NURBS UV coordinates into sub regions of the texture rectangle, currently this is not so great where each surface of a solid gets UV coordinates that are overlapping over the same full texture region.

And yes as you have noticed the way that you construct an object will determine the UV structure of the surfaces that you create, and those surface UVs are what are directly used as the UV mapping when you export to polygons.

But the whole method of manipulating UVs tends to be an "advanced rendering" type area of work, in general it may be a while before advanced rendering tools like that kind of stuff become a focus area to be built into MoI. MoI is more primarily focused on the construction of geometry.

- Michael

Yes thanks. Yes for me moi will only ever be used for modelling (possibly if there is an option of NPR rendering for quick stuff that would be useful) I would hate to see you get bogged down in too much rendering stuff. However if it is possible to have any small tools to help out with the UV mapping that would really be appreciated but i understand not as high as modelling tools in the priority list. One thing I would love is the ability to draw a spline that told moi the direction of the map - my current project has a gluelam frame (rough outline below) it would be fantastic if it was possible to just draw a spline (red line) that would create the appropriate uvs for stretching and distorting a map along that spline. That would be my only real request with regards mapping as the rest you can usually do with standard mapping projections.

Cheers

Hi Rob, how are you building that shape currently?

If you do it with a 2-rail sweep that should actually create UVs that follow that curve...

Basically the UVs from MoI come directly from the surface data, it is probably not going to be a very easy thing to set up ways to morph or mush them around, other than squishing around your surfaces themselves which will move the UVs with them when they are edited.

re: NPR I am pretty interested in doing some basic quick NPR type stuff, I'd like to generally incorporate some basic 2D illustration type stuff in as time goes on. It is hard to know when that will actually come about but hopefully I'll be able to get into it for v3.

- Michael

I thought you might suggest the two rail sweep and yeah i'll give it a go here thanks. But OK I understand it's probably a big task to add a UV toolset - hopefully one day it might materialise though! Cheers

Ah tried the two rail sweep and all its assorted options and get some geometry errors and the object gets split up. any ideas for a work around?

I was wondering if a cheat could be to create the "Sheet of points" then pull or stretch the points around then trim out the shape after.

Would this manipulate that UV structure?

Burr