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

Hi burr,

> Would this manipulate that UV structure?

Yup, the UVs will basically follow the surface and if you stretch the surface out by control point editing the UVs will also stretch in the same way.

- Michael

Hi Rob,

> any ideas for a work around?

You might try placing some additional profiles to force a specific connection between the rails at a good spot.

If you'd like to post or e-mail the .3dm model file with those curves in it, I can try to make an example for you.

One problem with sweep can be when the profile curves go along the rails at sort of different rates of speed, if you place another profile in the middle of the sweep or at a strategic location where they are not connecting up well, then that will force an additional "synchornization spot" to happen in that location which can tone down that kind of a problem.

Also currently MoI's sweep has a problem where it is sensitive to the control point spacing of the curves, I'm going to be doing an overhaul of sweep before v2 is finished to make it more focused on pure distance traveled along the curves rather than being sensitive to control point spacing.

- Michael