Hello Michael,
since MoI is designed to be used with tablets and Tablet PSs without mouse/keyboard, have you ever thought of adding some really basic sketch tools like pencil and eraser maybe? I think by adding these you could make MoI excellent light concept design software.

Enzo

Hi Enzo, for the pencil type tool give the Draw curve / Freeform / Sketch tool a try, it is located here:





When you use that tool, it lets you hold the mouse button down and drag out a sketch curve, it should behave similar to a pencil tool and let you scribble things or use brush stroke type motions.


re: Eraser - I would like to have an eraser tool as well. Unfortunately it is a pretty difficult thing to make an eraser tool work in a vector-based program like MoI, where objects are made of structured lines and curves rather than just dots on the screen. The erase is easier to set up in a pixel based program that just deals with individual dots.

For example Adobe Illustrator did not have an eraser tool until version 11.0 .

So it may take a while before I can make that part happen.

- Michael

Michael,

Thank you for your fast reply. I didn't mean vector tools but pixel tools similar to those provided in Alias. And more precisely very simplified version of the tools provided in Alias. My impression is that their complexity and the odd UI in Alias are not appreciated by many designers and concept artists. So there is an available market segment.

The sketch techniques artists and designers use are typical with loose, natural, freehand, fast strokes. I am certain you have seen some and you know exactly of what I am talking about. This style of work is simply very different than using vector tools like the one provided in MoI or in Illustrator. Even if you add eraser working on vectors, the method wont be an alternative to artistic hand sketching.

I know that there are some tablet sketching programs on the market which could be used separately to prepare sketches and then import them into MoI as reference graphics. That is typical approach in digital prototyping and production surfacing, but quite useless for the concept development it self. The problem is that any serious concept design tool should allow the user to quickly switch between the sketch and the CAD model. Loading sketches form standalone applications every time a change is necessary is simply not an option. I believe that in the near future we will see CAD products that will allow associated work, but for now some basic pixel tools working in the CAD environment would be nice.

The modeling tools MoI currently has are just enough for professional concept work. In my opinion adding few simple sketch tools is the only thing you need to claim your share of the concept tools market.

Hi Enzo, I'd love to have pixel-type brush tools in MoI!

But unfortunately it would be quite a lot of work to make that happen, even to have simplified ones would require quite a lot of new infrastructure since those tools are not very similar to MoI's current vector-based geometry engine.

It would take quite a few months of work to even get a simple one working. That amount of time makes it difficult to schedule it anytime soon.

There are still too many CAD functions that need attention in MoI that I need to work on improving before I can focus attention on such a broad and time-intensive new area of work.

Hopefully in the future at some point I will be able to tackle it though, it would definitely be a great combination.

- Michael

This sounds like a great idea.

Sounds like something for version 4 or 5 though, from what you said previously about the planned phasing.