The script copier utility for this release.

You can download and run the attached ScriptCopier_Jun_23_2009.exe program, which will copy custom added scripts from your MoI v1 installation to the new beta's installation folder.

- Michael

Hi Petr, it's great to hear from you, you've been away from the forum for a long time!

I'm not exactly sure if I'm following what you are talking about for Ctrl+Right-click though...

You wrote:
> for example (see first image), currently there is no
> difference between ctrl+left and ctrl+right on Lock
> icon of Curves item.

There will be a difference between them when you do a second ctrl+right click though. That will unlock everything because that is meant as an "exit from isolate".


> I would prefer the ctrl+right click led to unlocking
> all types but curves.

If I understand correctly though, that is sort of the opposite of what right-click is meant to do.

Right-click (either with Ctrl or not) is meant as an "isolate" function - which means that it will "activate" (either show if no Ctrl, or unlock if Ctrl is held) the item you clicked on and "deactivate" (either hide if no Ctrl or lock if Ctrl is held) everything else. If that item was already active, then it will activate everything, which allows for a kind of "exit from isolate" on a second click.

In the case that you are talking about, all the other items happen to already be locked when your item is isolated, so yes that does not have any difference between Ctrl+Left or Ctrl+Right, but that's the same behavior as regular right-click without Ctrl.

For example if you have all styles hidden and you now right-click on one of them, just that one will turn on which happens to be the same as if you left-clicked for that case since everything else is already in the state that isolates that object.


If you want to get all things unlocked except for curves, the way you can do that is to Ctrl+right-click on curves until all things are unlocked which may take 2 clicks depending on your starting state, then use Ctrl+Left click to lock the curves item that you are on.


Basically the right-click set of actions whether Ctrl is down or not are meant to either activate the current item, or to re-activate all items. So in either case it is going to be activating that current item and not de-activating it. The method that you are talking about would be like deactivating that item rather than "isolating" it as the only active item...


Maybe this will make a little more sense: populate the styles section with all eyes. Now hold down Ctrl and right-click on one of them. You'll see here that everything else other than what you clicked on will become locked - that's the "isolate lock" - the item you picked is now the only unlocked one and everything else is locked. When you are done working on that isolated item, you can then repeat the same click on it and everything else will be activated again.



Please let me know if this does not make sense though, it's a fairly subtle area and maybe I did not understand what you were getting at.

- Michael

Hi Petr, also here is an illustration of how the right-click is set up, this may be clearer.

So in the following I am right-clicking on some items without Ctrl down. As you can see this produces an "isolate" of the item that is clicked on where it becomes the only active (visible) item and all other things deactivated (hidden). Then notice the final click - if you right-click on an item that is already isolated, everything will reset:



So now here I am repeating the same sequence but instead holding down Ctrl. You can see that the action is the same, except it applies Unlocked / Locked as what is meant by Activated / Deactivated:



So that's basically what the right-click is mean for, either with Ctrl or not, Ctrl just applies it as locking/unlocking things rather than hiding/showing. But the basic mechanism to "isolate" the item being clicked is the same.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

>> Please let me know if this does not make sense though, it's a fairly subtle area

No, it does perfect sense! Basically, it is exactly the same behaviour like for batch processing of snap menu, isn't it? I think you understood me very well. What I was talking about was related to the case and only the case in which ALL items are locked or hidden or locked&hidden. But I can see it now. It would make things somewhat complicated. Like you wrote- ""right-click (either with Ctrl or not) "activate" (either show if no Ctrl, or unlock if Ctrl is held) the item you clicked on and "deactivate" (either hide if no Ctrl or lock if Ctrl is held) everything else. If that item was already active, then it will activate everything"". -It means that only the state of item being clicked is taken into account and not the state of other items when deciding whether making the isolation or "exiting from isolate".


>> If you want to get all things unlocked except for curves,
>> the way you can do that is to Ctrl+right-click on curves until
>> all things are unlocked which may take 2 clicks depending on your
>> starting state, then use Ctrl+Left click to lock the curves item that you are on.

Basically yes. Except the state of curve(s) created after setting "starting state" - they will be locked after all. In the case I was talking about that I would prefer there will be both locked and unlocked curves (and unlocked everything else).

Petr

Hi Petr,

> Basically, it is exactly the same behaviour like for batch
> processing of snap menu, isn't it?

Yup, it's meant to follow that same model.

The nice thing about that model is that it kind of serves 2 purposes with the same mechanism - one is to make that isolate function to be able to get to that "only show this one category" state with just a single click (like in the screencap above).

Then the other use is just as a general shortcut for displaying all things - if you have a mixed state with some things on and some things off, you can do 2 right-clicks on any item to show them all.

Yeah, I hesitate to make additional behavior for other cases... If it gets too complicated with different behavior for special cases it will probably get more difficult to use in a natural way.


> It means that only the state of item being clicked is
> taken into account and not the state of other items when
> deciding whether making the isolation or "exiting from isolate".

What it actually does for this, is that it always first tries to isolate the item, but it keeps track of what was done in order to get to the isolated state.

If there were no changes performed during the isolation, then it knows that item was already isolated and it will do the "exit from isolate" operation instead.

So the state of other objects is actually taken into account though, since the process of isolating an object does mean to deactivate other objects. When all other objects were already deactivated, that's when "exit from isolate" happens.


There is also now a slightly different kind of isolate available by right-click on the Edit/Hide or Edit/Lock buttons on the side pane rather than in the Scene browser. Those isolates actually store a snapshot of the state of all objects when you perform the isolate (which in this case is targeted by selection rather than by style or type as in the scene browser), so that when you exit it the previous state, including mixtures of some hidden, some visible, etc... is restored rather than having all things turned on as with the scene browser one.


- Michael

Awesome michael.
Any word on sweeps?
I believe you mentioned that they would be fixed on this beta if I'm not mistaken.

Thanks in advance.

Hi niko,

> I believe you mentioned that they would be fixed
> on this beta if I'm not mistaken.

Nope, nothing on sweeps yet - the plan for those is to have some work done on those as the very last thing for the last beta. This one wasn't quite the very last beta yet.

- Michael

A little demo of what the new "Align to surface" option in Array curve can do now.

Here is a curve that has been projected on to a surface, and a cylinder that has been drawn aligned to the surface normal at the start of the curve:



With the regular array curve, you can replicate that cylinder along the curve, but it will have a general gradual rotation applied to it, which will not necessarily keep it aligned with the surface normal at all points:



Notice there especially towards the end, it is not very close at all to the surface normal anymore, it just does not know anything about the surface so it does not take it specifically into account.

However, there is now a new "Align to surface" button in the options for array curve, here:




If you push that, you will be able to pick a surface and that will inform array curve that you want to maintain alignment to the surface normal of that surface. When this is engaged, array curve will incorporate an additional rotation into each array instance, to keep it relative to the surface normal at that point, to get this result:




To have everything in the final result aligned to follow right along the surface normal, you do need to have the initial item already placed in alignment to the surface normal at the starting point of the array though. In the future at some point it would probably be good to have a sort of "auto place" mechanism for this similar to the auto-place mode for sweeps, so that you could have an initial object located flat in world coordinates and have it moved into place for you.

- Michael

Fantastic work, Michael!

-Will

There a lot of stuff here, Great work!


I really like the offset capping feature!

I've noticed that if you subtract from an object of a different style, the object will have that different style in the new face(s) generated.

Is there a way that object would always keep the original style, the first operand in Booleans?

Marc

Hi Marc,

> I've noticed that if you subtract from an object of a
> different style, the object will have that different style
> in the new face(s) generated.

Yup, that's actually a feature that took quite a bit of work to achieve! :)

In that case, the faces that are created are not really completely new, they come from trimming faces of the operands.

Anytime that there is this kind of ancestor relationship where the face can be traced back to its source, the style of the ancestor face is maintained.

The reason why that is good is it allows for things like this - here I have a little knob that I want to array and cut out of a larger piece:



If I know in advance that I want the knob cutouts to have a different render material than the slab body, then I can at this point before the boolean assign the knob to have a particular style of "Knob" or whatever, and then after I do the array that style will replicate to the copies, and then after I do the boolean with the arrayed pieces the style will again be maintained on the fragments of the knobs.

So now there is not any further work to be done for assigning styles to all those little bits - because the styles propogated through the various operations including booleans, just setting up the one style initially let me avoid having to try to do it later to all the numerous little fragments.


Anyway, that's why it is set up with that method.


This is a bit of an unusual function for CAD modelers, many CAD systems are often more rigidly limited to only allow a single style for an entire solid and not have the ability to have different styles for individual faces of a solid. So it may be kind of different from what you are used to because of that.

I've thought about making some option that you could set to change how this worked and impose a "one style for final result" limit on the booleans though. I'll take a look at adding that in for the next beta.

- Michael

Objectives lens targets revealed :)
Fog is disappearing bit by bit for me :)

Hi Michael,

Congrats on another great Beta.

This new feature of "Align to Surface" will be a big winner with those using MoI for jewellery designs.
The laying out of stones onto a rings curved surface was always one of those jobs I'd dread.
Looking forward to trying this out & seeing how it all goes.

regards Colin

Hi Colin, thanks!

Yes, I was hoping that the Align to Surface function would help out with jewelry stuff, I have heard from people before that they needed that function.

The only trick with it is that you will need to make the initial starting object to be positioned to be aligned with the surface normal. Then with this new option the replicated copies will all be aligned to the normal at each of their locations.

- Michael

Hi Michael, this makes much sense and is indeed quite handy!!

Recently I didn't do much rendering stuff, just line data from solids so I guess it's more 'cad' oriented
What's tricky is that I do not realize it right away, some parts are just left floating when I try to hide styles later on.

I guess I just have to remember to sort colors before doing boole laundry!

Maybe a inline operation ticker or an choice in the options panel would be nice. (The .Ini file would be a bit deep to switch)


Marc

Hi Marc, I had been thinking of an .ini switch for that since it seems like something you would want to set once and then leave it that way (if that was how you expected booleans to generally work with styles) rather than something you would be switching on and off again all the time.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

You're probably right, a .ini switch would do the trick. I imagine It would not change that much in work situation.
I would have imagined it as a special condition, like: 'ok this time I want to use the 'apply style' on this operation'.

This is a great feature but for the kind of work I do those days, it would be an exception for me.

No big deal there, just small workflow details.

Sometime l wish other software were written in the spirit you handle this project!
I just think of photoshop's 1.2gb installer and I don't feel well.

Moi is really one of the great computing experience I've had.

Thanks!


Marc

Hi Marc, I'll try to think about that a little bit more.

I was thinking of possibly doing this option specifically for the booleans, but there are also other situations that can result in a multi-style solid like Join... So maybe it should be a more general kind of option that affects all solids that are created.

Also another way to get a multi-style solid is to just select one face out of the solid and set its style to something else. I don't think that I will try to disallow this one though.

- Michael

Hi Michael, like I've said it's no big deal and it may not be worth it if a lot of work is involved.

Thanks,

Marc

Just noticed that the options pallet for export of OBJ now has a scale factor! Is that new to the Jun-23 beta or have I just been sleeping!

No need to keep swapping out my units! SWEET!

-AW