A virtual mirror (like Wings3D) or a real mirror?

@Mr braun
You don't find than Moi is yet "a plugin" for any 3Dprog ? :)
Why just Cinema4D? :D
"Integration" is realy necessary?

Yes Pilou, i agree with you, but CInema4D really need a plugin to manage nurbs surface and that good work with the spline! ;)

I talk about Cinema4D because Michael is a Cinema4d User: it will be great to render directely into cinema without other steps! ;)

<I talk about Cinema4D because Michael is a Cinema4d User
I didn't know that and had believed that Michael had no time to render :)

I know layers/groups are a ways off, but here is what I'd like to see...

Groups:
*You should be able to group objects together, and manipulate them as a whole wrt rotation, scaling, clipping, etc.
*Groups should be able to contain objects in different layers.
*You should be able to hide/show groups
*Groups should be lockable so that they can not be operated on.

Layers:
* You should be able to assign an object to a layer
* You should be able to lock and hide/show a layer.
* Objects not assigned to a layer, by default are part of a 'default' layer that can be locked, hidden, etc.

Colors:
* Assign a color to a object, group, or all objects in a layer.

Why layers/Groups?

Well, with even moderately complicated models, I find myself constantly pushing curves out of the way, or trying to make do with just the global show/hide.
With layers, I could lay out all my contours on a a plane or so, group them, put them in a layer, set it's color ( light grey ) and lock it. Now I have a reference for my further work.

:)

Oh, and Gordon and Coons curves. :)

A "Chop" command.

I find myself doing a lot of chopping up of solids. Draw a line, extrude into a plane, boolean or trim a closed surface with it, etc etc...

So I propose a simplified trim/boolean (diff) function, lets call it 'chop', and adding support for a orthographic 3D view with a view-relative grid.

So instead of drawing a curve, extruding to a plane, then booleaning the solid, then clicking seperate, then deleting the junk part, then joining the plane to the sliced solid to cap it..., how about following workflow:

You align your view relative to the object however you like. In 3D orthographic mode, or side view, or top view, etc, you draw your curve over the object. You select the object, and hit "Chop".

The line is automagically projected into a 'slicing' plane down into the selected object, dividing it into 2 capped pieces. These pieces are also automatically seperated and capped if you so choose. Like trimming curves, it then asks you to select the pieces you want to remove, or hit 'done' and keep them all.

I've found this to be something I do a lot of. And I think a command like this would immensely speed up the workflow, especially for those of us coming from a non-cad background.

> A "Chop" command.
>
> I find myself doing a lot of chopping up of solids. Draw a line, extrude into a plane,
> boolean or trim a closed surface with it, etc etc...

This is partway built into trim already - you can currently trim a solid with a line for example.

But it won't leave behind the piece of the cutting plane, it will cut the solid only. However if your cut left a planar hole you can fill that in easily by selecting the object and doing Construct/Planar. So that should work now for some cases.

I do want to extend this to be able to leave the pieces of the extended trimming object around as an option, and also build in some solid / curve interaction into the booleans like you are asking for. Not sure when though, there are some other things that I've got to finish up first...

- Michael

Modifiers "Twist, bend..."...but I don't know if it's realy possible for Nurbs volumes?

An "Helix" primitive :)

Michael, you rock!
This program is progressing fantastic!
Thanks
Ken

Some option on sweep to preserve the orientation of the curve relative to the global coordinates as it is swept down the rail?

I thought "Flat" did this, but it doesn't seem to do it, the curve always wiggles as it's extruded, especially if the rail has any sharp kinks.

I mean something like this:



Think of it as a top down view.

Hi Crusoe - "flat" still allows for rotations, but only rotations around the world z axis, so it pivots in a more controlled manner (no upwards or downwards changes in slope, hence 'flat' ).

If you want no rotation at all, then you can use Construct/Extrude for that, with the Set Path option - that should do what you are requesting here.

- Michael

One quick note on Extrude with Set Path - it seems that there is a bug where it won't work right if you have a path with a kink in it with, if you have "Cap ends" also turned on.

I should be able to fix this for the next beta but for now make sure that Cap ends is turned off before you pick "Set path" if you have a path with a kink in it, then you can select the object and do Construct/Planar to put on caps after that.

- Michael

Hmm, so how are sweep/extrude different then? I mean, what's purpose for having 2 seperate ones?

I guess it's partly tradition, the non-rotating type of "sweep" has been grouped under extrude in NURBS modelers before.

It fits somewhat because without any rotation you are much more limited in the path shape that you can use, you kind of have to use one that goes fairly straight, you can't make a good surface with a circle path for instance, because the shape will fold over on itself.

So in that sense it is kind of like a guided extrude, since simple extrude is straight.

Also calculation-wise it is quite different from sweep - there are some special properties to the extrude with set path. It preserves the control point structure of the path curve in the resulting surface, while sweep goes through a fitting process which is a little different.

So another use for Extrude with Set Path is if you want a straight extrusion, but with say 4 control points along it - you can draw a curve in a straight line using 4 points and use that as your path and get an extrusion with 4 points in it. People have requested being able to set the number of points along the extrusion, and set path allows for that, so that is another reason it is under there...

- Michael

New wishlist item :

Automatic solidification of objects when trimming (or an option to do so).
See the attached image. I know that there is a way to close the cylinder or the box but what about the sphere?
The only way to do what I want is to use a solid and boolean->diff but this way you loose a small part of the object.

Hi JTB - I do want to add this, but I also wanted to let you know that there is currently another way to do this other than booleans.

What you can do is extrude your curve into a surface (use "both sides" option), then do a "mutual trim".

This is where you select the 2 objects, then do a trim and at the point where it asks you to select cutting objects, just push "Done" there. This signals that those objects are both being cut and acting as a cutter as well.

This will leave you with the pieces, and you can then join those pieces back into solids.

Let me know if you need more info on this.

- Michael

Thanks Michael, I can use this for now...

Regarding Crusoes' post.
that could certainly be a nice option to have - This would be usefull for those such as you looking sculpting further via displacement.

However the OBJ exporter works great as is in my opinion for most other uses, precisely because creates ( as far as I have played with it til now) nice clean Ngons.

>> What you can do is extrude your curve into a surface (use "both sides" option), then do a "mutual trim".
This is where you select the 2 objects, then do a trim and at the point where it asks you to select cutting objects, just push "Done" there. This signals that those objects are both being cut and acting as a cutter as well.
This will leave you with the pieces, and you can then join those pieces back into solids.

Hey !
Added to my "bag of tricks". I had to experiment a bit to understand what you were saying but after that, the only question was why I could not imagine such an easy and obvious solution earlier by myself ! ;-))

And that's something I like in software like MoI. As a lot of actions can not be done automatically by thousand of dedicated tools, to compensate you really have to figure out how to solve the modeling problems with a more "basic" set of tools. That's part of the fun and of the creative process (as long as you're not working on a deadline). Reminds me Blender some years ago or even Bryce where some really creative guys used terrains (yes, terrains !) to create trees and simulate foliage long before there was a "tree tool"...

Ha ! The Bryce Forum Gallery by http://www.watchfuleye.com/ And Bruce MacLeod
But seems dispeared :(

Refound this by the "Wayback machine" :)
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.watchfuleye.com/