Hello everyone,

I love MoI for me its the most awesome modelling tool ive ever seen (way ahead of sketchup wich is also cool)
The scene/style management have pushed everything and allowed very complex models to be made.
The toolset is very complete while staying simple to use, I think you can already model pretty much anything with it.

The only thing I miss is Environements maps and Zebra in the viewport.

Environements maps benefits would be:
- able to see the curvatures and surfaces more efficiently
- able to make custom environements maps and share them
- visualize metalic parts inside MoI
- assign different environements maps (in styles > edit)

Zebra (wich is an environement map too I think):
- create more smooth curves
- check for surface imperfections

On the attachment you can see differents images of what I mean (most of all are from Rhino and T-Splines from Rhino manual), also look at http://www.vimeo.com/4281496
this yellow shading is amazingly cool, feel like inside a photo studio.
I like the smooth shading (the one on the attachement) wich give a very cool look at all the geometry, also you can really see and visualize the curves
and the overall 3d feeling of your object. I think this pure white look is an environement map but im not sure.

So here's a recap of my requests:
- Be able to use custom environements maps (simple jpegs)
- Be able to use mutliple environements maps or switch between them in a fast way (optional)
- Have "build in" environements maps already in MoI (one zebra, one photographic, one metallic like in the vimeo video) (optional)
- Be able in the MoI options to change the colors of solids/faces/lines (currently only the grid and background) (would be usefull)

I would hear your comments and suggestions about it, and feedback from Michael if its technically do-able.
I think it would be a cool point for MoI, many jewelry or product designers love this.
Another thanks for the hard work you are doing Michael, you have the best job in the world, making people happy :)

Hi DesuDeus, I'm glad that you are enjoying modeling with MoI!

> - Be able to use custom environements maps (simple jpegs)
> - Be able to use mutliple environements maps or switch between
> them in a fast way (optional)
> - Have "build in" environements maps already in MoI (one zebra, one
> photographic, one metallic like in the vimeo video) (optional)

Yup, these are on my list of functions that I want to add in the future.

I think I should be able to make a lot of progress in this area for MoI version 3.


> - Be able in the MoI options to change the colors of solids/faces/lines
> (currently only the grid and background) (would be usefull)

This one is an area that I am currently working on for v2 . Actually in the current v2 beta this is working now for edges and curves - those colors are controlled by the style that is assigned to an object.

So for instance if you have a line and you assign it to have Style = Red, you should see the line will be displayed in a red color then.

At the moment the color does not get applied to the shaded surface display but I am planning on adding that before v2 is complete.


Thanks very much for the feedback!

- Michael

DesuDeus,
You can also customize the UI to change the default colors of objects. I forgot the file name it may be the MoI.css file.

Michael,
Might there be a way to do this in the UI Scene Browser when all that work gets finished

[EDIT]Set "default Style"....Nevermind)[EDIT]

Hi Burr, that's actually in the moi.ini file, see:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1358.2

But in v2 that does not apply to curves anymore, the curve color is now taken from the style instead of from that moi.ini setting.

At the moment the .ini setting for surfaces is used, but soon that will also change to use the color from the assigned style as well.


> Might there be a way to do this in the UI Scene Browser
> when all that work gets finished

Yup, actually that works already in the scene browser - you can left click on a style's color swatch to assign the selected objects to have that style, and you can right-click on a style's swatch to set it as the "Active style", which will be what is applied by default to newly drawn objects.

So for example if you want to have your objects default to red when you draw them, open up the Scene Browser and go to the Styles section and right-click on the color swatch for the Red style. You'll see a ring appear around the active style, and now when you draw some curves you should see that they are red when you first create them.

- Michael

Michael,

I was just thinking and wanted to bring something up. Does/should MoI analyze the css color of objects and make a "range" near that color offlimits to the new style picker? Just a feature to help a numbskull like me from creating a style like "gold" and then screwing myself.

Please disregard these posts. I just figured out that all this changes when the styles hit surfaces.... (Limited brain capacity here)

Hi Burr,

> Just a feature to help a numbskull like me from creating a
> style like "gold" and then screwing myself.

You mean make it so that it can't be close to the selection color?

But even if you make it too close to the selection color and that causes a problem, you've got a pretty easy solution to that since you can just go in there and change the color to something that does not get in your way anymore...

When things are so directly under you control to solve like this, I would generally not try to automatically interfere with it by doing some kind of forced prohibition.

- Michael

Thanks for all

I have the latest Beta. Ive buyed MoI just by looking at the jelly pot tutorial and doing 2-3 booleans on the trial.
Already done a watch and lot of medical devices with it, complexe impossibles booleans for poly modelling. And its so fast !
Im not even thinking while modelling with MoI, Im even more faster than co-workers with Lightwave and Modo, and I produce cleaner meshes.
MoI is like sketchup, once you see it you buy it :D
Ive done some low-poly modelling with MoI also (thanks n-gons) I found myself working with MoI for things I was doing in Sketchup.
Wish I can share my works (at least a render) but I cant for now, the watch is not on the market yet same for the medicals :)
I also wish I had time to model things at home with MoI. (space ships !)

Changing the style color is an option, but it would be cool to have a color box somewhere in the options to change the default black lines
without messing with css / cfg / ini files.

I cant wait for MoI v3, environements maps gonna be awesome for very organic modelling, when you dont have really hard edges.
MoI only need more advertisements, the only one I know is on cgdigg website, to be a block-buster !
Maybe organising modelling contests on 3d forums like CgSociety, 30 days delay (the trial time) on an unknown software, that would be awesome :)

Hi DesuDeus, it sounds like you're having a lot of fun with MoI, that's very cool! :)

I hope that when the project you are working on is released that you'll maybe be able to share some images, it is always fun to see what is being done with it.


> Changing the style color is an option, but it would be cool to
> have a color box somewhere in the options to change the default
> black lines without messing with css / cfg / ini files.

Yes, actually in MoI v2 you can change the default color without messing with any config files, that's only necessary for MoI v1.

For MoI v2 the colors are controlled by the styles, so if you edit the default styles you will also be controlling the default colors as well.

To set that up, go to the Edit styles dialog, which is available on a drop-down menu on this part of the Scene Browser:



Choose "Edit styles" from the menu that pops up when you push that little arrow, and then on that Edit styles dialog, select the one named "Default" at the top and push the "Edit" button. That will allow you to change the name and/or color of that style, edit the color to whatever you want.

Now you'll see that when you draw objects, they will appear in that color that you picked there.

To avoid doing this on every new modeling session, you can save your altered style setup to a 3DM file (just with File/Save As) and then specify that file to be used as a startup template, which is available under Options > General > Template file.

When you specify a template file, it will load all the stuff from that file when you start a new modeling session including all the styles from it.

Hope this helps, please let me know if you have any problems setting it up.

- Michael

Ive never had the idea to make a template 3dm, thanks :D
Yes I will share my images, I just dont know when im gonna be able to do it.
Keep up the good work, and thanks for all the time you take to answer MoI users :)

I dont have anything else to say about Environement Maps so if any of you have, use this thread.