I'd like to know if MoI can play a part in the process I need. As an example, I want to create a spline leaf outline that is filled to become a leaf shaped plane, give it a tad of thickness and then export it to a program such as modo or C4D to subdivide enough so I can emboss the leaf veins and give it curl etc. Can I do the startup closed cirve in MoI and export it as a polymesh that can be further subD'd in another program?

Thanks.

Hi shokan, generally you would not take the meshed output from MoI to use as a sub-d cage elsewhere. Although it is possible to do so in some circumstances, usually the mesh you export will have things like n-gons in trimmed areas which are not good for sub-d refinement. But you could also re-topologize the mesh to make it more suitable.

For embossing you may want to try a brush based displacement program such as ZBrush or 3D-coat, rather than doing it as sub-d though. You can use MoI to generate the initial base shape for that kind of a use, especially with 3D-coat's new voxel based sculpting mode.

You may also have some interest in this previous thread that discussed some petal leaf type designs:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1401.1

- Michael

Hi shokan also I guess I should mention that if you want to export a closed curve as a mesh object you must build a surface for it first.

Curves by themselves don't create meshes, only surfaces create meshes when exporting to a mesh format like LWO.

If your curve is planar and closed, you can build a surface by selecting it and running Construct / Planar on it. That will build a trimmed planar surface from a closed planar curve outline.

Otherwise if your curve is not planar then you may need to use some other kinds of surfacing commands such as sweep to build the surfaces - that previous link to some other petal designs I think shows some ways to do that.

- Michael