A new v2 beta (version Oct-19-2009) is now available for download here: http://moi3d.com/beta.htm

You will need to enter your v1 license key to download the v2 beta.

The v2 beta installs into its own folder, it is not a problem to have v1 and any v2 beta installed on the same machine, in fact I recommend that so that you can fall back to v1 if you run into some temporary bad bug in v2.


V2 is very close to being wrapped up, but I still have a little bit of work left for Sweep (for mitered corners) and probably Groups before it is all ready so there will still be at least one more beta to come after this one.

This release kind of "clears the decks" of a variety of accumulated bugs and loose ends.


New stuff:


Added new Silhouette command under Construct > Curve > Silhou - this can be used to create silhouette curves that give the profile of a curved surface from a particular view.



This may be particularly useful to run before exporting to AI format - set up your view how you want it, then run Silhouette to generate the outline curves, then immediately export all of that to AI format. Make sure not to rotate or zoom your view in between generating the silhouettes and exporting because the silhouettes are tied to a particular viewpoint when they are done in the 3D view.

For example given this model:



Running Silhouette on it will generate these curves:






Added "Curve from 2 views" functionality to the Construct > Curve > Isect command.

This produces a curve from 2 planar profile curves from different directions. It is the equivalent of doing an extrusion of each curve and intersecting the extruded surfaces.

So for example with these 2 curves one which was drawn in the Top view and one in the Front view:



You can select these 2 curve and run Construct > Curve > Isect to generate this result:





Updated 2-rail sweep to use a new mechanism for handling the rails - previously it was sensitive to how control points happened to be spaced in each rail, and there could be a kind of twisting or bunching effect that happened to the profiles as they moved at different "speeds" along each rail. Now they should move at more equal speeds along each rail regardless of control point spacing. This fixes several problems relating to twisted or bunched results in sweeping, such as:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2468.1
This is a pretty major change to the mechanics of 2-rail sweep, please let me know if you see any bad behavior with 2-rail sweep in this release.


Added option for controlling the perspective field of view angle, under Options > 3D view angles > Field of view.


Add asterisk to file name display. The current file name in the upper-right corner of the window will now get marked with an asterisk (*) at the end of it when there have been changes made to the active file.


Various enhancements for background images (the View > Image command):

- Undo now works to undo edits of the background images while still inside the Image command.

- Added properties button which pulls up a new Image properties dialog which allows editing the path to the image if you have moved it somewhere else, a checkbox option for embedding the image data directly in the 3DM file, and a Reload image button which can be used to reload the image if it has been changed. You can right-click on an image's file name as a shortcut for pushing the properties button.

- Added a cen snap to the center of background images when dragging or adding images.

- Make images display as a line in edge-on ortho viewports when in the image command, so they can be more easily seen and dragged from a side view to change elevations.


Reorganized the View section in Options dialog - a new "Colors" section holds various options relating to display colors.


New edge display options - added 2 additional choices under Options > View > Edge color: "Darkened" and "Lightened" which will display using the style color but adjust it towards black or towards white by a factor that can be controlled by a scroll bar that shows up.


New shortcuts for editing styles:

- In the Edit styles dialog, right-clicking on a style works as a shortcut for selecting it and pushing the "Edit" button.

- On a scene browser swatch, Ctrl+left click will pop up the color picker as a quick way to edit a style's color.

- On the properties panel, right-clicking on the style line will pop up the Edit style dialog and let you edit the name and/or color of that style.


New "Add default styles" menu item on the Styles menu launched from the Scene browser Styles section (off the little arrow to the right). This brings the default set of styles (either the stock default set, or the styles from your template file if you have set a startup template) into the current model at the top of the style list.


Updated File/Import so that when importing a file which contains no geometry but only styles in it, those styles will get added to the current style table.


Updated style inheritance for Booleans and Join - the object that was selected first will be used to set the properties on the new combined parent object. So for example if you have a red object and a blue object and you want to Boolean Union them together, select the one that you want to be dominant first. The name on the combined object will come from the dominant/first selected input and also the parent object style which is used in some cases for style assignment with newly created faces such as fillets.


Updated style assignments for new faces and edges. If a new face is completely surrounded by other faces of one single style, use that style for the newly created face. This helps to make things like fillets on a multi-style solid work more predictably - if a fillet is done in a localized area that has all one style then the fillet in that area will get the same style. If a newly created face is not surrounded on all sides by the same style, then the parent object's style will be used instead.


Make it possible to set just the parent style of a solid but not modify any of its sub-objects by holding down shift when clicking on a style swatch. This can come into play for controlling what style is assigned to newly created faces such as fillets as mentioned above.


Updated icon loading to make it easier to override the button icons that come from resources, as mentioned in the forum here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2920.34



Added a script method so it is possible to set up shortcut keys that work the same as turning the mouse wheel for zooming in or out, including focusing the zoom on the mouse cursor's current location. To use them, set up the following on a shortcut key:
For zooming in, set up:
script: /* Zoom in a step */ var vp = moi.ui.getActiveViewport(); if ( vp != null ) vp.wheelZoom( true );
For zooming out, set up:
script: /* Zoom out a step */ var vp = moi.ui.getActiveViewport(); if ( vp != null ) vp.wheelZoom( false );


Updated OBJ export (MTL file names). Replace spaces in MTL filenames (which hold the material definitions for an .OBJ file) with underscores by default, since some programs cannot deal with MTL files that have spaces in the file name. Spaces in .MTL file names can be enabled by a setting in moi.ini:
[OBJ Export]
AllowSpacesInMTLFileNames=n


Updated the mesh dialog, hide the "Weld vertices along edges" checkbox for STL and SKP exports where it is not used for anything.


Updated "on" type object snaps (including On, Axis, and OnSrf). Suppress these snaps when in a planar restriction mode in the 3D view and the snapped point is off the plane. Helps to avoid some confusing jumpy situations when trying to use operations such as Rotate in the 3D view. Discussed in the forum here: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2889.1


Updated mesh options - there is now a setting in moi.ini that can be adjusted for what angle is used as the "rough angle" when the Avoid smaller than distance is being used. The default rough angle is 35 degrees but now a custom one can be set in moi.ini by this setting:
[Mesh Export]
AvoidSmallerThanRoughAngle=35



Bug fixes:

Fixed a bug with the Text command when generating surface output, where the surfaces of different letters did not necessarily get a consistent normal direction.

Made Extrude work more as expected when extruding a set of faces that are all in the same plane. They will all extrude in the same direction in this particular case now instead of each one going along its own normal directions.
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2999.1

Fixed a bug where Extrude would not work properly when given input curves that contained any segments approaching or under 0.001 units in length.

Fixed a bug with Loft seam alignment where long skinny surfaces could mistakenly use their natural seam alignment instead of the optimized one.
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2968.8

Fixed a bug where relative coordinate entry was not working properly during object dragging.

Fixed Edit > Show pts - updated the ShowPoints command to prompt for objects to select to turn points on for, if nothing was selected when it was launched.

Fixed bounding box calculation bug on dense helix curve reported in the forum here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2845.1

Fixed a bug where entering a numeric math expression did not support locales that used a comma as the decimal separator instead of a point.

Fixed a bug in the Merge command where edges were being incorrectly merged at singularity points such as at the pole of a sphere. These spots are now skipped, edges cannot be merged across a pole because the UV space trimming edges of each 3D edge do not touch each other in those cases.



Also a variety of smaller bug fixes and minor tweaks.


Please let me know if you run into any problems!

- Michael

Some long list :)
Funny two new functions !

Is that normal?

Hi Pilou, yup that is normal - you get several segments in that case because your input curve (the wavy one) is made up of several segments, use Edit/Separate on it and you can see the segments.

Each of those segments becomes its own face in the Extrusion and currently the Isect command does not try to automatically join the intersection result between different faces.

I guess I could make it do that, but all you need to do is push Edit/Join to join them yourself, they are all selected and ready to go.

- Michael

Ok not a big deal ;)
Thx for the precision, that was just pertubating :)

add: Silhouette command

This new command doesn't seem to be very reliable... Also note that it generates incomplete or no result when using it on solid primitives (cylinder, cone; box).


Petr

Thanks for all your hard work Michael! Still my favorite modeler, now even better! Looking forward to working with it.

Michael !

It is unbelivable ! This is an big present. Thanks :D

Yes!, HooRAH!

-Will

Feels great! I can hardly wait to dive in.
thanks,
eric

Can't wait to get home and download it!

These are fantastic and great new sets of tools Michael G.!

Cool, thanls Michael !!!

Not really sure what's the silouhette purpose, but I'll find :)
(get same kind of result that tyglik is talking about)

As the V2 beta cycle nearly end, I suppose surface continuity options will be 'only' added in the V3 ?

Wow! That's a lot of work, thanks!!

As Petr mentioned, the silhouette feature doesn't seem to work in the 3d view.
It appears to be working ok in orthogonal views though.

Marc

Lets remember we are beta testing it. The silouette command seems to not like "Sharp Edges" at this point. It will perform on smoothed silouettes. If you put the tiniest fillet on the box it sil's:

I suppose it is used for creating 3D "Plan views" of your objects for Illustrator or something. If I have edges, I dont need the tool to get that. :O

Hi Petr,

re: Silhouette

> This new command doesn't seem to be very reliable... Also
> note that it generates incomplete or no result when using
> it on solid primitives (cylinder, cone; box).

Actually, what you show there in the screenshot looks to be the correct and current expected result.

Right now the Silhouette command does not create duplicates of edges that are silhouettes, it only calculates "brand new" silhouettes that are internal pieces of curved surfaces.

The reason why is to avoid making duplicate curves when using it for AI format export.

The way AI export works, is it exports all curves and edges in the model as curves in the flattened AI file. If silhouette generated copies of edges in addition to the internal silhouettes, it would make it pretty easy to get duplicate curves if you just did a SaveAs to AI format.

I can probably put in an option for whether to duplicate edges that are silhouettes or not though, would that be useful for you? I don't think that it would do anything useful for AI export though so probably that option would be off by default.

- Michael

Hi BurrMan,

Yes I get the illustrator stuff, but I'm sure I can use it for other stuffs, like a quick way to add sci-fi details using silhouette as sweep rails etc ;)

Hi PaQ,

> Not really sure what's the silouhette purpose, but I'll find :)
> (get same kind of result that tyglik is talking about)

It's mainly for helping to get better export to AI format to 2D illustration programs.

Since it will be a while before there is a complete hidden-line vector generation in MoI I wanted to get this function in there to help out in the meantime.

For example if you export a cylinder to AI format, it exports existing edges in the model, so that means your AI file for a cylinder looks like this (this was done by drawing a cylinder, exporting to AI and then opening the AI file back into MoI):



So notice there that having only the model edges in the 2D output does not make for a very proper 2D illustration.

However, if you use the new Silhouette command on the cylinder first, it will generate the silhouettes on the curved parts of the cylinder. Then when you save to AI format after that (without moving the view in between silhouette generation and saving!) it will produce a 2D drawing like this:




That's still not a completely proper 2D drawing, you've got the seam edge in there which you probably don't want and it does not have things broken down into hidden and visible portions. But it is a major step forward because at least it has all the "raw parts" of the drawing in there so you have stuff to work with.


> As the V2 beta cycle nearly end, I suppose surface continuity
> options will be 'only' added in the V3 ?

Yeah those tend to be finicky things to work with, it is not going to be possible to have that included for v2 other than where it already exists like for Fillet and Blend.

- Michael

EDIT: looks like we posted at the same time!

But there seems to be some general questions from many people about what silhouette is for, so I wanted to have a more full explanation here with some examples anyway.

Hi Marc,

> As Petr mentioned, the silhouette feature doesn't seem to
> work in the 3d view.
> It appears to be working ok in orthogonal views though.

Actually it was working correctly in the screenshot that Petr showed there.

It does not currently try to duplicate edge curves that are also silhouettes, it only generates "new" silhouettes for the internal parts of curved surfaces.

See this previous post for a better description:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3000.18

If you do have an example where it is not working in the 3D view, could you please post it?

- Michael

Hi Burr,

> The silouette command seems to not like "Sharp Edges" at
> this point. It will perform on smoothed silouettes.

Yeah the part that seems to be confusing people is that it does not attempt to duplicate edge curves that are also silhouettes.

That's because all edges of a solid are already being written to an AI file if you do a "SaveAs" to AI format.

So if the Silhouette command added in curves that were duplicates of existing edges, it would be pretty easy for someone to end up with duplicate stacked up curves in their AI file.

But it sounds like I should probably put in an option for whether to extract silhouette edge curves also or not, that should be pretty easy to do.

- Michael