Hello,

Thought I would try to get a few things accomplished in the post.

1. My most immediate issue at this point is the filleting not working too well for me because of that seaming problem I think. Will this be cleaned up in v3 so nubs like me can end up with a good filleting job?

2. As I get into lofting I get some pretty unusual twisting behavior between top and bottom edges, as if the automatic way of doing things is trying to turn the model inside out. Are any improvements planned to be able to direct the loft in a certain direction, or am I missing something?

3. Any chance of a Thea Render plugin being developed?

As always, thanks for all the assistance. More models shortly, first QSG using MoI with cleanup in Corel.

Hi OSTexo,

> Will this be cleaned up in v3 so nubs like me can end
> up with a good filleting job?

I hope so, but it is hard to tell exactly when it will happen. I'm dependent on another company to make those filleting improvements in the geometry library that I use.


> 2. As I get into lofting I get some pretty unusual twisting
> behavior between top and bottom edges, as if the automatic
> way of doing things is trying to turn the model inside out.

Do you have an example you could post? Maybe it was a bug.

I actually did just fix up something in this area for the current v2 beta where it could get confused when the Loft was really skinny shaped, see here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2968.8


> Are any improvements planned to be able to direct the loft in
> a certain direction, or am I missing something?

You actually do already have full control over the twisting and directions - when you are at the "Loft options" prompt in the final stage of Loft, there are seam points that appear in the 3D viewport that you can drag to change how the seam matching works, and you can also click on profile sections to flip their directions if the automatic align function did not do a good job of it.

If you have profiles that are kind of scattered around with a lot of distance and variation between them, that can make it difficult for the automatic untwister to do a good job and you may need to manually do the alignment and flipping. But the controls for it are all there now.

Again, if you can post (or e-mail to me at moi@moi3d.com) an example of where you were having a problem that would help a lot to determine what was happening in that particular case.


> 3. Any chance of a Thea Render plugin being developed?

I don't have any plans for this currently myself - doesn't Thea Render support common file formats like OBJ and stuff like that?

It's not really feasible for me to do plug-ins for other systems, there are just too many of them. Instead I focus on trying to do a good job exporting data to standard file formats.

- Michael

>>>3. Any chance of a Thea Render plugin being developed?

Thea studio will support .FBX & (geometry will need to be tessellated to triangles on export) also UV texture alignment tools like offset, scaling, and similar options will be supported...

BUT since MOI does not have a material editor & does not create any dissent UVs I see not point for a plug in. you we still need a "middle man" like UV Layout, 3d-coat, Modo, Maya etc.

OSTexo I would recommend 3d-coat if you don't have any of the "big boys". Andrew Shpagin is also working .3dm support...and if you ask for a Thea export he could possible do it over night :)

Hello,

Thanks for the info MG, I'll just experiment some more and see what I can get fixed, if I get stuck I'll post the file to see what can be done.

Thanks for the info neo, I currently have modo 401, zbrush and SU7 and will probably end up getting some other package in the next month. MoI saved me from dealing with Rhino. While it seemed to be very capable, the learning curve seemed to be a bit steep for me, and I really needed to be able to jump into an app and come out with a finished product in a reasonable amount of time. I was hoping to use a "middle man" for Thea that was easy and lightweight to setup the scene and render away. From what I see they seem to be committed to make it easy for those that aren't experts to come up with a usable image without months of learning. Will 3D-Coat do this for me?

That's why I'm looking at SpaceClaim Engineer, I'm just having a hard time thinking it's 10x as capable as MoI for the price, although I'll end up using both.

OSTexo the Thea plugin for Modo is the way to go for your workflow IMO... 3dcoat is great but if you have modo + zbrush there is no need for it...also SpaceClaim is a great choice. it does what MOI does not...BUT I must say SpaceClaim has the most pathetic Pricing Policy ever, even Autodesk looks affordable :)

Hello neo,

It's more affordable than a few packages and seems to be relatively easy to use as far as those apps go. Is it worth $2500 for what I need it for? I'll talk to them to see if that price is the "real" price. They must have hired an AutoDesk exec to set their pricing. Let's just say I'm glad I came across MoI before I dropped that on SCE.

Hello,

I have attached an example of what I am speaking about with loft. I would like the points to line up with the "X" on the circle, but cannot seem to make that happen. Refit gets closest. Thanks.

ostexo

If you split your circle using the cross lines and separate the lines of the other profile you can then make 4 seperate lofts (or mirror the lofts). Picture shows the 2 lines to loft between. then the same process for the other sides.

Also i use spaceclaim. Im not sure what you want to use it for? but it works well with rhino and can you can cut paste from MoI. it needs a bit of getting used to as its quite a different way of working. have you got a trial? my biggest tip would be if the part is symmetric cut half away and you can more easily adapt it then mirror it back after the changes? If you can keep splitting the part into simpler pieces it will work very well.

Jamie

Hello Jamie,

Thanks for the tip, the procedure worked well. I would be using SCE to clean up and simplify some models as well as work on some conceptual enclosures for some equipment. I'm by no means an engineer, but will have those who know what they are doing make sure the parts can be built. I like the idea of how you can build out geometry the way they demonstrate. I fell through the cracks after requesting a demo a few months ago, SC just got back to me now... I'm not sure if that is a good thing or how they are doing in general. I did a demo on Rhino and found it to be too much / cluttered for my taste, maybe that is why I like MoI. Do you use Style or Engineer?

Hi

Glad it worked. Im using spaceclaim style with Rhino. The only thing that I miss is the healing functions from the engineer version. Mostly I use it for the solid modeling that is weaker in rhino (ie shelling) also for simplifying and adapting geometry. also good for very quickly sketching things out in 3d. I also use MoI whenever I can instead of rhino and paste into rhino for some tools MoI doesnt have.

The next release of spaceclaim should be end of this month. I would go ahead with the demo and see if it suits you. There are a lot of tutorial videos on the spaceclaim site which are really helpful. do you have an example picture of the type of housing you would be looking to create?

Jamie

Hi OSTexo,

> I have attached an example of what I am speaking about
> with loft. I would like the points to line up with the "X" on
> the circle, but cannot seem to make that happen. Refit gets
> closest. Thanks.

I see - but that is actually not a bug, it's more of a lack of "artifical intelligence" in MoI.

When you do a Loft between profiles that have a different number of segments in them (in this case 1 segment for the circle, and 4 segments for the end piece), MoI will do a kind of averaging process to merge the different shapes together.

MoI is not able to analyze the shapes to such an extent to realize exactly how different pieces should be mapped. You've got to help it by splitting things up into pieces so that there is a simple "1 to 1" segment matching.

Like Jamie mentions, you want to use Trim to split the circle up into pieces to enable this.

Once the circle is split, then you can either use Separate on the other piece and do the Lofts in pairs, or you can also use Edit/Join to join the circle together into 1 curve which will now have 4 segments inside of it, and then do one loft between each of the 4-segment pieces. When the loft sections have the same number of segments, they will get matched segment-to-segment.


But yes if you want to merge different shaped pieces together in a loft you will likely need to split things up so that you have more control over exactly what portions are being matched between the 2 profiles.

It would sort of take some kind of advanced artifical intelligence pattern matching to try and do that automatically, I don't have much hope of being able to produce that anytime soon... ;)

- Michael

Hello Jamie,

I have all the components ready, it's just a matter of sizing and making the equipment easily modular in nature, something that is requested often but not available.

MG, I thought you were adding brain link AI to version 3? (grin)