Since Tron first came out, I've always loved the idea of a light cycles. I thought I might try a hand at an alternate design and see how far I can take it in moi. This is my first serious attempt at modeling anything with moi, so I expect to learn a lot.

So here's a start at that, first just sketching out some curves, obviously taking inspirations from Daniel Simon's design. I'd love some C&C on this. I'm also curious as to what's the best approach at joining the sphere like wheels with the body?

PS Happy New Year to all, and a HUGE thanks to Michael for this software. So far I really love using it.

Hi Jim, it looks like you're off to a great start!

So for joining the sphere-ish wheels to the body, it kind of depends on how you want the join to look, do you want it to look smooth where they run into each other?

If so then the way you usually want to do that is to build the body and the wheels as separate pieces that initially just punch through each other and meet in a sharp crease. Then you select them all and use the Construct > Boolean > Union command to cut them with each other and combine them into one volume. That will then create some edges at the juncture between the wheels and the body surfaces which can then be selected and filleted to smooth out what used to be a sharp corner there.

That same technique is used in both the 6-legged pod and the sunburst video tutorials available here:
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/tutorials.htm
so watching those would probably help - they go step by step through the process.

If you get stuck try posting the 3DM model file of your current result.

- Michael

Couple more updates, still fooling around with the forms/volumes.

I'm not sure how to get the body done. The parts pointed to in red (see 4th pic) show pretty ugly transitions. I'm Not sure what the best way to generate the surface is. I used the loft command to connect the various curves.

Hi Jim, you may want to use a smaller number of profiles, if you use too many of them kind of close together it will tend to make a bunched up result that sort of wiggles as it tries to go directly through each of those profiles. Having too many kind of applies too much pressure to the result in a certain sense.

So that's one technique - also you can try setting the "Loft style" option (look in the upper-right area of the main window to see command options for the currently running command) to Loft style = Loose, which will make a surface that is more generally guided by the profiles rather than forced to go directly through each one. That can reduce wiggles.

Also another thing is you may not want to try to bend the front part of your body section to try and make it adapt to the wheel so much - instead just make a straight lofted pieces that just runs directly through the wheel at first, then boolean union together and smooth out the transition with a fillet. Focusing on just the body piece as just a simple kind of more straight independent piece initially can also help to make it a more simple and smoother structure.

- Michael

http://www.danielsimon.net/ ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLsvx0OcLPY

OK, how about this :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivPheV77JcU

seems very easy to drive :D

A few more updates. I do have a question: how can I merge in the two pieces in the second attached image? If I try boolean unions they don't seem to work, on the highlighted piece (elevated so you can see it's not a solid, which might be the problem) a boolean merge sort of works, but I can't join the pieces together. Any suggestions?

Hi Jim, the booleans are more oriented around working with solids. If you have open surfaces instead of solids then usually the best way to handle those is to use the Trim command instead of the booleans.

The trim command will cut the surfaces of objects and let you pick which pieces to discard. Then you can join the results together.

You can kind of think of the booleans as kind of automatic macro version of trim + join where it decides which pieces to discard from the trim by which volume they are in. But if there are no volumes to the pieces then the lower-level plain Trim is better.

See this recent post for a description of how to do a "Mutual trim" where you want to cut 2 pieces with each other:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3901.5

But also you may run into some problems trying to merge your piece there because it looks like one of its corners may be badly formed and kind of bunched up and potentially folding over itself in this area here:



Those kinds of mangled chaotic surface areas tend to cause problems in surface/surface intersection calculations that are part of the Trim and Boolean commands.

So that surface may need to be reconstructed to be cleaner and not bunched up in that area before it will really be suitable for trimming.

- Michael

Hi Jim,

> a boolean merge sort of works, but I can't join the pieces together.

A boolean merge will try to make a solid, so probably in that case you got some kind of capsule-like solids.

You would then need to delete some of the bottom surfaces of that solid chunk before it would have open exposed edges that could then be joined to other edges.

- Michael

Thanks Michael! I'll post when I get a bit further, hopefully this do the trick!

Got a little bit further.



Still not 100% happy with this, but this is getting a little closer to what I'd like to do. I wanted something in front of the legs to act as something a little more aerodynamic looking that just the exposed knee. Not sure if this is exactly what I'm looking for though. Anyone else has suggestions, C&C, I'd love to hear it.

Made a quickie render in modo to see how the exporting works. Amazing simple to deal with and looks pretty slick, bad modeling notwithstanding :)

Couple more updates, still getting the hang of moi and trying to figure what looks cool here. C&C most welcome!

I'm definitely not sure how to join the body to the front wheel. A Bool union gives a bunch of cuts through the wheel which I kind of hate to see, but maybe that doesn't really matter?

Hi Jim, it's coming along well!

> A Bool union gives a bunch of cuts through the wheel
> which I kind of hate to see, but maybe that doesn't
> really matter?

Could you maybe explain a bit more what you mean by "a bunch of cuts through the wheel" ?

Do you mean you have some excess material sticking into the wheel that you want to get rid of, sort of like this area shaded red here:



If that's what you are talking about, then one easy way to get rid of that is to do a boolean difference on the body piece as a separate step first, to carve off that area that you don't want, before you combine the body and the wheel together.

That would go something like this - draw a curve in the side view that will divide the area you don't want off:



This looks like this in the 3D view:



Now select the body and run the Boolean Difference command, and select that curve as the cutting object, that will divide the body into 2 pieces:



And then just delete the piece that you don't want:



So one thing to note is that it's kind of easier to not try and make the dividing line go along the exact same area as where the wheel will contact the body, try to put it in the in-between zone - note how I drew the cutting arc above. If you try to make it follow exactly along where the wheel will contact the body it is a bit too easy to be off in the wrong direction and end up with a little hole there when you union them together in the next step.

There are some other ways you could approach this as well, like the Trim command can be used to slice the objects with one another and then you pick which pieces you want to have discarded.

But just carving off the piece you don't want with boolean difference is probably the easiest way.

Also another possibility is to use the Boolean merge command, which will also carve things up into multiple volumes and you can delete the part inside the wheel that you don't want, and then select the other parts and union them back together again.

- Michael

Thanks Michael. I got a little further, here's another version of the bike.

Still not 100% happy with the front part of the bike. The back portion is basically what I want. The is getting there, but still not quite there. Last 2 shots are taken in modo after exporting the mesh from moi.

Hi Jim, well it looks like it is coming together, and the renders are looking good already!

- Michael

Fooled around with what part of the engine detailing might look like



In Moi



Modo rendered


Currently weighs in at a shade under 500K polys - so I need to find a way to trim some fat when I put in with everything if I want to animate this.

I can't say enough how much fun it is to work with Moi!!

Wow, I really like the engine. Nice detail!

Awesome detailing on the engine!

Hi Jim, have you messed around with the new contour rendering in Modo yet?

That allows you to include some wires from the edge structure in MoI in your rendering, see here for an example:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3926.1

There's a patch for MoI v2 to enable LWO export that is ready to have contours applied, see here for the patch:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3926.4

That engine might look pretty cool with just a very faint contour rendering on it, could maybe kind of preserve some of the part detail in the glowing parts.

- Michael