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

Michael,

I don't have 501 yet, I'm not sure when I'm going to get around to upgrading, so no, I haven't gotten around to playing with.

OK got some further work done on this, here and there when I get an hour or so to fiddle. I think I'm getting closer to something I like but there's still some things I'm not quite sure of. I'm trying to pull some ideas in from Kevin Flynn's bike, specifically the rear bits. Any ideas how I might do a better job or C&C of what I've currently got? Note I'm not trying to copy it precisely, just get ideas from it.

Here's the current state:










Here's the stuff from the movie that I'd like to take inspiration from:






So my problem is the area pointed to in red:




Another issue is the area in front: I cant get these edges to fillet, presumably because the geometry is awkward. Any ideas on how to build it a different way that would lend itself to being filleted here?

Hi Jim, re: filleting - it's hard to say without examining the actual model closely but probably your fillet problem with trying to do those edges is due to this juncture over here where they all meet up:



So note that when you create a fillet the new fillet piece is going to trim away part of the existing model, and that actually leaves holes in the model at the ends of the trimmed away parts and the filleter has to try and figure out what to do with those holes.

For example in your case here trying to fillet this edge here:




Is going to try and produce a fillet piece that trims away some area to either side of that edge kind of like so:



How then would you want that corner juncture (that I have the arrow pointing to in the first screenshot above) to be formed after having the surfaces trimmed away by the new fillet getting inserted? It's not clear to me what kind of shape you would be hoping to have in that area. Most likely the filleter is not able to figure out any way to handle that area either.


> Any ideas on how to build it a different way that would
> lend itself to being filleted here?

It's not clear to me how you would like that juncture corner formed after it is done being filleted...

Here's another way to describe what makes it difficult - you've got an existing fillet going in one direction like this:



But then the new one you want to fillet is going to produce a fillet going in the opposite direction, like this:




How do you want the juncture between those 2 fillets going in opposite directions to be formed?


It could be possible to do some kind of low level surface modeling manipulation to that area to get the kind of shape that you want, you would do that by selecting those surfaces around that area and using Edit > Separate to break them apart from the main object, then you can do possibly work with those individual surfaces, doing some surface/surface filleting and maybe building some fill in pieces using some sweeps or something like that to get what you want, but you kind of need to know what you want first in order to have that work well.

- Michael

Damn, that sounds like far too much work. Isn't there a magic button that I can press to make it all look "cool"? You really need that button... :)

Basically I just wanted to bevel/fillet/smooth off the sharp edges, but obviously I'm not 100% how that would look or work. More experimenting ahead :)

:)