Holy moly! I can't wait for that. :) MoI gains up in power. Great work Michael.

MfG
sk2k

Hi Michael,

Boolean curves: You won't have to click inside the areas you want to keep or remove? It works without intervention? I think so if I understand you well. On the other hand, this is restricted to closed curve (how you mentioned) due to this automatic handling, isn't it...

Petr

> Boolean curves: You won't have to click inside the areas you
> want to keep or remove? It works without intervention? I think so if I
> understand you well.

Yes, this is correct it works in the exact same steps as a regular solid boolean, no extra picking or intervention required.


> On the other hand, this is restricted to closed curve (how you mentioned) due
> to this automatic handling, isn't it...

Yes, that is the case. I tried to get open curves to work with the merge operator - it almost works but there are some complications that get in the way that won't be easy to solve for now.

Something that involves open curves and manually picking areas, although certainly useful in the right circumstances, just is not what I would call a boolean operation. Boolean operations involve using Difference, Union, or Intersection.

A region picking method would be something I'd consider to be more applicable in the Trim tool instead. Right now in MoI there is a control in Trim that lets you specify whether you are keeping or removing the selected fragments - this would be a good spot to also have a point-in-area selector as another optional way to specify the fragments.

- Michael

Michael,
Thanks for the info. No problem on waiting as I have enough tools in this version to keep me plenty happy ;)
And those new booleans are sparking ideas already :)

Woaw !

Boolean on curves was one of my requests ! I didn't expect to see it in MoI before V.2... Can't wait for the next beta...

Thanks Michael !

MoI version 1 and ZBrush 3 released next spring ! It's gonna be crazy !!!! ;-))

You mean this Spring for Zbrush 3... ;)

Ok, another Boolean enhancement for the next beta: Auto-extrude.

This allows planar curves to be used in the boolean as either a cutter for Boolean Difference, or as an entry into Boolean Intersection.

This is a convenience factor which automatically handles extruding the planar curves through the objects behind the scenes.

So for example given this setup with the curves floating in front of the sphere:



In the next beta you will be able to do boolean difference to do this:



Or boolean intersection to get the reverse:




I think just one more area to tune-up before Booleans are all finished for V1...

- Michael

Wow! Exactly what I need! :D

>> You mean this Spring for Zbrush 3... ;)

I mean the one coming after this winter... ;-)))
I'm just wondering how the new tools in ZB3 (matcap and some other things I've seen on the video) will ease the process of texturing objects created in other applications like MoI...

Maybe Michael should release V.1 on the 15th of May as well. I would take a week holidays then... ;-)

@ Michael : Auto-extrude looks great !

Ok, just finished another boolean tune-up for the next beta - Boolean difference now works well when using surfaces instead of only solids.

This combined with auto-extrude means that this is now possible - given this setup:



Doing a boolean difference of the box with curve as a subtraction gives this (pieces moved to illustrate):



Where each piece is a solid. Here's another example - the results are all solids:




So quite a bit of boolean stuff for the next beta coming...

- Michael

Very cool stuff!

I think this spring I will get a new release of all the apps I use!
AutoCAD, Revit, Maxwell, MoI, etc...

Hi Michael,

What happens when group of curves will be inside of solid or intersect the one?

Petr

Hi JTB, AutoCAD is released each spring... I think it is rather embarrassing then worthwile... -Petr

> What happens when group of curves will be inside of solid or intersect the one?

Hi Petr, I may need an image of this to be certain that I understand your question.

But if I understand correctly, it doesn't matter where the curves are located, they can be anywhere along their plane normal and have the same effect.

This is because the solid doesn't interact with the curves directly - instead imagine that the curves are
moved along their plane normal to be placed just a little bit outside the bounding box of the solid (or surface), then extruded so that they push through to a little bit more than the other side of the bounding box of the solid.

This produces the same extrusion part no matter where the curves are placed along that normal direction.

Then the solid actually interacts with that extrusion.


I've now finished Union now to work properly with surfaces.

- Michael

All that is not in the beta of the 26 / 2 feb 2007?

> All that is not in the beta of the 26 / 2 feb 2007?

Hi Pilou, nope - all this new boolean stuff will be for the next beta which should be ready pretty soon.

- Michael

Just an update - I'm trying to get the new curve boolean stuff to work on open curves as well instead of only closed curves. I'm making progress but it is taking a while, maybe a day or so longer before the new beta is ready with all this new boolean stuff.

- Michael

Feature Suggestion: Min/Max Range Values for Offset & Shell commands

If you're not particularly paying attention to the scale of your model, then you don't know where begin when plugging in values for "Offset" and "Shell"... I often have to try several values just to get one that successfully displays a result on the screen.

Would it be possible for MoI to display the Upper and Lower Limits of possible offsets by default, or perhaps provide a "Calculate Min/Max" Offset button? (Obviously you would need to cap the MIN/MAX values well before infinity for very simple surfaces that have virtually nothing limiting how far they can go.)

Also, if MIN / MAX values are present, perhaps a range "slider" could be provided at the bottom of the keypad so one can simply slide between the values to evaluate different distances or thicknesses. With a range slider, you would probably need to provide a little "Calculate" button so that MoI didn't try to calculate the offset or shell operation each time you nudged the slider...)

Hi Justin, I guess this would involve a lot of different calculations, some on detecting the curvature of surfaces, and others trying to analyze the interference between different adjacent surfaces.

Unfortunately these calculations are really complex, it would be really hard to actually implement this, even harder than doing the shelling operation itself...

But I do want to figure out some way to improve this in the future though.

In the meantime, there is an alternate method to entering a numeric distance - you can pick 2 points in a viewport, and the distance between those points will be used. This can help adapt to the scale of your object for example by picking the 2 points snapped on to a piece of your object...

- Michael