Hi Danny,

> Re: fonts
> What Burr is getting there is the same as on my
> computer I think I prefer century gothic.

I should be able to get that figured out for the next beta.



> BTW was your server down for most of the day ?

Yup, power outage in the data center. I guess they had to go to every machine in the whole facility and manually reset them so it took a while to get things going when the power returned.

- Michael

Hi Greg,

> Word got out about the V3 beta and everyone tried to
> get it at once! (Oh to be so popular!)

At first I thought maybe my poor web server was getting overloaded like that! But actually it was sitting there without any power due to a power outage in the data center...

- Michael

For avoid that! :)

lol Frenchy... "I'll peddle!!!"

Hi Felix,

> Since you already have the orientation picker would it
> be possible to use that to orient the UVs of each surface
> as you like (as an option maybe), <...>

I don't think it will be feasible to do that - for things to work well it needs to map from one full UV space to the other UV space and although it will be possible to do something like map U to V or U to negative U or things like that it won't work to do something arbitrary like a 30 degree angle which is what the orientation picker is set up to allow currently.

I think the way I'll be able to make it work is that it will pay attention to which corners you click nearest to on both the base surface and then the target surface and then flip or swap UVs as necessary so that those 2 corners align. Then maybe a checkbox for flipping the surface normal direction.

That should give you some control over how the base surface and target surface will align with one another without needing to worry so much about which particular directions are the U and V directions.

If you want to rotate something by some arbitrary amount, you would need to do that by either rotating the object or the base plane how you want it first before doing the Flow.


> PS. I tried history and it doesn't apply (unless it's me)

History is not on by default for Flow but you can turn it on by selecting the output object (the deformed result) and then using the Edit > History command, and click the "Enable update" button.

When history update is enabled on the result object then it will recalculate when you edit either the original object or either of the 2 surfaces.

- Michael

Thank Michael,

I tried history as you mention and it works fine. It give you quite a bit of possibility.

At least the idea of flipping the normal using a check box wasn't a bad idea after all.

Thanks again,
Felix

Hi Felix,

> At least the idea of flipping the normal using a check
> box wasn't a bad idea after all.

Yeah that part should probably be fine.

The thing that could get sort of messy would be if there were 3 checkboxes like "Flip U", "Flip V" as well as "Flip surface normal". That's getting to be kind of a lot of flip options and you may not even know in advance which particular direction is the U and which is the V.

So that's why it could be better if the U and V alignment could be done by paying attention to where you clicked on each surface to - it could flip U and V directions as needed so that the corners that you clicked on would get aligned to one another.

That's what I think I'm going to try anyway, we'll see if it will work out ok or not.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

>The thing that could get sort of messy...

that's why I though of the orientation picker as a mean to setup the UV's like you want but maybe, instead, if it's possible of course, would it be possible (completely outside the flow command) to kind of see the normals orientation and or the UVs orientation? We could setup thing before hand.

I've done another test and I think it's easy to figure out what I'd like to have instead of the result I got (see file). I would like (if possible) the flowed object to keep as much as possible it's roundness. Though I can see other ways to do that, I wonder if I could still do it using flow which would be much less work especially when the object to be flowed is much more complex than the current one?

Edit: I got it, I created a trimmed surface from a projected circle (on the original target) of the proper diameter and I needed to shrink the trimmed surface and the result look much better now. But the roundness is still distorted, to a much less degree though. I'll try another mean to create the target surface, maybe a bool intersection??? No, still have the same untrimmed surface. Is there a way out???

Thanks,
Felix

Hi Felix,

> instead, if it's possible of course, would it be possible
> (completely outside the flow command) to kind of see
> the normals orientation and or the UVs orientation? We
> could setup thing before hand.

That could be possible but many people might not know that they would need to use that separate u/v/normal reorientation command in order to control the result that they were getting with flow, so that could potentially be more difficult to use.

Just in general with various commands I've tried to make directional things more controlled by selection actions - for example if you do a sweep with "auto place" mode for placing the profiles, the end of the curve that you click closest to when selecting the rail will be the one that is used to start the sweep.

So matching surface to surface by paying attention to the selection area would fit in pretty well with how some other things operate already.


> I would like (if possible) the flowed object to keep as much as
> possible it's roundness. Though I can see other ways to do that,
> I wonder if I could still do it using flow which would be much
> less work especially when the object to be flowed is much more
> complex than the current one?

Well, your target surface is flared out wide on one end near the bottom and compresses down near the top, so that's going to cause a kind of squishing distortion in the area near the top.

There isn't any way for the flow command itself to avoid that squishing - squishing things is basically fundamental to how it operates.

If you want a non-squished looking result you may want to try some other construction method like use just on a circle curve to place a path on to your target surface using Flow and then do a sweep of a circle along that path curve to make a more uniform tubular type shape result, rather than including the tubular surface directly with the flow which will squish it.

- Michael

Michael,

I understand your point of consistency throughout the various function and command. I'll wait and see when this thing about selecting the corners one wants to match.

As for the "roundness" thing I tried to fit the button in only the top part of the profile curve (I trimmed it and sweep it alone). The result is much better, though still not what I would like but close.

I think I'll try somekind of 2 pass flow using curves instead of surfaces maybe the result will be exactly what I want, I'll let you know.

Regards,
Felix

Hi Michael,

I tried the 2 pass approach using curve instead of surfaces and though I had to figure out how to do it, it was a bit tricky , I managed to create the button the way I wanted and position it on the target surface.

This idea of creating a kind of 2.5D object (basically a flat object (2D) with a little thickness) bending (flow) it in 1 or 2 of direction and kind of applying it where I want is an operation I would use quite often in my work.

In the joined file you'll see in front row the setup I've created, from left to right, the button, the base lines, the target curves and surface and "crossair" where the final flowed button will be positioned.

The second row shows the setup for the first flow, you'll noticed that I rotated (top view) the button in the center of the target curve.

The third row shows the setup for the second flow, you'll noticed I've rotated the button 90 degree in front view before using flow.

The fourth row shows the button rotated back to its proper orientation.

The fifth row shows the button properly "oriented" on the target surface.

I suppose all this can be automated in the future and I hope I'm not the only one that would use such a series of operations. Maybe you have already something in mind to facilitate this kind of 2 curves bending.

Even if this specific application never happens I believe it's much easier to do then having to create the button in place directly on the surface. Imagine a much more complex shape like something out of Zsurf for example.

This flow command is simply awsome, I'm sure many user will find many use for it. Excellent work!

Thanks,
Felix

Hi Felix, that's a great result!

Yes, using flow mapping from a base curve to a target curve can make it a bit easier to apply a bend only in one direction at a time and minimize distortion.

> Maybe you have already something in mind to facilitate
> this kind of 2 curves bending.

Well, just using the flow command twice in sequence seems like it does the job for this case quite well already.

Do you mean having some special option just for the convenience of a couple of less clicks?

It's not generally very good from a UI design standpoint to stick in a whole ton of custom options for doing specific things that can already be done pretty easily with just a couple of actions in sequence - that tends to lead to UI bloat making the UI get overly filled up with specialized stuff and a UI that is totally chock full of stuff is more difficult to use.

See this previous post for some more explanation on this UI problem:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4442.19

The philosophy of "more is better" does not really apply very well to UI design, at least in the case of trying to keep things easy to use which is a big focus for MoI.


So if you are able to get a good result for this case by using the technique of using flow twice in sequence, then that's what I would consider to be a successful setup already.

What you're talking about there should amount to only a few seconds to apply the flow command a second time, right? Shaving a few seconds off of a construction technique like this is not really a significant improvement. Compared to all the other setup that you're already doing it's not really a significant stumbling block and all together the overall technique is saving a whole lot of time compared to constructing the warped object directly without any use of flow...


But you could probably use surface to surface flow to expedite this if you made a target surface that was not pinched together - that would be something like take these 2 crossed curves that you have here:




You can use the Sweep command to build a curved surface from those that is more uniformly shaped and not pinched near the top or bottom, that should help to minimize distortion in surface-to-surface flow.

Select one of those curves for the sweep profile, then run Construct > Sweep and select the other curve as the rail, that will build a curved but not pinched surface that looks like this:



This kind of surface that does not have pinched together areas in it will reduce distortion when using it as a flow target.

Basically if you want to do a 2 directional flow, that is what the surface to surface flow will do already, just try to make the surface have a more uniform semi-rectangular layout to it and don't pinch parts of the surface to be narrower or wider than other parts.

- Michael

Hi, I dont know if anyone asked this before but I think an optional color-coded-normals could be useful, cause when I export surfaces to modo sometimes they're seeing the wrong side, just a suggestion.

Hi Ed - in Modo if you set your material to be double sided it shouldn't really make any difference which particular side is the positive normal direction side.

Is there some reason why you don't just set it up like that so that it doesn't matter one way or the other?

- Michael

Hi, there is a reason: some translucent materials and fur materials doesn't work with the double sided option, but if there is too much work needed to make it possible... maybe it is not that important.

Hi ed, well I do want to have some mechanism for seeing and altering the normal direction while inside of MoI.

It just has not been a real priority yet since for the most part I have figured that if your rendering application has some features that are sensitive to the normal direction then they would also probably have tools in there to do the flipping inside that application.

It kind of turns out that is maybe not a correct assumption though since it's not uncommon for there to be bugs in rendering applications with handling imported vertex normals while doing the flipping. They just have to flip the vertex normals as well as the face normals, it's not particularly high technology stuff so you'd think that it wouldn't be a problem but, ....

Do you often put fur on renderings of objects that you've created in MoI? Most of the time I'd think that fur would go on character type models and not really on the kind of stuff that is typically modeled with MoI.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I knew somehow this one seem to easy. I tried sweep as you suggested but it is almost as complicated because in order for the button to fit on the original target surface, I have to create each curve for the sweep exactly the same length of the side of the base plane, this prevents any scaling (still have to flip normal). Lastly for some reason the button get rotated about the normal of the 2 curve used for the sweep where they intersect (see joined image, red line). Just in case, I've rotated the button, the seam was vertical where the curve shows at the top of the surface.

> Do you mean having some special option just for the convenience of a couple of less clicks?

No, I was thinking more of something like a custom script and I think I can create it myself someday (and share it).

I have a passion for furniture making and I'd like to add ornaments or carving like features to my work and not just glue on type of ornaments. This new flow command is just great for that and yes many time the target surface will be flat but there will also be quite a lot curved surface as well (legs, corner post, etc.) and somewhat less compound curve surface as in this case.

The simple button I've used here is just a proof of concept kind of thing I used to learn how to use this new flow command. Eventually, I intend to also use highmap displaced surface via Zsurf probably and use flow to make it conform to the surface I want.

Moi moi moi, I'm getting adicted...
Felix

Hi Felix,

> Lastly for some reason the button get rotated about the normal
> of the 2 curve used for the sweep where they intersect (see joined
> image, red line). Just in case, I've rotated

Can you post the 3DM model file for this case where you're getting unexpected rotation?

It could be that you're seeing the result of uneven parameterization of the sweep surface. One thing that is good about the curve to curve flow is that it is based on distance traveled along curves.

The surface to surface flow is not based on 3D distance but rather parameter space distance, and it can be possible for parameter space to be compressed or stretched in relation to 3D space. When that is the case it will result in compression or stretching of the surface-to-surface flow as well.

Right now I think that you can get that kind of uneven parameterization if you just draw a control point curve with fairly uneven spacing between the points and use that for a part of the sweep. You can use the Rebuild command for now to reconstruct a curve with uneven parameterization in it, and then using the result of the rebuild for constructing the sweep may give you a better result.

But that is one nice thing about the curve to curve one as compared to the surface-to-surface one - that the curve-to-curve one is arc length based and is not sensitive to parameterization like the surface to surface one.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

here is the file you requested.

I would also think that using curves instead of surface present advantage in cases like mine. Specially when the curves are simple arcs as in this case. But for say freeform curves, it might become quite difficult to "bend" and position the flowed object correctly, I'll see when I get there, for now lets forget about this.

Thanks,
Felix

Hi Felix, I'm not really sure if I'm following the rotation problem - there are quite a bunch of objects in that last file you posted and I'm not entirely sure which ones were used to make that particular result that had the improper rotation.

One thing that I did notice though is that in your original object, the seam of the circular part is at a different rotation than the nearest point of the star, like this:



Did something happen like you got a 90 degree rotation in the result of the Flow because the surfaces happened to have a different UV axis direction placement, and then you rotated the base object a bit to compensate? If you wanted the seam of the outside circle tube part to align with the star, that would need to be aligned in the base model.

Maybe I'm just not understanding what the rotation problem is though...

- Michael