The filter sounds great, looking forward to try it!

In some situations locking the solids only will be nice to prevent accidental sub-object selection.

Marc

Hi Grendel,

> arrows bracket the circle line inside and out
> click inner to select inside circle, click outer to select outside
>
> the circle would affect anything inside or touching....or outside
> and touching if an outside selection is needed

The problem with that, is that extra inside/outside step would be really inconsistent with how other selection tools works.

Like for example if you do a rectangular selection right now, there isn't any extra stage to do that kind of inside/outside step - instead the way you do that with the rectangular selection is to first do a "select all" and then do a rectangular selection but hold down the ctrl key which makes it do a deselection of the things captured by it, that produces a rectangular hole in the selection.

It's good if other kinds of selection tools would work in a more consistent manner to the existing ones, rather than having a really different kind of flow to them like the arrow bracket inside/outside step like you've described here...

- Michael

I love these threads where Michael is explaining his rational for features, specifically:

"Things like a permanent extra button means that some beginning user who just wants to do simple things and doesn't need to do any filtering will pay some price in UI complexity for something that they don't use. That's the kind of thing I'm trying hard to avoid."

Implied in this is an often overlooked psychology principle, hierarchy of knowledge and its unconscious effect on emotions, which is required for efficient teaching/learning.
Its at once disheartening and exciting to see that while my University professors are forgetting it, Michael is actively employing it in the indirectly related field of UI design!

I believe that its such things, considered small by modern standards of judgment, that are the reason why many people are grappled by MOI, at first emotionally and then intellectually.

Thanks Ambimind!

Yeah, often times the negative consequences of adding stuff to UI is not really considered very carefully by many developers, that's a big reason why typically a program becomes sort of "bloated" over time.

Trying to avoid that is a big priority for MoI's continued development.

One way that I do that is by trying to get more multiple functions out of the same UI area - like in this case for filtering the selection indicator will do double duty to also allow for filtering as well. I try to make it a higher priority any time there is a good concept on how to re-use some existing UI to make it more powerful without really adding any extra footprint to the simple use case.

- Michael

Hehe this is great :)

But yes, I'm really keen to see circular selection - many times so far I've wished to have it!

If that is not possible then making a circle that selects everything touching inside is simple enough and then I can invert selection to get the outside

Today I feel it very strong, it seems, hour X comes nearer.

Rudl

Hi Rudl - still working on the new selection filtering system right now. Hopefully that will wrap up soon and then I'll probably try a few deformation tools and then release the new beta after that.

Not sure exactly when, maybe in about a week.

- Michael

A week :D

Yeys!

Hi NightCabbage, yup it's getting really close - I think I've got the selection filter system all working, and now I'm working on one of the first deformation tools, the "Flow" command which lets you warp an object between a base spine curve and a target one, like so:



- Michael

Hello,

Does this apply to solids as well? Even if not, I see could the immediate savings in time and effort using it.

Nice Michael.

Can you lay that notched object down flat and deform it around the same curve?

If so, then we may need fewer steps to project designs and text onto a cylinder?

Ed

Hi OSTexo, yes it will work on solids as well although with a few caveats. It seems like it will be better for sharp edged things - surfaces that were smooth to one another in the original object will not necessarily end up totally smooth to each other in the deformed result. That's because the surfaces undergo a kind of rebuilding process.

Still though it should be quite useful.

There will also be another variant where you can map a 2d layout from a plane to follow a surface rather than mapping from curve to curve.

- Michael

Hi Ed,

> Can you lay that notched object down flat and deform
> it around the same curve?

I'm not quite sure if I follow what you're asking about here - but there will also be a different variant that will allow you to map from objects arranged on a plane to some other surface rather than mapping between curves.


> If so, then we may need fewer steps to project designs
> and text onto a cylinder?

Yeah I think it should help out a lot for applying text on to other shapes.

- Michael

Also in some cases I'm seeing kind of odd little bumps and lumps in the rebuilt results when applying this to some kinds of surfaces. I may need to do an overhaul of the surface rebuilding part to get the solid morphing piece to be more reliable.

- Michael

Thanks Michael. I was asking if you rotate the notched object 90 degrees away from you (lay it down), will it wrap on the same curve?

Ed

Hi Ed - sorry still not quite following - the notched object shown there is already a 2D curve laying flat in the Top view...

If I rotate it by 90 degrees then it will be sticking up vertically and you can still wrap it on that other curve - it will then give a vertical result like a wall like this:



- Michael

Sorry for the confusion. That's what I was trying to describe. Yes - that will open the door for a lot of design possibilities.

Ed

Exciting looking stuff Michael! you're such a tease :)

Cheers

Ahhhh, text along path... Does it work with a 3d curve???