I know, the machine at home nearly bogs down to a halt if I leave MoI running too long without a restart.
It's some kind of service, maybe for IE that shows a huge number of IO reads.

You said that the Beta version uses less or none of the IE implements. It is an independently running app now?

Yes, if anything is set near the poles, it does some nasty things. I made sure that the wire thingys were not on the line or in the center, so this thing turned out nice without any major glitches.

There's a nice cloverleaf pattern on the bottom as the "icing" was spread on the cake plate and adjoining table.



Well, all this is good for conforming objects to revolved things, but I cant wait to try out the projected flow.

Ahh... one thought about your projection flow option:
From what I could see on your examples, the objects, I think, maintain their width from the front to the back of the objects as it is conformed.
Or in other words, like the sides of an extrusion, for instance, maintain parallel angles.
If the surface has a sharper angle, the projected shape might look really warped.

Perhaps the shape of the object can conform to the surfaces normal, as they do when done with regular flow?
This example shows what I can't describe adequately...



So it would really look like you took a cookie from the cutter and carefully placed it on the target surface.
Just a thought.

Hi Mike,

> You said that the Beta version uses less or none of the IE
> implements. It is an independently running app now?

Yup, that's correct - the v3 beta version doesn't use any pieces of IE anymore.


> Perhaps the shape of the object can conform to the surfaces
> normal, as they do when done with regular flow?

Yup, there's an "Straight" option for projective mode - when Straight is unchecked, then the objects come off of the surface normal of the projected base surface which behaves like the current flow similar to surface offsetting. When Straight is checked, the objects come off only in one direction like an extrusion (and like the constrained direction idea that you mentioned back a while ago).

The previous examples I posted are actually all going off of the surface normal - but if the surface is not very curvy in that general area you won't see too much difference between these modes.

The projective mode won't work too well if the object being projected on to is curved too steeply in relation to the projection direction - it shouldn't approach too close to being 90 degrees away from the projection for example. It's more meant for beaming an object on sort of like a decal to a localized area of the object rather than wrapping across the entire surface.

- Michael

Wow!
Thanks, I can't wait to try that one out.

The only drawback I notice when playing with MOi3D is the viewport speed.
When I start filleting objects the frame rate drops badly. I do have a fast system and even with Cinema4D I do not have problems with the viewport speed but with Moi I do.
Is this a know issue?

I have a laptop with an I7-2720QM 3.30Ghz 16GB ram and a 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 550M GFX.
So that is not a bad configuration.
On my PC I have a Radeon 5770 GFX and it shows the same slow viewport speed.

Peace,
Rich_Art. ;-)

Hi Rich_Art - often times much of the viewport speed is taken up by the edge curve display - try turning off the hidden lines (On the side pane under View > "Display hidden lines") and see if that helps speed things up.

Also by default MoI generates a pretty dense surface display mesh which looks nice and smooth but can tend to bog down if you've got a heavy model with a lot of little curvy bits, like lots of fillets.

Try making the display mesh density to be coarser as described in this previous post and see if that helps:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4196.2

The settings for that are under Options > View > Meshing parameters - try setting "Mesh angle" to 25 degrees and uncheck "Add detail to inflections" and see if your display speed gets a boost.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the tips. Tonight after work I'll test the things you just described. :-)
I'll let you know what the result is.

Peace,
Rich_Art. ;-)

michael

i have tried this morning similar exercise to danperks with sphere and pattern made out of 5x10 rings (approx 2x1 ratio) and the final result of flow
is perfect but i have feeling that flow did it like a wrap around equator with longer side. i still expect it to work more equaly spread.
is that flow script based on some sort of Buckminster Fuller type triangular teselation (geodesic dome type) perhaps .
maybe i am not doing somthing correctly. streight was unchecked.
i'll keep trying this wonderful tool. i just love it.!!!!

regards

Hi Mario,

> is perfect but i have feeling that flow did it like a wrap
> around equator with longer side. i still expect it to work
> more equaly spread.

Flow will make use of whatever the structure is of the target surface - a sphere surface is a rectangular surface (all NURBS are based on a rectangular base shape) which has its top and bottom edges compressed down to a single point.

So because the sphere surface has compression in its structure, it follows that using it in flow will also generate compression.

If you don't want to have compression you'll need to use some other kind of surface structure than a sphere - possibly a sweep or something like that, a couple of ideas were mentioned previously here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4549.5
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4549.6


> is that flow script based on some sort of Buckminster Fuller type
> triangular teselation (geodesic dome type) perhaps .

The problem with that is that a triangular geodesic dome does not have a regular rectangular layout to it, so it does not map directly to a simple 2D plane.

In order for flow to be able to work, there has to be a mapping between the 2D starting object and its final 3D result.

Do you have any kind of examples that you could show for how you would rather have the 2D pattern mapped on to the sphere?

- Michael

michael

should i then try making sphere using sweep and trying the same exercise?

thanks

""""""""""The only drawback I notice when playing with MOi3D is the viewport speed.
When I start filleting objects the frame rate drops badly."""""""""

Rememebr that MoI is a NURBS modeler and you are making comparison to Polygon modeler.. They are different, especially when you start adding Finite detail like little fillets on everything...

In a NURBS Cad modeler comparison, MoI's Viewport blew doors on 15-20,000 dollar software!!!!

It would not be right to call it's viewport slow (Although I do undertsand what you are describing)

Usually, those other high end app's, start to "Cull" the viewport when trying to do any manipulation in it.."culling can be good, if you are starting to work on 1,500 part assembly's, but in everyday workflow, it is a distraction...

FYI.

Hi Mario,

> should i then try making sphere using sweep and
> trying the same exercise?

Yes - if you want to avoid compression at the top dome area of a regular sphere, try making a dome using the sweep technique shown in that previous post and use that as the target surface instead.

That surface does not compress to a pole at the top so it won't have the same kind of compression as a sphere does.

The new problem that you'll have is that you can't make a complete closed sphere shape out of a single surface that way, just sort of a portion of one.

- Michael

>>>>Rememebr that MoI is a NURBS modeler and you are making comparison to Polygon modeler.. They are different, especially when you start adding Finite detail like little fillets on everything...

In a NURBS Cad modeler comparison, MoI's Viewport blew doors on 15-20,000 dollar software!!!!

It would not be right to call it's viewport slow (Although I do undertsand what you are describing)

Usually, those other high end app's, start to "Cull" the viewport when trying to do any manipulation in it.."culling can be good, if you are starting to work on 1,500 part assembly's, but in everyday workflow, it is a distraction...

FYI.<<<<<<



I do not meant to attack Moi :-) I love Moi and the great support and feedback from Michael.
I only had some problems with the viewport speed and I'm not used to that with my current system.
It will be better with the change of the setting as Michael asked me to alter.

And indeed as you said, I'm a Polygon modeler for many many years so I only can used that as reference. :-)
Thanks for the reply any way. :-)

Oeace,
Rich_Art. ;-)

michael

so what is the main difference between two identical spheres

1) created from the solids menue
2) created as sweep to identical dimensions

thanks

Hi Mario,

> so what is the main difference between two identical spheres
>
> 1) created from the solids menue
> 2) created as sweep to identical dimensions

You won't really be able to do a sweep to the exact same shape as a pole, but you can make a sort of dome shape with the sweep.

The easiest way to see the difference is to turn on surface control points with Edit > Show pts.

For a sphere surface you can see that the surface control point grid has "poles" in it and how the control points compress together as they near that pole, like this:



On the other hand, if you create 2 crossing curves like so:



And then use sweep with one of them as the profile and the other as the rail to follow, it will build a type of dome surface like this:



And then if you select this surface and turn on its control points you can see that they are arranged in more of a regular grid pattern and the edges of the grid do not totally collapse down to a single point as a default sphere surface does:




If you want to avoid compression with Flow you'll need to use surfaces that are more like this in their structure - more evenly distributed and not having portions of the surface compress down to a point like a sphere does.

- Michael

michael

i have done few succesful tests using pattern on sphere.
my conclusion is:

if we assume that rectangular extent of the pattern is of 2:1 proportion, then shorter side is projected along equator and longer side is projected along meridian.
can we control this? i have tried rotating pattern and target and it does not seem to have any effect.

thanks for your professionalism and time

mario

>>>>The settings for that are under Options > View > Meshing parameters - try setting "Mesh angle" to 25 degrees and uncheck "Add detail to inflections" and see if your display speed gets a boost.<<<<<


LoL found the problem. The mesh angle was set to 1. instead of the standard 10.

Peace,
Rich_Art. ;-)

Hi Rich_Art,

> LoL found the problem. The mesh angle was set to 1.
> instead of the standard 10.

Yeah that would do it - the default 10 degrees will already generate pretty dense display meshes.

With an angle of 1 degree (that's a max of 1 degree angle between surface normals) it would be generating a really large quantity of teeny tiny little tiny polygons for the display mesh.

With it set back to the default you'll probably see reduced calculation time as well since it would take more time for generating those really dense display meshes, in addition to bogging down the display.

If you start to work with more complex models with a lot of pieces in them, it can help to set the mesh angle to something rougher like 25 degrees to reduce memory consumption of the display meshes.

- Michael

Hi Mario,

> if we assume that rectangular extent of the pattern is of 2:1
> proportion, then shorter side is projected along equator and
> longer side is projected along meridian.

Do you mean that the result is rotated 90 degrees from what you need?


> can we control this? i have tried rotating pattern and target
> and it does not seem to have any effect.

You can control it by manipulating the base plane - if for example the result is rotated by 90 degrees from what you want, that means that one of the surfaces has their U and V directions swapped from what you need.

So to fix that up you need to swap the U and V directions of your base plane - you can do that by rotating it around its diagonal by 180 degrees and then scaling it.

In the next v3 release that won't be necessary anymore since it will automatically swap or reverse any U V directions on the surfaces as necessary to align the corners nearest to which you pick on the surfaces.

But for now manipulating the base plane is how you control it. When you manipulate the base plane you leave the objects you are going to deform alone and just change the plane, don't rotate the whole set of both base plane and objects together - if you do that there will be no change since it's how the objects relate to the base plane that is controlling things.


Basically the way that Flow works is that for every point on the objects that are being deformed it finds the closest point dropped down on to the base plane. That produces a UV coordinate in the UV space of the plane, and an offset distance for how the point is above or below the plane. Then that same UV point is evaluated on the target surface, and the same offset distance is applied.

So basically Flow works by going from the UV space of one surface into the UV space of a different surface.

Every NURBS surface is made up of a rectangular grid of control points, and one direction of the grid is the U direction and the other is the V direction.

- Michael