> Okay, I have figured out how to extract a curve: select the underlying curve and copy.

Yup, that's the basic extract technique.

Another way to make a quick duplicate is to select the edge and then hold down control and drag off a copy of it. But Copy + Paste can be good since it completely preserves the location of the object.


> Anyway, this is my preliminary sketch of my moise. ;-)

It's looking pretty nice!


> I hope you'll welcome more suggestions. I've got plenty.

Certainly! That's how things improve! :) Of course some things may take a while before they can be implemented...

- Michael

> The rail revolve is probably the appropriate tool at this point for this type
> of shape, then tweak the control points to get the desired contour.

Yeah, at the moment this seems like the best way for this particular shape. But I definitely want to make this work better through a curve construction technique as well instead of relying on surface point tweaking. Network surface is probably the one, but I'm also pretty interested in fixing up Sweep so that it would work better for this.

Actually, Network surface will only really be better for doing the full object but for doing the half object network surface will have some similar problems as sweep in that there will still be some cross-sectional rotation especially in the last sections where things come together to a point.

Running through this has given me an idea to try for sweep, which is to see if all the profiles are on parallel planes, and if they are then create each in-between new cross-section on that same plane. This would eliminate rotation of the profiles and should result in something that can be cleanly mirrored.

It is nice if it is possible to model a clean half of a model, it is sort of less hassle to tweak the shaping by editing a half a curve instead of worrying about editing a symmetrical curve and keeping it symmetrical.



> Also, is there a way to flatten curves in one op?

One way is to turn on points for the curve, select all the points and use Transform/Align - then pick your alignment location in the front or side view with horizontal alignment.

At some point I would like to add a one step project function that didn't make you turn on points, but I haven't quite figured out where to place that in the UI, like whether it should go in some sub-function of align or have to be its own separate tool.

- Michael

> ...and what about third method for sweeping as described here?

Hi Petr, yup, this is yet another thing on the list that I have been wanting to add. It seems like it should be a pretty good way to add additional control over the sweep shaping.

I think it is not too hard to add, I'll see...

- Michael

> Tricky indeed and show the power of the function rail Revolve! + Editing move points :)

Sometimes when you see that things are arranged to have poles, that can be kind of a clue that rail revolve might work well as a base surface...

The nice thing about rail revolve is that the surface it generates inherits the exact same control point structure as the curves that are used. This is a lot different than some other functions like sweep for example, which go through a type of fitting process that generates a lot of extra points.

So the results of sweep are not very friendly to manipulate with surface points, because each surface point that you move only changes a small region of the surface - this makes it hard to move the points around without causing bumps and lumps.

When you have a smaller number of surface points like rail revolve generates, that makes it easier to tweak them and not get lumps.

In this case one part that I didn't mention is that I added one control point to the profile curve so that the surface would have a good point to edit in one of the wider areas - the original curve was actually too sparse and it wasn't easy to tweak the surface to conform to the profile without having one more point in there.

Every once in a while it can work to switch your perception of what is a profile and what is a rail, like in this case for rail revolve it involved a reversal of thinking more of profiles in a radial sense around the poles, rather than profiles moving along slices of the object.

- Michael

The funny thing is that with simple function + astuteness (adding control points...) some situations can be yet resolved :)

One more thing. As shown on the images below, all those edges in yellow are the result of trimming using cutting edges (lines/curves). Those lines are supposed to have small gaps. Is it possible to add another trimming option where you could specify a gap as well as the extent of it, instead of drawing two offset lines first? Just wondering. If not, forget about it.

> Is it possible to add another trimming option where you could specify
> a gap as well as the extent of it, instead of drawing two offset lines
> first? Just wondering. If not, forget about it.

Unfortunately it would be really difficult to make this work well, especially in corner areas where two of your trimming lines come to a sharp corner, and also in junctures where there are several of them coming out from one point.

So I don't think it will be possible to do this anytime soon. Maybe some day...

- Michael

Thanks, Michael. Good thing is there are enough tools to achieve the desired result. I was also thinking of an auto kind of trimming when it comes to lines/curves to be used in bool/trim ops. Two intersecting lines, for example, offsetted on both sides, then the original lines disappears as well as unwanted lines such as those inside the intersection. I think Moi should have some kind of an embedded programming tool like Autolisp or something so that users can participate in adding some little tiny functionality even if only when it comes to 2d shapes.

Anyways, this is still a draft. As they say a journey begins with one step. It's not necessary for me to render it lifelike. What's important is knowing that the tools are there to achieve the bigger magical picture.

Added to the special thread gallerry :)

> I think Moi should have some kind of an embedded programming tool like
> Autolisp or something so that users can participate in adding some little tiny
> functionality even if only when it comes to 2d shapes.

MoI uses JavaScript as this kind of embedded programming language. It's actually used quite extensively to control how each command works (when to hide and show controls, etc..) - the script file for each command is inside the \commands subdirectory.

But it takes a lot of effort to document how to use MoI in combination with a programming language. The documentation and support work far outweighs just having the embedded language capability. I don't expect to have enough time to do proper documentation of this type of scripting for the V1 release of MoI, but it is something that I would like to focus on more in future versions.

- Michael

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong...I did this before and still can't figure it out! I checked Enable HTML,
when I look at the preview it's OK, so I hit Apply and the spellchecker comes on.
I cancel the spell shecker and hit OK, but the image does not appear.

Jesse

You must when Edit your post
"Enabled with auto-line-breaks"
erase the special caracteres around your image address and all will works fine !
I had same problem before :)

Yeah, it is possible it converted your angle brackets into plain text angle brackets at one point.

That would look something like this: <img where the brackets around your image have been replaced with an escape code for showing a less-than or greater-than bracket.

If that happens, you've got to go in there and remove those escape codes and put just a < or > character.

-Michael

Modeled in MoI, rendered in Flamingo.

-Jesse

> You may be be able to buy Adobe someday, hehe. And Corel. Or Newtek. ;-)

:) :) Well, I think I'll be pretty happy if I can just manage to survive as my own small business...

- Michael

Don't dream : google will buy all softs for put them on Google Earth :D

Ok, one thing I've been working on for the last day or so is a new "Tangent preserving sweep" mechanism.

This is a special mode for sweep which can kick in if you have all planar profiles, and all profiles share a common tangent direction. In this case the sweep is done in a different way such that the resulting surface maintains the common tangent direction of the profiles.

In a normal sweep the profiles get disturbed due to their rotation as they slide along the rails, if the rails are not symmetrical mirror images of one another.

Here is an image to show the results - these are half surfaces mirrored over with the center edge hidden. The standard sweep is on the left, the new Tangent preserving sweep on the right.



Surface quality seems amazingly good, except for a small subtle bump right near the pole, I'm going to see if I can do something about that.

I was also thinking of calling this a "mouse buttocks removal" sweep... :)

- Michael

This will be a great addition, thanks. I would also like to toss in a vote for the 3-rail sweep method Tyglik posted an image of. I find that the more profile shapes I add to my sweep the chances increase that I will end up up with what looks like a "wrinkle" appearing between profiles after the sweep is completed. Also, I generally have to draw the third rail anyway as a guide to create my profiles, so it would save a lot of time to just be able to use it in the sweep.