Before watch this I suggest you to check this: http://moi3d.com/forum/messages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6034.1

Hallo,
In this video I'll show you the power of LOFT.
Loft is more powerful than Extrude, Sweep, Network, Revolve and Rail Revolve.
And can replace all of them, watch my video to see how it can be.

all LOFT operation was made with this settings - LOOSE, EXACT






After watching this video you will understand why I suggest this for future versions of MOI:

Michael, I suggest to Remove Extrude, Revolve, Rail Revolve. All that commands can be replaced by LOFT.

Planar and network I suggest to merge in one command - "Caps". With my method the only function of network remain and it is making "Caps".

Sweep, I suggest to leave only for tubes and name it Tubes or Pipes. Remove - two rails sweep and scaling rail. All that can be replaced by my method.

I suggest to remove Normal style in loft, after my method it will stay useless.

May be you say that a lot of people get used to Extrude, Sweep, Network, Revolve and Rail Revolve. But the main aim of MOI is to be as simple as possible.
So why we have to have 5 commands if we can have only 1 that is more powerful than all of them...

It will be good to make this transition smooth to this concept of workflow to not disappoint people)


Also, not very clear but just thoughts...

I suggest to change a bit main workflow in MOI.
Having this method with loft that allow to make a lot of shapes we can simplify MOI UI.
First make Loft the main command in menu like push/pull in sketch up or Space claim. Make it big icon in menu.

Some more ideas, not clear but good to start.
1. For example, if we have one curve and click on it with ALT it will copy and automatically creates surface between these two curves with loft and it creates new style and assign it. JUST click+alt and we have new shape!!!
2. If we have 2 curves connected with loft A-B, and click on first with alt it will create third curve - C and Moi connect it this way A-C-B.
3. Also if we have A-B and click on B with alt it creates C like this A-B-C.

Michael I don' know if it is possible, but just made some brain-storm))

Hi Andrei, I'm glad that you like Loft so much, it's a great fit for the types of models that you are showing here!

I don't think it would be helpful to get rid of other tools like Extrude or Revolve though - for different kinds of blocky or totally even rounded shapes those tools allow you to get precise results with a smaller number of curves. Being able to build models with a small number of curves is basically the cornerstone of NURBS modeling.

For example Extrude not only requires fewer curves but also knows how to make internal shapes into holes in the extruded result. So with one tool you can take a set of curves like this:



And then with just one single step produce this result here:




Doing this with only Loft alone would require a lot more work!

There are a whole lot of mechanical type models that are well suited for doing with extrude like this, I think it would be a big step backwards for those types of models to eliminate extrude...

There are many different types of models and certain kinds of model structures are easier and quicker to build with an extrude or a revolve.

- Michael

Yes I agree but,
You can use loft and then Boolean all that holes and text, same time to make)

Is it rational to keep this command only for this when it can be easy replaced?

About revolve, making all curves, to LOFT by copying them and modify can make very precise result and time is practical the same as draw curve to revolve. But give you much more options to modify shape... Much more)

Hi Andrei,

> Yes I agree but, you can use loft and then Boolean all that holes and text, same time to make)

It's more steps, that means it takes more time to create it...


> Is it rational to keep this command only for this when it can be easy replaced?

Yes, because this kind of shape that I show above is extremely frequently used in mechanical models.

- Michael

Hi Andrei,

> About revolve, making all curves, to LOFT by copying them and modify can make very precise result
> and time is practical the same as draw curve to revolve. But give you much more options to
> modify shape... Much more)

Again, it's not the same amount of time - you have to duplicate curves and that's an extra step - that is a longer time.

The other problem is that you will be losing accuracy at the same time. A revolve is a 100% precise rotated shape generated from just one profile curve.

A loft through many sections will not have an exact circular shape in the loft direction as a revolve has.

If you don't care about accuracy then that's ok for your particular case, but it's not ok for other people's use of CAD to only have some kind of arbitrary organic shapes instead of precise objects....

A lot of the things that you are describing would just generally fit better in something like a sub-d modeling program where there is more focus on making organic squishy shapes and not much focus on precision.

- Michael

Circle curves (that was made from circle) that was used to make loft (loose, exact) will not give perfectly round surface?

Good Michael just wanted to share my thoughts, to make Moi simpler and better..

Cool explorations of possibilities of Loft!

Hi Andrei,

> Circle curves (that was made from circle) that was used to make loft (loose, exact)
> will not give perfectly round surface?

I was thinking you were talking about doing a "loft revolve" something like this:




But I guess you're talking about something more like this:



That way with circles does give you a perfectly round circular shape, but the problem is that you lose the exact control of the profile which Revolve gives you.

Here's a simple example - note how the profile curve has an arc piece in it, and in the revolved result that revolved arc will produce a 100% exact sphere fragment:





This basic shape would be difficult to make exactly if you tried to do it by placing a whole bunch of vertically stacked circle slices in exactly the right spots to try and make an exact sphere shape when they were lofted together.

Hope this gives some more information on why it's not really possible to just throw out revolve and just always use Loft for every kind of case instead. There are a lot of basic mechanical shapes where Extrude or Revolve are just better tools for generating them than Loft.

- Michael

Sorry for my English :)

Michael, do not remove all of the tools and leave only the loft. Yes, the loft is a good tool, but it is not always necessary, and process modeling using it becomes slow.

Each tool is designed for its purpose, as already said, Michael, and keep one tool to using it to solve all problems and slow down the simulation rather silly.

***

The original text is in Russian.

Извините за мой английский :)

Майкл, не надо удалять все инструменты и оставлять только лофт. Да, лофт хороший инструмент, но он не всегда нужен, да и процесс моделирования с помощью него становится медленным.

Каждый инструмент предназначен для своей цели, как уже и говорил Майкл, и оставлять один инструмент, чтобы с помощью него решать все задачи и замедлять время моделирования довольно глупо.

Yes Michael, I mean second variant.
And this little video I made, to show how it works.
Revolve may be faster, but it is very limited versus LOFT.






Some times Michael I think that you personally don like Sub-D, or T-Splines or any kind of organic shapes. Because you always tell to people to use only simple command like extrude or fillete or revolve.
But you never can make complex shapes with this limited tools)
And when people ask you how to make some kind of organic form you often say - "you better use Sub-D" you tell me this a lot of times))). Telling this I think you loose some users that make some organic stuff.
MOI have great potential for doing organic shapes as I shown in my tutorials)

And another great example of using LOFT.

Hi Andrei - MoI is just primarily focused on making it possible for people to do simple shapes quickly and easily. Lumpy bumpy organic forms are not simple shapes and require a lot more skill and just general 3D spatial awareness to model. Those types of shapes are a priority for sub-d modeling programs so they have all kinds of features aimed at them. Since they are not a priority for MoI and they are a priority for sub-d modeling programs, that's one reason why I often recommend using sub-d modeling for doing organic work.

> Revolve may be a bit faster, but it is very limited versus LOFT.

Your own video seems to prove that revolve is tremendously faster - after the profile curve is drawn doing a revolve takes like 2 seconds. I timed your loft method and you took 3 minutes and 20 seconds to do it, that's 100 times longer! I don't see how you would reasonably describe that as only a minor difference...

Also beyond the speed problem there is also an accuracy problem - your method does not produce an exact sphere shape in the top area, while revolve makes a 100% precise sphere there. Yours is just sort of eyeballed to some approximate shape of a sphere.

There are so many many more steps with the loft method versus revolve for that shape that it takes a substantially higher amount of general skill and familiarity with MoI in order to do your method - if that was the only method available for producing that shape it would mean a lot of people just simply could not create that shape at all, they would have to become an advanced user of MoI just to be able to do that simple shape! MoI is all about trying to make it easier for people to do shapes like that, not needing to be an expert in order to do simple shapes.


re: Extrude - there are all kinds of other situations in addition to interior cavities where extrude saves time, like when you want to extrude on both sides, you just check the option "Both sides" on extrude to do that. If you want to make a tapered extrusion with a 10 degree slant on the side walls, the "Tapered" option makes it easy to produce that. If you have multiple separate shapes that you want to extrude you can select them all and extrude them all in one operation... It's just better at building blocky extruded shapes than loft because it's specifically focused on doing that.


Your own revolve example really clearly shows why it's not possible to just get rid of Revolve. For a lot of construction uses, it's not really of importance to be able to squish the shape into some kind of formless blob after you have created it. I understand that's important to you in particular, and for your use then that's great that you have Loft available with this technique to use for making stuff like that. Someone who wants to make an accurately formed sphere shape would not benefit from your technique though, it would be worse for that kind of a user if they only had Loft available and not Revolve. By having both Loft and Revolve both available it helps both you and other kinds of users as well.

That's one thing to try and keep in mind - other people use MoI for much different purposes than what you are using it for, including doing physical construction of models that must be accurate. Part of the overall focus of MoI is on being able to do things accurately. Again sub-d modeling has a much different focus, more on organic squishability and not really any accuracy at all. That's why I keep on mentioning sub-d modeling to you, since you are putting a high value on making squishable organic shapes, that particular goal aligns very well with what sub-d modeling is pretty much entirely focused on. NURBS modeling is generally more focused on precision as a high priority instead.

- Michael

Yes you are right, I think it's because I'm more concept artist less Cad engineer)
I have an idea on new version of MOI for CG artists I wrote you private message.

Hi Andrei, I sent you back a reply - in order to keep the development of MoI more streamlined it works better for me to focus on just one single version rather than trying to juggle different versions with some features removed or changed between them.

Also again many sub-d modeling programs are already focused on that same area of doing organic modeling for CG artists... When I started MoI I made a conscious effort to try and bring some aspects of the CAD toolset to be available for artists and not so much focused on doing what other tools already were handling.

I still don't really understand why you don't like sub-d modeling, it's very squishable and makes blobby forms well like you are focused on doing with loft...

- Michael

Because nurbs is much more clear for me and have great functionality. I do not need to make a lot of extra work to make simple hole, or to make square outgrowth on organic shape. And there are a lot of other nuances that you will find modeling in these two methods. I have experience in sub-d and always come to nurbs.

Michael:-I still don't really understand why you don't like sub-d modeling, it's very squishable and makes blobby forms well like you are focused on doing with loft...-

agree with Michael...it's also strange,Andrei,you don't use T-SPLINES (if i understand correctely,you own Rhino+Tsplines )..??

If you insist to loft everything in Moi,you should ask to Michael to implement "close loft to point" like in Rhino....could be a useful option to speed-up workflow

Yes I had trial versions of them Rhino still use to learn some workflows.
I'm not insist just wanted to show my ideas, and let you and Michael to decide is it good or not)
Could you tell more what "close loft to point" make?
And personally I like more my method than T-Spline...)

Thanks God we are still free to share our opinions here...no problem Andrei..go ahead !

-Could you tell more what "close loft to point" make?-
Well..there are lot of Rhino users here and,don't forget,the person that have created it...let to them to describe that function
anyway try to do a loft in Rhino and see his pop-up options