Hi Graham,

> What im wondering about is, What kind of detail could i do, like say if i
> want too carve hair into an animal or feathers and such, how can this be done.

MoI probably isn't going to be a good tool to do that type of fine bumpy type details.

You'll probably get better results for that type of stuff with a program that is designed specifically for relief type work, I think ArtCAM is more specialized in that type of area, so you might want to check that program out.

Earlier you also mentioned Silo - That would be another good choice for small organic type details like this. Its toolset is more designed for sculpting and handling small little lumps and bumpy details.

As you've seen, MoI has a different approach - MoI is more oriented towards creating larger sort of more broader curved pieces sort in a drawing or sketching type style. Its toolset allows for really quick creation of these types of objects, but isn't really as well suited for teeny tiny bumpy details like you might find on a model of a human head for example.

Different programs tend to have strengths in different areas.

- Michael

Hi Graham,


Michael is right about ArtCAM being better for organic reliefs. In the image of the girl on the coin,
ArtCAM did a "relief from bitmap" which I had to clean up and sculpt to match the drawing.


But, for really simple 2.5d designs that don't require much of an organic look,
if you just wanted to mill some grooves that would suggest the look of hair
or feathers, some CAM programs have an option to do a
"centerline engraving" or V-carving on a 3d surface, using a vector line.

As you can see, I brought the same image into MoI and traced over some lines.
I probably could have done a better job if I had done my feather this way..:-)

In the CAM program, you would enter in the depth of the cut . The width of the tool
determines how wide the cut is, so you could do a few tool changes to vary the width.

You can draw the feathers or hair with MoI's freeform sketch curve, keeping the lines
spaced adequately, being mindful of the width of the tool and the overall proportions
of your design. MoI exports an IGES file that can be converted to a DXF in another program.
I'm not sure which one would be best. I think CorelDraw does it, but from what
I can remember, it breaks up the lines pretty badly.


Jesse

Hi Jesse - Do you know if there are any other CAM programs out there that also handle relief work like this, or is ArtCAM pretty much the main one for that?

- Michael

HI Michael, RDK, Thanks for the reply, Artcam hmmmmm maybe if i morgage the house and sell the kids lol. I know mastercad/cam has a puffing tool that will work in detail like that but its even more expensive than art cam. I guess right now its not that important. But what if i drew some lines to repersent hair and extruded as a minus and just use a vbit to carve them, I havent done any files as yet to try plus im still finishing my cnc machine. I have a whole seller who is waiting to see some files before I start on any finished product so i better get some done hey. Thanks again. Graham

Hey every one, well this is cool, I can open a file from MOI into silo, So now i can do the big stuff in moi and do the small detail in silo, I like moi for my main modeler as its way easier and faster.Things are getting better. Oh i saved a file from moi as a obj so if anybody needs to know there ya go. Graham

Hi Michael,

ArtCAM seems to be the most popular one in the US.
I've never used any other relief modelers but I'm aware of
Cimagrafi , Stenza and Type3 There are probably several
others..

I don't think of it in the same category, but there's RhinoArt, a plugin to
Rhino and also Matrix, (a jewelry design program with Rhino as it's engine),
which has an "Art" module. The thing I've encountered with surface modelers
and making textured surfaces, is that the meshes rapidly grow in
size as detail increases.

A friend of mine sent me a intricately textured model to mill that he had
created with C4D and Rhino.. it was a nice model, but it was too big for me to do
anything with it in Rhino. (He bought himself a PC with a dual processor and 4
MB of memory to handle those big files).

The same model that was 124 MB as an STL, slimmed down to less
than 5 MB when I imported and converted it to a relief in ArtCAM.
What's up with that? I guess some file formats are more efficient for highly detailed surfaces.

-Jesse

Hello Graham,
Does Silo allow you to import back the re-touched file to MOI?

Thanks,
Rudy

Hi everybody,hey rudy,sorry i didnt get back to you about sending a file back to moi from silo, at the moment i cant seem to do that but im sure there is a way.
jdk, I did check out artcam. awsome software, im getting a demo but wont be able to afford it for a while.
Hi Michael, Ive been trying to do a project here but having troubles, Every time i go and do a boolean my sweep disapears, I have an attachment to show what happens. Maybe you or some one can show me what im doing wrong. Thanks, Graham

Hi Graham, it's not clear to me which parts you're trying to boolean together.

Are you trying to cut the upright wavy "Q" walls with a curve?

If you're trying to divide it in half by a line, you may need to move the line up in Z away from the middle of the shape. That's because a straight line right in the middle of the shape kind of has 2 directions that it can possibly cut the shape in. If you move it a little distance away from the shape, it will clear up which direction the cut should go.

But I'm not sure if that is what you are trying to do there.

- Michael

HI michael, What im trying to do is the sweep extrude then boolean but when ita done the sweep part disapears, Im doing the q first then the rest as i go piece by piece by piece. I hope thats the right way to do it. Thanks for your help. Graham

Hi Graham, ok now I understand.

Your problem here is your extrude is not a solid, it only has the side walls on it. You need it to be a fully enclosed solid with caps closing off the bottom and top.

Normally you would get caps put on automatically (unless you turn it off by unchecking the button for it), but that can only happen if the curves you are extruding form a fully closed loop.

In this case you've got a slight opening on both the outside and inside outlines at these spots:





See how the ends don't line up with each other on the zoomed-in view? You need to fix up those ends so that they touch each other, either by trimming or by using Edit/Show pts and moving the end points around. There are 2 spots like this to fix up.

Once you do that, you will be able to select both the inside and outside curves, and then do an extrude, and it will generate a solid that has sealed caps on the top and bottom - that's what you want.

In this case you can also skip the sweep step, because your sweep in this case is made up of 2 lines which will make a plane - the extrude with a fully closed outline will already make a plane at the top. You only really need to do the sweep step if you want a more textured or curved piece on the top instead of a flat plane.

Let me know if you have any problems with making this next step work!

- Michael

Thank you so much Michael. Sorry im such a pain in the butt. I got the Q to extrude but I can not get the center to clear . Sorry again for being a pain but once I figure this all out im sure ill go crazy with creating designs and such. Thank you Graham

Hi Graham, don't worry you're not being a pain, you're just learning how to use the software! Helping people with problem areas tends to help me understand what things need to be improved in future versions to make things easier.

In this case you've still got a mis-matched endpoint problem on the inside loop. Check out the image from my previous message again - there are actually 2 areas that needed to be tuned up, the second area is also circled in red sort of in the lower right-hand area.

Your new model has fixed the first problem in the outer loop, but not the equivalent second problem in the inner loop. Once you fix the endpoints of the inner loop to align, then you can extrude everything and get the clear inside like you want. Let me know if you still have problems with this and I will give you some clearer steps.

By the way, your illustration in the center looks nice and clear, it will be cool to see this finished!

- Michael

Hi every one, I was wondering if some one could look at my try at sweep,extrude, boolean. I took a close look at every thing and there dosnt seem to be a problem yet it wont work. What ive been doing is opening moi , did my 2d drawing then took it apart and would do piece by piece in a nother mooi window, dont know if thats how every one eles does it. If you know a better way please tell me thanks. attachment q3.3dm is where im at, slowly but surely ill get there.graham

Hi Graham, the main part that you're missing there is that when you do the extrude, you need the curves that you are extruding to form a closed loop so that it will create a fully formed solid with a cap on top.

The example I gave before used one single larger closed outer loop and then divided the result into smaller pieces. That's kind of convenient if possible, but sometimes you may want to form smaller closed loops in areas where one larger outer loop is not so immediately apparent.

But the main thing is the curves that you extrude should be a closed loop.

Here are some step by step details on how to proceed on one portion of your curves.

Let's focus on this region outlined in red:



I've selected a couple of the curves that bound this region - the problem is that the curves are too long, you need to slice up these curves so that you can pick a set of curves that only outline just this region and not a longer part.

You can slice up a curve by using Edit / Trim. So in this case, select the 2 curves shown above, and then run Edit / Trim. MoI will show a prompt in the upper-right corner of the screen that says "Select cutting objects". Select the upper line of the region and push "Done". Next MoI will show the sliced up results and the prompt says "Select pieces to remove or push Done to keep all". In this case we want to keep all pieces, so just push done again. The result is that those 2 longer curves have been cut at the intersection point with the other one, so now you have smaller pieces that can be selected like this:



and then extruded, and since this is a closed loop the extrusion will get created as a fully closed solid with end caps in place. This is the key thing - extrusion of a bunch of curves that don't touch each other end to end will not create a solid, it will create only the surface side walls. Sometimes that is useful, but booleans are easier to understand and more predictable when you do them on a solid object rather than on a non-closed surface object. So I'd recommend that you only extrude closed loops so you can work with solids.

Then you would repeat this trimming process on your other various curves, dicing things up so that you can create closed regions and extrude those one by one.

Let me know if you need more details!

- Michael

Hi Michael,

have a look at www.vectric.com