Hi Michael,

I've noticed that MoI follows the lead of Rhino and doesn't provide any form of permanent construction guides (outside of those that can be kept on screen via the wonderful keep construction guides family of scripts). Is there a UX design philosophy behind this decision? This isn't a loaded question I'm just interested as to why the decision was made in the first place.

Back in the day when I was learning Rhino my tutor taught us to separate our curves into guide curves and construction curves. The equivalent to this thinking in MoI would be to create a Style/Layer for all of your guide curves separate to your construction curves style/layer.


This way of thinking about guides is alien to those in my team who've only ever used poly modelers seeing as curves are used in a very different manner in poly tools. So I'm also wondering if this workflow is unique to the world of Nurbs modelers per se and not just Rhino & MoI.

Cheers,

jm

Hi Jon, well in the past I've seen a lot of people complain about extra cleanup steps required for creating construction geometry. Having construction lines clear out at the end of commands solves that problem, you don't have to do any extra steps to eliminate the guides that you created for getting a particular strategic point pick.

Since you don't need to spend any extra effort to get rid of them it also kind of takes away any hesitation about putting them in. It just generally makes it easier for them to be used more frequently.


> This way of thinking about guides is alien to those in my team who've only ever used poly modelers
> seeing as curves are used in a very different manner in poly tools.

Frequently poly modeling is done without any regard at all to accuracy... I guess that's a big fundamental difference.

- Michael

With these scripts you can keep Helper Lines!
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#KeepCLine

>With these scripts you can keep Helper Lines!
>http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#KeepCLine

Indeed, as I mentioned in the first post, those were one of the first set of scripts I installed when I started testing MoI. Essential for the way I like to work.

My question was more regarding the specific UX design strategy behind Michaels decision not to implement permanent construction guides as a standard function. Most of the 3D design packages I've used over the years enable the user to implement some form of construction guides but seeing as both Rhino & MoI don't provide that functionality as standard I suspect there must be some kind of reasoning behind the decision. If I were to guess, it would be that the very nature of Nurbs modelling (fundamentally being about boolean operations and cutting elements away via trimming surfaces and such like) lessens the need for permanent construction guides. Whether a curve is drawn as a guide or as a base element to an e.g. trimming surface isn't really relevant but all those curves can be used as aids whilst modelling. That's my guess anyway but I'm probably way off the mark! :)

jm

In any case you can also draw anything as guidelines as you want with a special name, color...and hide/keep it as you want!

Only just seen you response Michael so my last message was in response to Pilou.

As I say my question was in no way a criticism to the way things are done in MoI but more a question regarding how that decision was made.

I think you may be a little (dare I say it) presumptuous about poly modelling workflows these days as render engines such as Maxwell & V-Ray can only produce the quality of renders that they do if everything in your scene is built to scale and in an accurate manner so CAD style accuracy has become essential in recent years. This is of course less important to the character modelers in gaming/FX but for ArchViz, accuracy is essential.

jm

>Having construction lines clear out at the end of commands solves that problem, you don't have to do any extra steps to eliminate the guides that you created for getting a >particular strategic point pick.

>Since you don't need to spend any extra effort to get rid of them it also kind of takes away any hesitation about putting them in. It just generally makes it easier for them to >be used more frequently.

Everything you state here makes complete sense to me and I'd agree that for many users this strategy of having constructions lines automatically clear after every command could make it easier for those users to make greater use of construction lines as they're a whole lot less hassle to manage. It's certainly one of the things that I've enjoyed about working with MoI. However architectural modelling is based on a lot of repeating design patterns (a simple example being the spacing of window openings on a wall) and in this case you need permanent construction guides to aid you when designing these aspects so it's great that there's a script available that enables the user to keep their guides after completing a command should they choose.

I think it will really benefit end users when you've been able to implement the scripts browser within MoI we've discussed previously so that access to this kind of script is made as simple as possible. I wouldn't suggest for a second that MoI should ship with all the scripts listed on Petr's page but a pick of the best and an ability for users to easily add new scripts to the library.

Hi Jon yes in the future I would like to figure out some way to have "sticking" construction lines in some built in way.

Mainly it's intended that if you need persistent construction geometry you would just draw whatever regular lines, circles, planes, etc... and just name them or assign them a particular style to keep them separated somehow from your regular objects.

- Michael

Hi Jon,

> This is of course less important to the character modelers in gaming/FX but
> for ArchViz, accuracy is essential.

Yeah sorry I was over generalizing the term "poly modeling" and referring more to sub-d modeling for character animation / movie effects type stuff.

Certainly ArchViz is a different area. A lot of people that I've known in the past doing ArchViz actually do come from a long ago drafting / 2D CAD type background though too, instead of only being familiar with poly modeling only...

Often times poly modeling tools themselves are heavily oriented around character animation / fx type stuff as well. Now I seem to remember you mentioning Form-Z - that's a rather unique poly modeling case that has a lot of architectural background in it.

- Michael

>Yeah sorry I was over generalizing the term "poly modeling" and referring more to sub-d modeling for character animation / movie effects type stuff.

No problem at all.

The lines are getting blurred these days. Some architects are using sculpting tools like Mudbox & Hollywood VFX houses are using the likes of Revit to create virtual set designs so it's role reversal time in so many cases. One of the few good things that has come out of Autodesk's Pacman like tendency to gobble up any product it sees as a potential threat, is that practitioners in design business are being exposed to a wider choice of tools and this has had the end effect of making some of the more adventurous firms more agnostic in their choice of tools. Visualisation businesses used only need to worry about translating CAD files ready for texturing, rendering & animation in the likes of Max & C4D but now we're using gaming engines such as Unity 3D to create interactive walkthroughs or having to ensure the models we create for rendering workflows are also shipshape for prototyping via 3D printing technologies. IMHO the better studios out there need a mix of 3D design specialists and more free thinking generalists if they're going to be able to deliver on ever more ambitious client demands. This is one of the reasons that I've been looking at the likes of MoI/Rhino as an extra toolset for my team. Nurbs tools enable us to deliver on certain design briefs with much greater efficiency. They also make a designer think differently about the challenges of the brief, which can only be a good thing.

Thanks again for taking the time to explain some of your thinking behind the way MoI functions, it's greatly appreciated.

jm