Hi Michael, first let me thank for this fantastic software.
Let me tell you that i'm not an expert 3d modeler. Just an architect trying to find the best application that can fit our needs. I run a small pratice - 30 people - and we always have used Archicad (a BIM software), and lately Sketchup, to produce our projects and models.
We are also starting with Rhino, and a few years ago, we have used formZ, but not successfully.
Saying this, our goal is to find the tool(s) to develop architectural forms. None of us us is very focused on software research, not to mention the skills to write scripts and so on...
We bought Moi 3D and it has been a fantastic surprise: the learning curve, the ease of use and the intuitive interface are really interesting. Not to mention the results...
That means - the ease of use and the obtained results - that with a few added details, Moi 3d can be the perfect architectural software, combined with production tools like Autocad, Archicad and so on.
The major problem can be the complexity of architectural models. We deal with a lot of information, many different (ou repetitive) pieces like façade modules, stairs, windows, doors, partitions... just to mention a few.
So, I wonder if it would be possible to implement features like those I list after:
- Layers and layer combinations - we would prefer (and we need) to use Moi 3d Styles to assign materials (and we currently use a lot of in each project). So, we cannot use Styles as a substitute for layers.
Layer combination is also very useful when dealing with a lot of information.
- Blocks - behaving like Archicad Objects or Sketchup Components. That means something that we could modify the source piece and instantanely have all the twin pieces changed.
- Terrain tool.
- Import and export options for production software (we need to import the layout drawings and after to export the models result to "package" everything in therms of technical drawings).

Hi Soalheiro, I'm glad that MoI has been useful for you!


> - Layers and layer combinations - we would prefer (and we need) to use Moi 3d Styles to
> assign materials (and we currently use a lot of in each project). So, we cannot use Styles
> as a substitute for layers.

Hmmm, well it is intended in MoI that styles are the closest thing that matches to traditional AutoCAD style "layers", so it's somewhat problematic that you don't want to use them in that way.

How do you set up materials in your other systems, is it not done by layer assignment there at all?

In MoI you can use object names as an additional way to organize things separately from Styles though, maybe that would work for you. Assign an object a name by clicking on the top line in the object properties panel, then that name will appear in the "Objects" section of the scene browser, and all objects assigned that name can be hidden/locked/selected as a set in the scene browser that way.

In the future I want to add an additional grouping mechanism which should then give another way of organizing things too.


> - Blocks - behaving like Archicad Objects or Sketchup Components. That means something that we
> could modify the source piece and instantanely have all the twin pieces changed.

Yeah this is definitely something I want to add in to MoI, it will probably happen in the MoI v4 timeframe.


> - Terrain tool.

This one has some difficulties since Terrain is often represented by polygon geometry made up of triangular faces, which is a fairly different kind of geometry than what MoI is currently focused on working with.


> - Import and export options for production software (we need to import the
> layout drawings and after to export the models result to "package" everything
> in therms of technical drawings).

I'm sorry this one is not clear to me, could you maybe describe it in a bit more detail?


Thanks,
- Michael

Hi Solheiro

I'm not sure I can contribute much here though I have had many years of experience (I started using AutoCad in 1982 and stopped using it about 8 years ago).

For the last number of years I mostly use Rhino.

Over time I have always worked relatively small (12 Cad stations at the most) and for nearly 20 years have a small town rural practice ... working alone and I love it.

Now I use MoI as my primary design and modeling tool. It is wonderful to work with, fast, intuitive and versatile.

I do use it in tandem with Rhino as a drafting tool and my primary rendering device. I set up basic drawing sheets in Rhino with all layers and materials assigned. Then I open this file into MoI and work with styles as though they were layers. When most of the design work is completed I then 'import' the contents of the MoI file back into a copy of the original Rhino setup sheet. This preserves all the original layer characteristics and material assignments. [If I save the MoI file and then open it in Rhino without the import step ... then the materials are lost as far as Rhino is concerned].

It would be nice if blocks worked in MoI but not yet. It would be nice if MoI had dimensions ... but not yet and it would be nice if I could do renderings with a plug-in.

But as a design tool MoI is the best one I have used, bar none. (I beta tested early SketchUp years ago .. it is a good tool and well advanced but for me it always felt awkward even the newest iterations don't feel comfortable as a working tool ... each of us approaches the world differently).

As an aside ... Octane Render is very promising either as a stand alone (MoI drawings import into it very well) or as or plug in for Rhino rendering tool. The price is currently low as it is still in development ... but it is fast and high quality.

When you do some finished work with MoI please post some samples.

Cheers,
eric

"> - Blocks - behaving like Archicad Objects or Sketchup Components. That means something that we
> could modify the source piece and instantanely have all the twin pieces changed.

Yeah this is definitely something I want to add in to MoI, it will probably happen in the MoI v4 timeframe."

that would be a feature that would save a lot of time, not only for architects but for every kind of work. Looking forward to use that. Thank you

Michael, thanks for your nice words (I know that I'm not a 3d expert, at all!).
My concern, as an architect, is just to find the best tools for our team to work
> - How do you set up materials in your other systems, is it not done by layer assignment there at all?
Let me try to explain this to you: other softwares have "materials" and "layers". So, you can have doors, windows or columns in wood (and you assign the material wood), or in steel, or in aluminum, and so on. You just have to choose the material for each one, and that is independent of the layer (block A, 2nd floor, space "B"...). If we don't have "materials" and "layers", you need to have a Style "block A_ door_wood", another one "block A_door_aluminium", another "block A_ door_steel", and "block B_ door_wood", and so on, and so on.
This means that you must multiply the number of construction elements or blocks by the materials. I know that for a product designer that's not an issue, but for architects, dealing with so many elements...
In Archicad, Rhino and Sketchup we can work that way, with materials and layers (even if we need, at the end, to translate materials to layers when exporting to a rendering software like 3D Studio.
But I really believe that Moi 3d is a fantastic tool for architects... With some improvements.
Thank you again.

Hi Soalheiro,

> Let me try to explain this to you: other softwares have "materials" and "layers".

Well, not quite exactly - in Rhino for example layers themselves have a render material assigned to it and by default it's that layer's own material that is used when rendering. So by default that works the same as MoI's styles where the materials are defined by layer assignment.

The difference is that in Rhino there is also an additional switch that you can set on individual objects to say whether the object has materials assigned by layer (the default which then operates the same as MoI), or by a separate setting. But this kind of per-object override makes for a fairly complex system, and it's easy for it to lead to confusion in various ways, like for example if you receive a Rhino file from someone that has all the materials defined using that override so each object's material is separately assigned from the layer, then when you edit the layer's own material it has absolutely no visible effect on things and that can be quite confusing if you were not very closely involved with the development of the file yourself.

In MoI I've been hoping so far to avoid those kinds of potentially confusing situations by keeping things simple and not having a sort of parallel material system to the layer system with individual override settings also thrown in as well.

Maybe in the future I will revisit that and see about adding in per-object overrides but I'm pretty sure that it would be better to work on some other organization mechanisms like hierarchical groups first to see if those used in parallel with styles will provide the kind of additional organization tools that you would need rather than some kind of parallel layers/materials/individual object override type system.

- Michael

Hi Michael ...

Your last post referred to materials being assigned to styles in MoI. I am assuming that you mean display colors ???

So far as I know at this point one cannot assign external textures (like a .jpg file) to a 'style' ... am I correct about this?

I have another question or two about this coming soon but I want to think about how to explain the clearly first. They have to do with MoI / Rhino compatibility about 'materials'.

cheers,
eric

Hi Eric,
Thanks for your contribution. It will help me a lot.
I've only started to use Moi in my (our) last projects, but always in conjunction with other software - Archicad, Sketchup, Rhino - so, it's difficult to show a good example of what we've been doing just with Moi.
Our primary drawing tool is Archicad (it's so easy to draw and change walls, doors, windows, have associative dimensioning and areas...). After, we can use Rhino, or Shetchup, and recently Moi (mostly the 3 together, depending of the parts and their complexity) to build up the model. After, we export everything to 3d Studio. This at Schematic Design stage. For Detail Design, we build up a complete BIM model in Archicad (it's useless and very time consuming to start the conceptual stages with a BIM software).
Take a look to our web page - www.opera-projects.com/ing - and you can have my contact: jose.soalheiro@opera-projects.com
I really would like to see what have you achieved with Moi - most of the examples posted at this forum are vehicles, mechanical pieces and product design. Almost never a building. That's why I've been wondering how could it be used in architecture.

Cheers

José Soalheiro

Hi eric,

> Your last post referred to materials being assigned to styles in MoI. I am
> assuming that you mean display colors ???

Yup, that, but also how the materials list is generated when you export to a rendering format like OBJ format.

When you export to OBJ format the styles list becomes a materials list in the OBJ file, and the style assignments become material assignments.


> So far as I know at this point one cannot assign external textures (like a .jpg file) to a
> 'style' ... am I correct about this?

Yeah you can't do it directly inside of MoI itself, you need to edit the material definition inside your rendering program to change the material from a basic solid color to instead have a texture.

- Michael

Hi José, here are a couple of results that eric has previously posted here on the forum:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6384.1

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4662.1

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2251.1

Hope you don't mind me posting them eric!

- Michael

Also another one from eric here:
http://moi3d.com/gallery/viewitem.php?id=166

- Michael

Thanks Michael,
Very useful examples.
As soon as I can isolate some material developed in Moi, I'll post it (for now, I have some contractual confidentiality restrictions for the last projects we've been involved using Moi).
But I have many practical technical questions that I would like to address you all in the future.
Just need some time...

Cheers,

José Soalheiro

Hi Michael ...

Yes, you are always free to re post anything I send.

I thought I had another question or two but I resolved them. I'll explain what I have discovered.

I have set up a Rhino template with all the materials I normally use for rendering ... about 100 of them.

I can open this file in MoI and use this template (renamed) for any modeling I want to do ... assigning MoI styles (that now have all the template names) to any parts of the model I choose. Then save this model. (I should note that these are all materials and textures that work with Octane).

Then open Rhino but do not open the MoI created file ... open the Rhino template with all the materials assigned to layers and import the newly created MoI drawing (model).

This preserves all the materials and will render with the Octane for Rhino plug-in.

The advantage (if one has Rhino) is to be able to do the modeling in MoI (which is a joy) and get the benefit of Octane Render (which is great).

I thought this info might be of some use to others like Juan.

cheers,
eric

Hi Michael ...

Here is an example.

Modeled in MoI (on a Rhino template containing render materials). Popped back into Rhino (with import).

Added trees are created by e-on (the free version) inserted with Rhino ... one tree sized and revolved with Rhino.

This rendering required 2 minutes with Octane for Rhino. This might have been able to be done with the Octane StandAlone but I don't yet know import and assign materials with it ... nor do I know how to import .obj files (the trees) into the stand alone version.

I don't consider this any kind of a finished render ... I need to do a lot more work on it and add detail but it is a quick and dirty illustration of MoI as an architectural tool.

I should add that I saved it as a medium resolution .jpg file for the sake of file size.

MoI rocks and Octane is pretty good, too. Simply great low budget tools.

cheers,
eric

Hello,

Though not in the architectural field I have found that MoI and Thearender work nicely together and some architects have made some pretty impressive renders.

http://thearender.com/cms/index.php/gallery.html

Agreed,

The only thing missing from the pipeline is UV mapping. Though MoI has basic mapping via styles, if one of them had a full implementation, you could go straight from one to the other, no third party required. What would be ideal is a Thea plugin where you could render from directly inside MoI.

Hello,

That would be the icing on the cake if UV mapping was possible, right now I'm inserting C4D R15 Studio into the workflow since I couldn't stand the modo workflow anymore and with Thea having a proper C4D plugin now I'm just waiting for LightMap to have their proper plugin integrated. That said, it would be incredible if Solid Iris and Lightmap made a bridge to MoI.

"In MoI I've been hoping so far to avoid those kinds of potentially confusing situations by keeping things simple and not having a sort of parallel material system to the layer system with individual override settings also thrown in as well.

Maybe in the future I will revisit that and see about adding in per-object overrides but I'm pretty sure that it would be better to work on some other organization mechanisms like hierarchical groups first to see if those used in parallel with styles will provide the kind of additional organization tools that you would need rather than some kind of parallel layers/materials/individual object override type system.

- Michael"

In the following please exchange group for layer or whatever other word you want to call it.

I complete agree here, keeping things as flat as possible is ideal, and per-object overrides sound messy. I'm using MOI 3D for designing interfaces for audio equipment and there are a lot of text labels. Currently these are all assigned to the same style, but I have to be careful to select each individual letter when moving words, which isn't ideal since I think of words as a single object.

Some form of grouping would be really helpful. I think it is nice to be able to keep things flat as well, so each group could have an option to either be linked / unlinked / locked / unlocked (whatever you want to call it), so that you can still easily move individual elements in the group, but also if it is locked move all elements together no matter which you select. Being able to have sub groups would also be very useful, this would allow switching of visibility between collections of objects possible, while still retaining their individual object names and styles.

By default when a group is created a bounding box and centre can be automatically computed, but being able to edit / reset these would be handy. That way for an oddly shaped word the I could manually position the actual visual centre (not the mathematical one) so that when I do something like a vertical centre alignment with another object it gets it will work without me having to manually re-position it just right.

Hi andrew, yeah I've been thinking that probably groups would have an option on them for "Select as one unit" which you could enable or not - if enabled the whole group would select and move together as one when any part of it was clicked, but if not enabled then pieces would behave normally and the grouping would be more for organization purposes and used from the scene browser instead of changing anything about selection.

I hope to dig into these areas in the v4 time frame.

Thanks,
- Michael

> I really would like to see what have you achieved with Moi - most of the examples posted at this forum are vehicles, mechanical pieces and product design. Almost never a building. That's why I've been wondering how could it be used in architecture.

Hi Soalheiro,

I'm using MoI as well for very complex architectural models. With complexity I mean amounts of pieces and level of details. My projects are mostly steel constructions, prefabricated/modular buildings. Usually a complete model consists of hundreds of unique pieces. Sometimes they get animated or rendered as single frame depending on clients' needs.



Above image is from one of my projects. Unfortunately I can't share 99% of my work because my clients won't let me. :(

I'm doing all the modeling in MoI and everything else in 3ds Max. I'm modeling piece by piece in MoI then build my hiearchy in 3ds Max. I love MoI because it's just a simple modeling tool. It's not bloated with unnecessary stuff. Because of this it's simple to learn, intuitive, easy to use, stable, etc..