Thanks michael!!

Now can startmaking more intresing models.

I would like to know what exactly de diverence is between NURBS an Mesh. I'v been looking up some information about meshes wich now I understand. But what are NURBS? I only know that there's high and low polygons.

Forgot to ask how i can insert blueprints in form of a box (like in car modeling)

Greets Isaac,

Hi Isaac, for blueprint images you can use the View / Image command to insert a bitmap image (like a .png or .jpg file) as an image plane.

See here for more information on the different image options: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=325.1

- Michael

> I would like to know what exactly de diverence is between NURBS an Mesh.

Hi Isaac, there are a lot of details but I will try to sum it up.

A polygon mesh is made up of a bunch of points and then there are flat polygon facets that connect between the points to form a skin. The skin is what you see in a rendering, there are some shading tricks that are done to make it appear visually that the skin is smooth even though it is made up of little flat pieces.

A NURBS surface is also made up of points, but instead of connecting the points with flat pieces, mathematical formulas are used to blend the points together to make a smooth curve, called a "spline curve".

The nice thing about NURBS is that since it is a true curve it can more accurately represent a smooth surface than a bunch of flat little pieces can.


Now, there is a variant of polygons called "subdivision surfaces" which are actually related to NURBS but also have some differences.

If you want some more details on NURBS, you can look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NURBS
http://www.rhino3d.com/nurbs.htm

- Michael

Hey michael.

Thanks for the nurbs details.

Unfortunantly i haven't had much time to mes around met MoI lateley. But i'm still going to do my best in modeling soething fancy in the nearby future!
Talking about future. When is Moi going "1"? And are there going to be anymore Betas befora that?

Wil there be a posabilaty to use a 3d mouse (space navigator etc.) in Moi?


Thanks for all the atention u have been giving me!!!!!!!


Till my next question,



Greets the static modeler!

Hi Isaac,

> When is Moi going "1"?

Not too much longer, the biggest thing left to do is to work on documentation. Soon I will be switching gears to focus on that and once that is done then version 1.0 will be ready.


> And are there going to be anymore Betas befora that?

Yup, at least one more. The next one will probably be the last one, although it is possible that there might be more to test any major bug fixes.


> Wil there be a posabilaty to use a 3d mouse (space navigator etc.) in Moi?

Yes! In fact I just finished the work on this yesterday. This and .AI file export are the major new things for the next beta. I'm just working on fixing up a variety of other smaller details and bugs before wrapping it up.

- Michael

Can I ask, being a newbie and certainly not any kind of malicious spirit advocate, what .AI export is used for? I am assuming this is for Adobe Illustrator...in my thoughts, though, things from MOI seem to be targeted torward a renderer, not a 2D vector program.

But hey, if I'm wrong, I just learned how to do something cool with these two programs!

Since it's a 2D program, would the export be from the view you're currently looking at?

Thank you,

- A

Hi Angeliclight - yes it's for Adobe Illustrator or also other 2D vector illustration programs.

It's true that a lot of stuff in MoI has been positioned towards 3D renderers so far, but I do expect to be adding more stuff for 2D type illustration in the future as well.

The ultimate goal for MoI is not really so much just 3D or 2D, more just on generally drawing and creating designs.

Sometimes you may want to use 2D output of a design and sometimes you may want to use 3D output...

Some people will probably prefer to do some kinds of 2D drawing within MoI and then export it to Illustrator.


> Since it's a 2D program, would the export be from the view you're currently looking at?

When you save to an AI file, a dialog will pop up that lets you pick the projection view to use:



- Michael

Hi Michael
When you say "projection"
Is it just the "window view" top, back etc
or it's also a real "projection" to a plan of curves who can be inclined in the 3D space?
So "deformated" as projected in result on the plan

Hi Pilou - one of the choices is to use the 3D view, which will do a projection to the 3D viewport's view plane which can be inclined in different directions.

With this option, the resulting 2D curves in the AI file will have the same appearance as what you see in the 3D view.

Is that what you mean?

- Michael

I want to mean that :)
I drew an inclined circle in 3Dview
What is the AI file: Circle or ellipse?

Hi Pilou,

> What is the AI file: Circle or ellipse?

In the case that you show there, with a slanted circle (not aligned to any world axis), you would get an ellipse in the AI file except in the one special case where you had the 3D view looking right straight down on the circle and you set the Projection view option to "3D".

The curves in the AI file will look the same as the curves that you see on the screen in the viewport. So if you have a circle which appears from a view as an ellipse, when you export to AI you will get the ellipse curve.

If you want to export circles instead of ellipses, then you would draw them in the top view and set Projection view = "Top".

- Michael

Thx for the explantion& precision: it was not evident :)

Hey mMichael remeber me? Isaac.

I haven't been playing whit Moi cus i was waiting for a pc i would get from my office. But now that i have it i sill can't find my moment of inspiration cus the onboeard vodeo card does not suport direct 3D. I't a P-lll. So i would say that the onboeard Vid card would atleast have the power to take on Moi.

Surprisingly my pc can workl whit Inventor 2008! and Blender 3d (maybe cus they have softwarematic 3d support).


So my cuestion is. Isn't there any way to get Moi working on my PC? Is there going to be any software 3d support in Moi in the future?

Btw I do know some one who has a Rage 3D pro PCI slot card (old one) for me, Will this do the trick?


Greets,


Static Isaac,

Hi Isaac - yes I think Inventor 2008 and Blender both use OpenGL which has a software-only mode.

But it will be pretty slow, you probably won't be able to do very detailed models with software-only rendering, that's why I didn't really focus on that for MoI. MoI uses Direct3D which does not have a software-only mode.


> Is there going to be any software 3d support in Moi in the future?

I haven't really planned on it so far. You can get a good graphics card for around $30 that will be many times faster than software rendering... Here is a recent post with some advice for upgrading older computers to work well: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=735.3

The one that I mentioned there is an AGP card - if you need a PCI one your options are more limited, but a quick browse of newegg.com shows several decent cards around $40 or so... If you got one of the GeForce4 or Radeon 9250 ones, those would work pretty well if they are compatible with your computer.

> Btw I do know some one who has a Rage 3D pro PCI slot card (old one) for me, Will this do the trick?

No, not really - MoI will run with it but it is terribly slow. That card is about 9 or 10 years old which is extremely ancient by 3D video hardware standards. You need something more around only 5 years old to run MoI well.

- Michael