Hello Michael,

>Try using the "Zoom area" button on the viewport bottom toolbar for this - the first point that you pick for the area to zoom in on will become the center of the new view, make the zoom rectangle fairly >large to make for not much change in zoom in/out level.

is it possible to set the rotation-centerpoint by a simple click with the middle mouse button? I know this feature from Catia V5 and it's very Handy - no menu clicks-no Icons-no additional Keyboard-keys. The view gets also centered to the new centerpoint.

Kind regards
Karsten

Hi Karsten,

re:
> is it possible to set the rotation-centerpoint by a simple click with the middle mouse button?

Sorry no it is not possible to do that currently - right now there is not any way to assign the middle mouse click to a custom action. Also it would probably be kind of awkward to attempt to do that since in MoI when you're in selection mode you don't see feedback on pointpicker things like object snaps, so it would be a kind of semi-blind (meaning without regular snap feedback) to try and do that as you're describing.

But the "Zoom area" button mentioned above is available at the top level UI, it's not on a nested sub-menu. It's the button on the bottom of a viewport here:




You can also set the rotation pivot point to the center of the selected objects by using the "Reset" button on that same viewport toolbar. Often times that's the easiest way to do it.

- Michael

Hello Michael,

thanks for the answer - and sharing your minds.
But one Thing I didn't understand - what is it caused by, that the Event for "click", can't select a custom command?
I understand the described catia - function like that:
The middle or a right click selects (maybe blind) an element or - if there is no hit -creates an intersection point with an invisible plane (depending of the Viewport alignment) and do an viewport reset.
Or is it in principle not possible to get click- and "mousebutton down Events alternatively?


Thanks in advance
and
have a nice day

Karsten

p.s: Maybe combinations of Buttons:-)

Hi Karsten,

> But one Thing I didn't understand - what is it caused by, that the Event for "click", can't
> select a custom command?

It just means that there is not currently any infrastructure in place to allow the middle click to be customized to do different actions.

Customizing middle mouse button behavior just does not happen automatically with every single program - there are things like UI that needs to be created to allow it to be changed. Currently there isn't anything set up to do that.

I have not really figured out what to do with the middle mouse click as of yet, it's possible that by default I'd like to make it pop up a toolbox of a few frequently used commands or something like that.

Because of the problem that I described that you wouldn't be able to get regular pointpicking snapping feedback, it would maybe be a little awkward for the mouse button to be configured like you are describing, so it could mean it would not be on a list of standard fixed behavior options but rather something that required some kind of more flexible and customizable script to be set up in response to the click.


> Or is it in principle not possible to get click- and "mousebutton down Events alternatively?

It is possible in principle, it's just not something that has been implement as of yet.

Sorry maybe I have misunderstood your original post - when you wrote "is it possible" I thought you were asking if it was possible to make the current version of MoI behave like that.

- Michael

Thank You Michael,
for wasting your time with my curiosity,

and Yes, my question was relating to later Versions.

A nice day to all
Karsten

No problem Karsten!

- Michael

When will we see the first v4 beta.

I am very curious, which way you will go next.

Hi Rudl,

> When will we see the first v4 beta.

Still quite a few months out at a minimum. I am making progress but there's still quite a bit left to do.

 

> I am very curious, which way you will go next.

The current priority for the rewrite is to make MoI 64-bit and also have a native Mac compiled version. Hopefully most everything else should remain the same at first.

- Michael

That's an *excellent* plan!

A mannequin (basic human - with 5.9 feet* - 180 cm*) would bei nice - only for a quick proportion-measurment* - even only a flat plane like in sketchup - maybe also a basic light/sun and basic flat shadows.

This would be cool :)

<< A mannequin (basic human - with 5.9 feet* - 180 cm*) would bei nice - only for a quick proportion-measurment*

This mannequin ? :)
http://bit.ly/moipat

no, not a 3D Object, maybe only as a personal hack ... ;) - just 2D Dummy in the 3D Space ... but he he ... maybe a dummy ther you can place an other 2D Pictureelement - png e.g. would be nice white or black = transparent/alpha - in the origin point. Like in sketchup :)

So take this one and make any thing you want!
(Alpha, cutout...)
Then import inside MOI anywhere you want!

Hi Lordfox,

> <...> maybe a dummy ther you can place an other 2D Pictureelement - png e.g. would
> be nice white or black = transparent/alpha - in the origin point. Like in sketchup :)

You could try using a background image for this, you can load one in using the View > Image commnad.

If you want transparent areas in the image, make sure the PNG image has alpha transparency in it.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

As I wrote the initial wishlist post using a previous account, I can't add the following to it:

• Adding full viewport navigation customization to the MoI preferences — the ability to assign view zooming (including a direction switch option), view rotation and view panning to any combination of keys and mouse controls. This would really help in seamlessly switching between 3D applications.

• Adding the moi.ini alternate triangular faces generation option "CentroidTriangulation" to the MoI export dialog options.

• Adding the moi.ini Undo memory size option "MaxMemorySizeMB" to the MoI preferences.

• SVG import / export.

Thanks!

— Metin

1. group/ungroup feature
2. command line for scripts

+ 1 for Group / Ungroup

The more I use MoI, the more I have situations where certain objects need to stay together. Too easy to accidentally bump something out of alignment.

Ed Ferguson

Added this to my previous wishlist addition:

• SVG import / export.

A lot of logo's, icons, web graphics, etc. are created in that open vector format. It's also the default file format of Inkscape.

Thanks!

Hi Michael!

Just minor wishes, no priority...


1. Lower-Poly-Tessellation Proxy view port geometry or bounding boxes when manipulating the view or working with object.

Okay, so I know that programs like SketchUp does this, when the view is stationary and you aren't moving any surfaces, Moi can generally update the view port with fine tessellation, but when moving, zooming or whatever, dealing with models with a lot of complex and 'heavy' objects or using Moi on older video cards will cause the display to lag. Switching to a low-poly (high Angle setting) version or using bounding boxes in the worst loads might ensure that the model view can be manipulated at a 'comfortable' and efficient frame rate.

Maybe an [Auto] option for the viewport Angle setting - Moi would detect when the frame rate lags too slow in manipulating the view port and throttles the setting higher in angle to speed things up without the user worrying about it. (this could be computed on a separate thread so that there is no wait time when re-tessellating)


2. Slight Improvements to tessellation export (.OBJ, etc)

The "Insufficient Memory" thing is a buzz-kill but I do understand that it may be tied to video card memory... (maybe instead, it could just not show the object in view but process it algorithmicly anyways. ...I speak as a layman)
I wish that a scene could be exported all at once instead of having to export different sections only to re-combine them in the renderer... and on that note: wasn't there an .OBJ combining EXE? I swear I used one before but can't find it.

My main request for the export would be to allow separate tessellation setup factors for individual surfaces within one export session. Nothing complex or intrusive. Maybe just a button that says [fine tune selected] and like, if I had a roundish box with a button on it, I could add more detail to the button object and then let everything export at once.


3. N-Gon Patch tweak. Couldn't there be a special case with three or four-sided surface holes that the patch would use a single surface (most optimized to match the tangent continuity of the associated surfaces) instead of doing the star pattern on them? Or essentially like a Blend surface patch that would also match the sides.


4. Remember when you teased us with the possibility of a control cage deformer? (sigh...)


5. Rebuild to work with surfaces... and can work for joined surfaces.


Has anyone written a script that would place little ticks or tiny colored lines on the outside facing normal which would also be distributed to show surface continuity? I don't think Thea Render cares which side is which (a relief)

Hi Mike, thanks for your input!

There was an old MergeObj.exe utility program, but it didn't merge different entire OBJ files together, it merged any different objects within a single OBJ file together into one single object. Some info here: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2699.4 . I've removed it since the option to merge same named objects does the same thing directly built in to MoI's regular export.

The "Insufficient memory" problem doesn't have to do with video card memory, it's due to running out of system RAM - MoI is currently a 32-bit program and can only address up to about 3GB of your system RAM before its 32-bit address space is all used up. For MoI v4 I've been doing a major rewrite specifically to deal with this so MoI v4 will be a 64-bit program and will be able to use all available system RAM, so that should solve this problem at least if you have plenty of RAM installed on your system.

re: different mesh settings for different surfaces in one single export session - I've thought about that before but it just inherently adds a significant amount of complexity to numerous things, just one example is that what if you needed to repeat the export after making some changes, would you really want to have to go through the steps of going through tuning all the individual settings all over again for each export? That seems like it would be problematic. Probably it would make more sense to have something that you could set up before doing the actual export where you could tag some surfaces with their own settings and those would then override the main dialog settings at the actual export time. But there would certainly be a lot of work involved in setting that up and I'm just in general not a big fan of that type of mechanism where something like the mesh export dialog controls don't have any visible effect on the current export due to some special override being set previously. That's the general kind of pattern that tends to lead to great confusion at some point later on when someone forgets they engaged some special override and wonders why their regular settings adjustments are having no effect.

- Michael