This software looks really fun to use. Could it be used for game art or would it be too un-optomized and have bad faces?

Hi CJ - some people have used MoI for game asset development before, but if you need fully optimized mesh topology that's usually something that you will have to generate manually with some retopology work rather than just use the automatic generated mesh structures.

However, MoI's mesher is quite good compared to how CAD programs usually do it, so it's possible that in some cases you could use the results directly too though. It depends on the particular case and how optimized of a result you need.

If you have mechanical shapes as part of the game assets that you need to develop, there's no doubt though that MoI can be useful as a part of the creation process. You should just usually expect that an auto generated mesh mechanism is not going to be quite the same thing as hand tuned meshes and so retopology work is just part of the overall process to be used.

- Michael

Hi CJ - Simplest answer is to try it and see if it suits your workflow. There are a few here that use moi for creating high resolution game props, which are used for creating textures and materials, and then use low poly count models to be used in their games that are rendered with the HR textures and materials.

From a personal perspective, I have had problems with medium to high res poly exports going to MudBox and ZBrush, but exporting at more course meshes with angle set at 30-45 and weld edges along with divides, you also need to export as quads and tris for ZB or Tris only for MB. I have used OBJ files for import into Maya, Modo, Silo and Cheetah3D all on OS x and I have had no real problems with bad faces, but this does depend on the complexity of the models.

Hopefully someone with real world experience of doing game assets will also come and give some more info for you. I know I can remember seeing a model of a weapon that went from MoI to Modo and their results were really very good. But for now i can't remember what the thread was titled (Michael may be able to help here)

Martin Spencer-Ford

Game art like Pixel Art 3D ? (cuboïd)
Try Qubicle : http://www.minddesk.com/

Michael wrote:
"However, MoI's mesher is quite good compared to how CAD programs usually do it"


Now THAT's an understatement if ever I saw one. Micheal, don't be bashful.
MOI's mesh output is the reason I first took notice. I wouldn't have given credit to MOI's deceptive underlying power without it.

I now work in marketing and previs, but after nearly 20 years of working in the games industry I can state that yes, absolutely it's a viable tool in the pipeline for game asset creation. There's nothing like it for quick, clean parametric modelling, and the conversion to hard poly meshes is, basically, perfect.

/Rico Holmes

Thanks for the kind words, Rico! I'm really glad that MoI has been useful for you!

- Michael

Ola,

I'm using MoI for hires modeling in the game industry. Basically it's not very different than Zbrush user in the workflow.

While most of the time I rebuild the low res 'by hand', MoI is still a huge help to pre-decimate the model. Thanks to the angle subdivision of the mesher, MoI show how the topology need to look like to get the best result vs polycount, priceless.

As a side story, I even uses MoI lately to resolve a very annoying modeling problem. I have to provide a very low res skybox geometry for one of our game. The idea was to create an half sphere, with a very specific subdivision pattern (simply said, more division on the lower angle). The goal was to avoid a much distortion as possible in a parallax shader.



Went out perfectly as our programmers need !

I find that if you can avoid curved sections in your models (use Chamfers instead of Fillets), you can usually get away without requiring much retopo work back in your poly modeler, if any at all.

For me, MoI's mesher was the largest selling point - excellent stuff!


-Will