Yes Andrei, I tend to agree with you. That said, creating industrial design hard surface modeling for consumer devices *seems to me* to be much easier in MoI than SubD. Box modeling is great for basic forms, but detailing it can be quite a headache. And polys w/out SubD quickly become difficult for such models as the boolean/fillet/chamfer type operations are not too accurate nor robust.

Check this article may be it will be interesting for you: http://www.carbodydesign.com/2013/06/pininfarina-sergio-concept-the-design-process/

It is about Peninfarina design workflow. They use Creo and moves like this:

1. Sketch
2. 3D sketch
3. Polygonal(SubD) 3D Model
4. Nurbs.
5. Production e.t.c...

In third stage they use polygons becouse it is much faster to build and reshape forms. And only after they satisfied with forms they go to nurbs for precise modeling, class A surfaces e.t.c.

Thanks very much for the kind words Chipp, I'm really glad that you have been getting up to speed and productive in MoI so quickly!

I think it should be a good fit for you with wanting something that is easy to pick up again after some time away.

That's one of the kind of side benefits that come from the lightweight "fast & fluid" type focus... One of the things that I want to do with Moi is to make it useful to people as an additional tool in their toolbox even if they are not necessarily spending a whole lot of time with it. It can get addictive though! ;)

Whether it's a good fit or not can also depend a lot on the particular style of models that are being worked on too though.

Thanks, - Michael

Very inspirational Chipp.

What LightWave plug-in are you using in your demo video "Lightwave Modeler Excercise"?
Is that "LWCAD"?

Thanks

Scott

Yep. LWCAD is a pretty remarkable set of plugins. There's even talk of spline surface NURBS with trim and fillet features in the future. I can't see how it would ever seriously compete with dedicated NURBS modelers like MoI.

Agreed.
I'm sure it's a decent plug-in.
But if one can afford it($329.00), they might as well opt for a copy of MoI instead.

Scooter, you are correct. IMO, everyone should have a copy of MoI and I'm doing my best to spread the word. I've already got 2 people who have told me they'll be purchasing it soon. PLUS, there's this great video on YouTube which shows how MoI is great as a CAD 2D tool for Illustrator. Pretty sweet.

http://youtu.be/vOfKQugba00

Well written, Chipp. I completely second your MoI enthusiasm.

I've been fiddling around with 3D since the good ol' days of Sculpt 3D, Turbo Silver and Imagine on the Commodore Amiga, but my interest in 3D became serious when I started using 3ds Max in the late 1990s.

These days I use MoI for nearly all my modelling, and Blender for rendering, poly subd, sculpting and animation.

Keep up the good work!

Regards from the Netherlands,

Metin

http://metinseven.com — 3D (print) design • animation • artwork • illustration • visualization

Sculpt3D! That goes back a ways. I know Scott Peterson well. Helped him out with a Real Estate CRM a few years back. Their modeler was pretty good and they had the first ray tracer on the Mac, though Sadly for Byte by Byte, it never did catch on.

I got started with 3D with Turbo Silver on the Amiga too!

- Michael

I got started with Imagine on the Commodore Amiga as well. Small world isn't it?
I discovered MoI a few years ago from PaQ, who had mentioned it on the Luxology forum.
Now I use MoI for at least half of my modeling projects and find it indispensable.

-s

It is a small world ineed!
Started with Sculpt 3D, Imagine and Lightwave on the Amiga as well :-)

Now its almost 100% Moi3D.

I was given a computer in the later 80's that didn't have anything on it.. I turned it on to a blinking cursor, and typed "Hello"... Waiting for a response.... :o

Was that a Sinclair or Comodore 64?
We're dating ourselves. :-)

-s

In my childhood I had Sinclair... It was unforgettable time in my life... We played tons of games using tape casetes. But at this time I have no Idea about 3d )))

Hi

I've often read posts here that suggest MoI isn't suited to organic shapes. I disagree and have found it much easier to create models with complex surfacing in MoI (see attachment - a work in progress). In fact, when you look at the tools used to create car bodies - Alias AutoStudio for example - MoI has much more in common in terms of the tools available.

I started out using Carrara when it was at version 1 and moved from there to LightWave finishing up with Modo and, recently, Rhino. I started using MoI because it was one of the few applications that could bridge files between Autodesk Inventor and Modo but I soon found that MoI was so good and fast to use, it has ended up being my main modelling tool and I now use Modo only for rendering and animation.

For me, the principle limitation of MoI is that it is still a 32 bit application whereas everything else I use is 64 bit. I often have to export models to Modo in sections to avoid the 'out of memory' warning but this isn't a great problem.

If you are having trouble doing organic shapes in MoI I'd urge you to persevere because it's surprising just how good it can be.

Mark

Nice work Mark!

- Michael