http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zWj2keMob-c

Cant wait to see whats revealed with MoI!!!!

Hi Burr - wow that is a lot of the statue sunken down there!

Coincidentally right now I'm working on exposing the sunken 32-bits from MoI so the full 64-bits will be revealed... ;)

It is a long process and I've still got a ways to go but I will probably have the HTML UI working fairly soon which will be one big milestone.

It involves a switch to a new compiler, switch to new version of webkit which has lots and lots of changes in it, and porting from Windows specific code to cross-platform Qt code at the same time to have a native Mac build. All those things together means a lot of changes and porting.

It's only been the past couple of days since I've got enough of the UI working that it's starting to look like MoI again which is nice. But then once the HTML UI is all up and going there's still a lot to do with getting 3D geometry stuff going which is another big area.

The sort of frustrating thing is that once all this work is done the end result is going to look exactly the same as the old one... But having 64-bit and native Mac build will be a better base to build new stuff off of for the next 10 years I think.

- Michael

And I wouldn't be surprised if the ancient petroglyphs reveal unique spline-math information that gives Moi an advantage... or at least a good luau pig recipe (that doesn't taste awful)


http://www.eisp.org/


Does 64 bits mean that very large and extremely complex scenes will manipulate better, respectively?

I'm glad to see you still breathing life in it Michael!

Great find Burr!! haha!

That's great news Michael !

That will be a major achievement.
Will there finally be a proper flight simulator in this one ? :-)

Marc

And what is the result of these Petroglyphs ?

Talking rocks frenchy.... talking rocks.

Rongorongo.

Hi Mike,

> Does 64 bits mean that very large and extremely complex scenes will
> manipulate better, respectively?

It's not really that it will manipulate better, it's that it won't run out of memory until it's actually used up your machine's full memory.

- Michael

Hi Marc,

> Will there finally be a proper flight simulator in this one ? :-)

Ha, I wish I had time to work on fun Easter eggs like that! I've always thought having the Moai mascot guy come out and talk to you would be a fun one.

- Michael

Something like the old Quark XPress robot who would trundle out and disintegrate your frame with his laser beam.

Perhaps the MoI version could have the mascot head (with body) dance out and put a hex on the program that would change all the color settings until the next restart...

It would be a true Easter (Island) Egg!

Hi Michael,

A few questions about the new HTML GUI. Will it use the same CSS, or will it be different. If different, would you like me to update the MOI GUI Builder or do you plan on having your own GUI Builder? Also, do you want a NEW look with new icons for your new MOI? I may be able to help there as well-- if you like.

Hi Chipp, it's looking like the CSS will be about 98% the same, but there will be some changes. The changes are mostly for some positioning things that have slightly different behavior in this newer WebKit release. Like I'm finding I need to update flexbox definitions to use the more recent kind of flexbox rather than the early version of it that was being used before.

But it's looking like there won't need to be any changes for things involving colors.


> would you like me to update the MOI GUI Builder or do you plan on having your own GUI Builder?

It would be great if you would update your GUI Builder, hopefully that won't be difficult since the new CSS will have the same structure in general, just a few different properties used especially for flexboxes.

Someday I would like to make a GUI builder of my own but it will probably be focused on rearranging buttons and not really on visual color changes. I do also eventually want to do something for colors as well which would be to make all the colors listed in a separate Theme.txt file that had definitions something like this:

BUTTON_BORDER_COLOR rgb(24,2,4)
etc....

Then in the HTML or CSS it would use BUTTON_BORDER_COLOR , and when .htm or .css files are loaded I'll go through and replace those labels with what's in the theme file. The idea there is to make it easier for people to edit just the colors without needing to go through all the other stuff in the .css file. Although maybe this is not really needed anymore with your GUI builder. I do want to eventually have it that several different themes ship with MoI and there would be Theme: option in Settings where you could switch between them.


> Also, do you want a NEW look with new icons for your new MOI? I may be
> able to help there as well-- if you like.

I would like to update several of the icons, I might take you up on that. I'll probably look around a bit first and see if I can find an already done collection to use, if you have a recommendation for one please e-mail it to me moi@moi3d.com

Thanks,

- Michael

Hi Michael. Thanks for the update. Just let me know when you're ready to beta and I'll start making changes. I'll look around for icons, but I suspect there will be a few which need customization. Let me know and I'll see what I can do about putting together and SVG master collection.

Hello,

MoI itself can be an effective part of icon creation workflow, it is a great way to establish and hold look and feel of assets whether representing 2D or 3D and to iterate designs quickly and consistently.

My following comments are simply my observations about the look and feel about MoI as well as a bit of workflow related stuff, not to be taken as law.

My guess is you have around a dozen icons that you're using from a stock set. If that is the case it may be easier to make those compatible with MoIs look rather than trying to make the balance of your in house icons fit the look and feel of the stock icons. It might be the right time to solidify the MoI "look" by establishing those guidelines now, it saves time and effort down the road and usually results in more consistent messaging.


There are some inconsistencies within MoIs icon groups themselves, e.g. switching between 2D and 3D within the same grouping, but those are little things that can be cleaned up without too much effort.

Workflow wise much of this inconsistency is mitigated by good use of labels, please do not change this as the default load. Some of these concepts are nearly impossible to graphically represent and for the user to find in the toolbar without a label. At any rate there is some strong evidence to suggest that as people use an application they depend less on the icon itself and more on the usual location on screen. There are some potentially confusing items, like the deform button and object snap actually being flyouts, but the overall grouping looks very nice.

I'm curious what sort of assets can be used within MoI? Are the icons RGBA and is there a standard size that is being used? Thanks.

Hi OSTexo,

> My guess is you have around a dozen icons that you're using from a stock set.

Yeah it's pretty easy to tell which ones, stuff like File, Save, Undo, Redo - these are looking kind of dated now and I would like to update them to a newer style if it's easy to do that. The main way that I'd like to do it is to find a new set of icons to license to replace these. It's better for me to find a packaged set because then it's possible in the future to use more icons from that same set rather than having to create brand new ones from scratch at that later time.


> If that is the case it may be easier to make those compatible with MoIs look rather than trying
> to make the balance of your in house icons fit the look and feel of the stock icons.

Yeah I'm just looking to update those particular icons, I am not looking to change most of the ones on the side pane that I made myself, those are fine as-is.


> There are some inconsistencies within MoIs icon groups themselves, e.g. switching between
> 2D and 3D within the same grouping, but those are little things that can be cleaned up
> without too much effort.

That's true, but I would see that as a purely cosmetic issue and so it has a low priority. I don't see how having a mix of 2D/3D icons really has any impact on usability itself which is what I place by far the most emphasis on.


> Workflow wise much of this inconsistency is mitigated by good use of labels,
> please do not change this as the default load.

Certainly I won't be changing that - the labels are a crucial aspect for usability. I'd be more likely to remove the icons and have text only than to remove the labels and have icons only. One of the main purposes of the icons is just to take up space to make the buttons a nice big fat squarish shape to target more easily.


> I'm curious what sort of assets can be used within MoI? Are the icons RGBA
> and is there a standard size that is being used?

All the icons are 32-bit PNG files with alpha channel. The standard size for the images is 64x64, which gets scaled on demand either up or down (usually down) to match the current button size. The button size in the UI is dependent on the current UI font size which can be dynamically changed under Options > General > "UI Size".

- Michael

Michael,
Have you looked at the axialis stuff?

Hi Burr,

> Have you looked at the axialis stuff?

Just briefly, but they looked pretty good. I haven't spent much time yet looking around in detail yet.

- Michael

Hello Michael,

Thanks for the info, I suppose it would have made sense for me to look in the icons folder in MoI.