Hi Moi'ers/Michael


I wonder if a brush function, similar to what Zbrush, Silo have, would be possible to make with script or integrate in Moi V4?

BR
Stardust

Probably not. Its a completely different form of modelling. Moi builds things using nurbs surfaces.It would need to build things natively as a mesh for this to be possible .Moi is suited to hard surface modelling with "smooth" organic elements.

You can however export a mesh from Moi and do your "brush" work in mudbox, zbrush,silo or 3dcoat.

Hi Stardust,

> I wonder if a brush function, similar to what Zbrush, Silo have, would be possible to make
> with script or integrate in Moi V4?

No, unfortunately it's like 3dcnc says above - the way that the model data is structured in MoI and in other CAD programs is with having large spline surfaces that are joined to each other at trimming boundary edges. This type of structure works very well for mechanical objects and allows for very accurate boolean operations but it is not very suited for lumpy bumpy organic type shapes like you would get with ZBrush.

The way ZBrush represents geometry is totally different, objects over there are made up of a whole lot of little polygon elements. That type of structure then does not work well for booleans but it does work well for brush sculpting functions.

If you want to use brush type functions, you will need to export your model into ZBrush or a similar type of organic deformation type modeler, MoI is focused on an entirely different kind of modeling style than that.

Different modeling programs use different fundamental methods for representing objects and each different method has its own set of strengths. MoI's method is heavily focused on building mechanical objects using profile curves and boolean operations. ZBrush has a very different approach.

It's not just a difference only in UI or scripting, but a difference in how the 3D model data itself is structured.

- Michael

...maybe new tools not revealed available to beta-testers only? :)
...new Moai statues discovered from Burr's post? :)

Moi3D is not ZBrush,but some cases you can do "raw sculpting" here too without exporting ;)

M

Hi Mauro, those look good! Yes it is possible to do surface control point manipulation in Moi, but it's a somewhat different process than a brush stroke based type mechanism, and it only works in certain situations like when you have set up a single base surface.

It's not easy to try and do that style of deformation on a solid made up of many separate joined surfaces like you will get when you do any booleans, and using booleans tends to be a very common method of building objects in MoI...

Usually the difficulty with surface control point manipulation for NURBS surface is that you can't add in just a single isolated point in a surface, NURBS surfaces are rectangular in nature and so if you want to add in points you have to add in an entire row or column of points, not just a single one. That's why sub-d modeling is usually better suited for organic shape modeling instead, since it is not as restricted in the point layout.

- Michael