Hi,
I am very new to 3D, and I must say that after a week of trying A LOT of different softwares, MoI is definetely my favorite =)
Using the Deform Flow tool (projection mode + rigid option), I have unexpected result :



So the elements are forming a circle, and when projected on a sphere, they form some kind of round squarrish shape...
Is it normal ? If yes, how could I get a "circular" result ?

Thank you !

Hi gui - I'm glad that you're liking MoI!

Flow using "projection" mode will shoot out rays from the base surface and try to intersect them with the target object, and if the rays miss or barely graze the target object you can get some strange results like you have here.

Your case there will actually have many projection rays miss because the base plane for Flow works on an entire surface, ignoring trim boundaries. You can see the underlying surface if you select your base plane and use Edit > Show pts, you'll probably see that it's a rectangular plane and the circular shape is from a trim boundary which isn't used for the Flow.

For what you're trying to do there, I'd recommend placing one box directly on to the sphere and then use Transform > Array > Circular to replicate it, that's usually the best way to make a circular pattern.

For placing the initial box, if you use Draw solid > Box > Center, and place the starting point snapped onto the Sphere using the 3D viewport, you'll be able to track along the sphere's surface normal when drawing it.

Or another way is to draw the box off to the side to start with, and then use the Transform > Orient command to reposition it.

There is some information on Orient here:
http://moi3d.com/3.0/docs/moi_command_reference8.htm#orient

And also here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3977.2
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3424.13
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3424.14

- Michael

Thank you very much !
I haven't try your suggestions yet because I'm facing another problem that might prevent me to use the software any longer.
I am working with an imported OBJ from photoshop, and operations (boolean) are very erratic. I still have 14 days of trial to make MoI works with my workflow, and this part is key.

Hi gui, for OBJ export it may help if you set the option for "Output: Quads & Triangles" in the Meshing options dialog that shows at export time from MoI, instead of "Output: N-gons".

Some programs have difficulty dealing with complex n-gons, meaning polygons having more than 3 or 4 sides.

If that does not help, can you give some more details about the erratic behavior you're seeing like a screenshot?

Thanks, - Michael

basically, if I do a boolean differ operation (a simple sphere minus several solids from the OBJ, it just does not complete, without displaying any kind of error). Merging two solids coming from the OBJ also sometimes doesn't work. I will investigate a bit more, because now I don't know if it's because of the nature of the solids, or because I select too many of them.

Hi gui, so you mean you are doing the booleans inside of photoshop on the imported mesh objects?

I'm not sure that you can expect very much from Photoshop's boolean functions, it's just not a major focus area for them. I didn't even know that they had any boolean functions in there at all.

The setting I mentioned before "Output: Quads & Triangles" may help though, I would recommend giving that a try to see if that helps.

But you would probably be better off doing the boolean in MoI and then export the already booleaned result to a mesh, rather than trying to do booleans on the meshes later on in a polygon modeling program.

- Michael

Michael, I'm not sure, but it looks like he may be working in MoI from an imported OBJ from Photoshop.

gui, if that's the case, please know that MoI exports OBJ great, but it doesn't import OBJ natively-- you have to use a plugin for that. And even if you do use a plugin, MoI is a NURBS based modeler whereas OBJ formats are for polygons. Only simple OBJ models can be imported and converted to splines-- and even then they need to be stitched up to create real solids which boolean appropriately.

Hi Chipp, maybe you've got it right there - and yes like Chipp says above MoI is not designed to work with polygon mesh type objects, which is why it does not have a built in OBJ importer.

If you're trying to make a workflow where you're trying to import OBJ polygon data into MoI and then work on it inside of MoI, that's probably not going to work very well unless your objects are very simple. CAD systems don't expect to have surfaces diced up into many hundreds of thousands of little flat facets, CAD systems expect for things like a sphere to be made up of one actual curved sphere surface, for example.

You would want to use a polygon mesh editing program to work on OBJ data polygon mesh data, not MoI.

- Michael

yeah that was indeed FROM photoshop to MoI...
Now that you mentionned the difference between OBJ and nurbs, the whole thing makes a lot of sense.. My problem is that the OBJ from photoshop is a circular text that I need to edit pretty often to build the 3D model (for print purpose). Maybe a nurbs oriented software could allow me to generate such an object, so I can continue to work with MoI ? because if not I'll have to find another 3D software, and I would really feel good sticking with MoI...






anyway, thank you a lot for your time and patience =)

Hi gui, it is possible to construct something like that in MoI, but since you already have what you want in polygon form it still may be more practical for you to use a polygon editing program to work on it rather than using MoI.

If you do want to use MoI, you would use the "Draw solid > Text" to create a line of text, then to bend it you would need to draw a horizontal line running along that text, and then draw a circle, then select the text and run the Transform > Deform > Flow tool to warp the text onto the circle shape. You would do that by selecting the text, then running the Flow command, then picking the line running along the text as the base line for Flow, then select the circle for the target curve.

See here for an example:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5097.2

There's also a plug-in that can help with this kind of deformation called UnwrapCurve, you can get it from here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5136.1

The way UnwrapCurve can help is that you can draw your circle first, and then select it and run UnwrapCurve to get a line that's the same length as the circle's circumference, then you can arrange your text along the line and know where each letter will go on the circle when it gets warped onto it.

MoI is not particularly specialized for text handling though, it doesn't have stuff to adjust letter spacing or things like that, so if that's what you were using in Photoshop again it may be easier for you to do it in a polygon editing program and not in MoI.

- Michael