Hey there, have a look at this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggVLnb_3T4c

Shapeshop is kind of "blob-based" (Meta-balls? can't remember what it's generally called)
But I guess it could be NURBS-based without too many problems...

Anyway, just a thought, with the whole sketching approach MoI is aiming at.

could be nice to sketch out an idea, and then refine it afterwards :)

Moi is a little like that you show :)
But I believe that a nurbs modeler must make more complicated calculates than a polygon modeler for have same function!

It looks like a fun tool!

But it is actually pretty hard to do completely blobby stuff like this with NURBS surfaces.

One part of the definition of a NURBS surface is that it is organized like a 2D grid, with a U and V direction. When stuff is going in all directions at once like this type of blobby stuff, it is hard to calculate a UV grid for NURB-ifying it.

That's why this type of meta-ball type technique generates polygon mesh output only, it is easier to fill in the surface skin of it by having just little triangles all over the place without needing any additional UV type organization. The mechanism usually used is called "marching cubes", which basically fills in just one little slice of the blob at a time by basically intersecting it with a voxel cube grid. The "little bit at a time" apporach just does not lend itself well to NURBS calculation.

Even though MoI is kind of shooting for a sketching type feel, there is kind of an accuracy vibe stressed in MoI as well. It's kind of a different thing than a cartoon blobby type sketch...

- Michael

Hi ELF,

Seen a similar program called CB Model Pro that seems to work much the same as Shapeshop.
http://www.cbmodelpro.com/index.html

It's not a NURB's program, but could be handy for those that are interested in this sort of designing program?

regards Colin

Ah, fair enough :)

I just saw the video and thought "Oh my god... you could do that with NURBS and get FAR more clean results!"
My thought was that in ShapeShop you have like, 3 utilities, for making a sketch into a shape.
We already have extrude and revolve, all we need is the blob, which is kind of like a NURBS tool script I saw for 3ds max once.
And the blending would be boolean with automatic filleting, and that would kind of be it...

Looks a WHOLE lot LESS beta-ish than ShapeShop, thanks :)

Hi ELF - you may be interested in this mini tutorial: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=415.2 , this describes one technique for making a blobby type shape with MoI using 2-rail sweeping.

- Michael

Nah.. It was more the whole sketching feel I fell for, all the tools I want are already there :) (MoI is quite complete of its size ;) )