I would like to have a simple material editor and a better objekt manager.

Hi, Michael.
We all want something here, but what's your plan?
When is the next version expected?
What will be the changes?
Or will there be a break for analysis?

Hi WN,

> Hi, Michael.
> We all want something here, but what's your plan?
> When is the next version expected?
> What will be the changes?
> Or will there be a break for analysis?

I don't have any detailed plan as of yet.

- Michael

1. waiting for a long time - fillet, chamfer
2 . better selection (lasso, hotkeys for 1,2,3,4,5: switch modes: blender approach is great 1,2,3 for poly, tab - object mode)
3. ogl improvements: reflections, mb other shaders, lines that are closed together ~ that makes buggy view, mb glass with transparancy
4. Bézier and better curve manipulation - SAI as example
5. Hotkeys: scroll up and down (adjusting radius: as designer i don't need to be precise)
6. scripting : points
7. instances

Hi,
- a Pivot tool like in polymodeling software would be verry helpfull.
The gizmo in Zbrush works verry nice and is simple to use.
- Some of the addons or plug ins that are around should be integrated in Moi.
this might be not so exiting but usefull. Because many especially new user dont know much about them and how to install them.
It took me quite a while to find some of them.

Apart from the fact that class A surfacing is a black art, it isn't a magical thing that the tools do for you. Even Alias with it's tons of surfacing tools requires a tremendous amount of effort from the user to help the software do its thing. I don't thing this should be an area that MoI should be focused at. OK, maybe some diagnostic shading/materials and a bit more robust fillet/blending tools are welcome.

On the other hand I believe that MoI lacks a proper industry standard layer system which will help with organization, selection and geometry visualization. It kinda works as it is with the styles, but I really wish there was a treeview control with drag & drop support and the concept of an "active" layer. In fact I experimented by using some javascript treeview widgets and treated styles as layers, but I ended-up abandoning my effort because it was a hacky way and nowhere near as robust as I'd wanted it to be.

The other thing would be more of MoI's internals exposed to scripting and proper documentation for it. The community has already done wonders with so little to work with. It's what every major software has done because it allows anyone to have a custom workflow, it lets you do any non-standard stuff you can imagine, and frees the developer from having to fulfill every little request. Not to mention that a powerful API will attract even more knowledgeable people to do even more complex plugins.

My 2c.

Hi immortalx, there is a concept of "Active style" in MoI, it's the one that has the ring around its color swatch, right-click on a swatch to set it:



- Michael

I know about that Michael! In fact that's what I used to programmatically set the active layer I was talking about. The thing is that MoI doesn't have the concept of completely hiding a specific style. I mean if you hide objects that have the orange style for example, and then generate a new object with that style, the last object would be visible. It doesn't align with the concept of a layer where everything in a layer can only be hidden or not.
Take for example Photoshop, where you're not allowed to draw on a hidden layer. That's what I attempted to do with scripting, but this thing was a show-stopper.

Hi immortalx, yes MoI's styles are specifically designed to behave like that instead of how traditional layers behave. That's why I avoided using the term "Layer" there.

The big problem with traditional layers where the layer itself has its own on/off property is that it greatly restricts flexibility. You can no longer show just an individual object you have to show the layer and all other objects on it then get shown too.

That's a big limitation that I didn't want to repeat with MoI. In MoI it's individual objects that have a hide/show state, not the Style/Layer itself. The Scene browser lets you manipulate a set of objects with one scene browser item but you can use different types of sets in combination with each other, like "hide all curves" (Types section), "Show just the object named X" (Objects section), in addition to Show objects with Style=Red (Styles section). You can't do that with traditional layers.

> I mean if you hide objects that have the orange style for example, and then
> generate a new object with that style, the last object would be visible.

MoI back in version 2 used to emulate layer behavior a little more closely and would hide an object assigned to a style (by swatch click) where all of the other objects there are currently hidden. That changed in v3 to not do that anymore, I don't remember the specifics of why right now I'll have to review it.

... actually now that I have looked into it, that appears to be a bug that crept in when the selection dot was added in v3, not an intentional change. I'll see about restoring that behavior in v5.

- Michael

Thanks for the reply Michael.

"The big problem with traditional layers where the layer itself has its own on/off property is that it greatly restricts flexibility. You can no longer show just an individual object you have to show the layer and all other objects on it then get shown too."

This has already been solved in most applications using nested layers.
In Blender for example the equivalent of layers are collections. You can have a collection with multiple objects, that you can individually show/hide, or show/hide the entire collection. Moreover, you can show/hide a single object's sub-geometry. And of course you can move objects between collections, or have multiple collections nested under another collection.
As you see, it adds tremendous flexibility for organization/selection/viewing, not to mention that it's the industry standard way for complex applications, and one that most people are familiar with.

All of that could work in conjunction with MoI's "types" concept, but with respect to the "active" layer. I'm not saying it's straightforward or easy to implement, but I'm sure that if you give it some thought it could turn out to be a very powerful feature.

Anyways, it's just a suggestion. Keep up the good work!

Hi immortalx, nested layers are helpful in other ways but they still don't give as much flexibility. You can't do "Show all curves" regardless of layers with nested layers for example. They also require more complexity to set up, it's much simpler if you want to deal with one particular object to be able to tag it with a name and be able to target that name regardless of layer assignment or layer structure as well.

For more complex cases where you're planning things out a lot the nesting is definitely useful though and I do plan on adding in some hierarchy into MoI's scene browser interface as well.

But I wanted to be quite careful to not repeat the problems with traditional layers.

The flexibility of MoI's system extends outside of the scene browser as well because simple Edit > Hide co-exists well with this system. Like for example, you can use Ctrl + Edit > Hide to do a "Show subset", that allows you to select any object to make visible, again regardless of what layer it is on and not having side effects of other objects showing because they were on the same layer.

It's overall a much more flexible system. Once hierarchy is introduced that should help with some other more complex cases. The focus for MoI has been to make simple things work well first before worrying too much about complicated things.

- Michael

I can show you a "sneak peek" here of something I've got working for v5 which are additional sub-type options in the "Types" section of the scene browser:





This is only possible because of not going down the limited path of traditional layers where the layer owns the control of visibility.

- Michael

Thanks for the sneak-peek, that's pretty awesome!

Well I don't want to be stubborn regarding the layers thing :p It's just a personal opinion that it's a better paradigm that it's widely used. Also I explained above why there are no side effects from showing/hiding an object. It can reside in it's own layer and together with other objects have it nested in a higher in hierarchy layer. Thus you could hide/unhide it without affecting other objects.
Anyways, the new thing you've been working on seems like it adds some great functionality!

Here's a screenshot of the thing I've been working on. Ignore the gazillion buttons in the browser pane, they were there for development :p

Hi immortalx,

re:
> Also I explained above why there are no side effects from showing/hiding an object. It can reside in it's
> own layer and together with other objects have it nested in a higher in hierarchy layer. Thus you
> could hide/unhide it without affecting other objects.

That puts an undue burden on the user to have to set up hierarchy just for the simple case of being able to hide/show one individual object.

It's better for the system to allow show/hide of an individual object without affecting others without any extra setup required.

- Michael

Good grief, you want Michael to get MoI to display on a VT52?! ;-}

Didn't look quite right for the VT52 though & then I noticed you're apparently working on a VT05. Days long gone by...

--Larry

@Michael, OK let's agree to disagree then :) Because I can't believe that Photoshop, Blender, Modo and many others have done it wrong.

@Larry Haha, glad you noticed! It's such a beautiful machine. They knew how to design desirable equipment back then. I have this crazy idea of building this case with fiberglass and fitting modern components inside XD

"""""I can show you a "sneak peek" here of something I've got working for v5 which are additional sub-type options in the "Types" section of the scene browser:"""""""""""""""""

Sweet!!! Can't wait..... ( Or can I ??? )

Hello,

- I have no idea how to do it right, but a way to combine elements together (solid / surface / curves) so they behave as a single object for selection / xform in the viewport would be an nice addition to tackle larger project. I often boolean union solids together because it's easier to manipulate, not because I need them to be merged into a single solid. Those containers could be a first stage for instancing or .3dm file referencing ?

- A 'simple' raytrace mode where you can get shadows, occlusion (and maybe some advanced transparency / reflection material) would a nice addition to validate designs ... (I don't want to loose the sexy wireframe display in that mode of course)

- wish I could win more fights with the fillet command :)

Hi PaQ


- I have no idea how to do it right, but a way to combine elements together (solid / surface / curves) so they behave as a single object for selection / xform in the viewport would be an nice addition to tackle larger project. I often boolean union solids together because it's easier to manipulate, not because I need them to be merged into a single solid. Those containers could be a first stage for instancing or .3dm file referencing ?


You can, right now, select objects (solid, cuves...) and give them the same name.
So with the scene browser, you can select them with one click, then you can transform them.
Naming objects is a good way to work on big projects.

another possibility is to give the same style to your group of objects. With the scene browser, you can select them with one click too.
As you can define styles with names and look defined by you, you are free with your choices.

You can combine those two possibilities to have a two levels selection tool for your groups.

Two levels is not enough for some peoples and projects but this is good for many.


Perhaps a third level would be possible if Michael adds a new attribute (called group perhaps), but I think having a tree of objects (or groups) with no limit levels is really more complex to do.

Hello Michael!

Here I'm back again with the same request that I've made long long time ago, when V4 was first announced ;)

For V5 (or I hope in the next builds of the current V4) I have this request:

A TRUE OBJECTS "INSTANCING AND GROUPING/PARENTING"

That's will be a HUGE leap forward!

Thanks.