Everything is just about finished, this will probably be the last beta.

Mostly it's just some small tune ups and bug fixes, but I wanted to get it out so it could get some exposure before the final version.

I'm going to be out on vacation until Jan 7th, I think the final 1.0 launch will be about a week after I return.

Stuff for the new beta:


New program icon

Improved texture management for image backgrounds - very large images will be automatically limited in size to avoid consumign too much video memory.

Fixed a couple of bugs with Network that was causing it to fail in some circumstances.

Updated extrusion / projection direction for lines that are on a world axis. This will now pay attention to the last viewport that was clicked. So for instance if you want to cut an object by a line that is running along the world x axis, if you select the line as a cutting object in the front viewport, it will cut perpendicular to the front view, and if you select it in the top viewport, it will cut in the world z direction.

You can now hold down shift+control when selecting to make the initial click ignored and force a window type selection instead. This can help when there is no empty space available to click in to start window selection, particularly when you want to window select surface points.

Fixed a problem where filleting internal corners of a curve where the fillets would not pass over any adjacent segments even if they were smooth.

Fixed a bug where UV coordinates were not being created properly when the new centroid-type triangulation was being used.

Updated AI reader to handle some additional kinds of .eps files

- Michael

Happy Hollydays Man !

For sure you deserve it !!

Hi Michael, Great News!

>You can now hold down shift+control when selecting to make the initial click ignored and force a window type selection instead.

This is a great idea!
f only other applications would behave like that.

I understand that Moi's primary focus is 3d but over time I discovered that it's drawing engine is also superior for creating 2d geometry.
No other applications is as responsive, fast and intuitive.

I sure hope to see some basic object sorting/grouping feature, dimensions and maybe linetypes.
This way Moi could easily handle the job in more complex 2d work.


Again congratulation for this awesome accomplishment.

Take time to rest!

Regards,

Marc

Hi, Michael

Happy Hollydays

Hi all,

This is quick and rough modeling with new beta of MoI.
One question. I'd like to use shortkey same as Rhino's alias command. Can I set keys for commands in MoI like as 'SV', not just like V or 'Shift+V' ??
For example, in my rhino, a alias is setting as 'SCTF' is for ScreenCaptureToFile. Is it possible in MoI?


Thanks,
momso

> Can I set keys for commands in MoI like as 'SV', not just like V or 'Shift+V' ??

Hi Momso, sorry no multiple keys will not work. MoI doesn't have a command-line interface like Rhino, which is one reason why you can do single-character (without enter) shortcuts inside of MoI.

In the future I would like to work on this some more to make multi-character shortcuts possible, but right now it will not work.


> For example, in my rhino, a alias is setting as 'SCTF' is for ScreenCaptureToFile. Is it possible in MoI?

Just a quick note on screencaptures, see here: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1049.5 for a script for how to do a screen capture in MoI at a size larger than the current displayed viewport.

- Michael

Hi Marc,

> I understand that Moi's primary focus is 3d but over time I discovered that it's
> drawing engine is also superior for creating 2d geometry.
> No other applications is as responsive, fast and intuitive.

I'm glad that it is working well for you in 2d as well!

I do intend to expand the 2d capabilities over time as well, so this path should improve over time.

- Michael

oh great update! and on the features I am using the most right now too!

thanks!

Question: Is heaving multiple number of images, lets say one in front view and one in right view; does it increase the amount of memory consumption for the video card? Even if using only one view at a time?

Thank you for this latest and maybe last beta release :)

And finally.. have a great New Year and thanks for all your great work on Moi3D now in 2007, next year is gonna be a interesting one for sure. "The Year of Moi" as it'll be called will be printed in the historybooks for future generations to read. hehe

/ Magnus

Hi Val, I'm glad the update is helpful!

> Question: Is heaving multiple number of images, lets say one in front view
> and one in right view; does it increase the amount of memory consumption
> for the video card? Even if using only one view at a time?

Actually using only one view at a time (with separate images in each view) should help conserve video memory.

There is stuff built into the DirectX system so it can manage these textures that reside in video memory, and if video memory is getting cramped, it will chuck them all out to main system memory and then only load back the ones that are actually needed dynamically.

So the one for the non-active view will get chucked out in that situation and only put back in when it is actually used when that view is displayed later.

If you have a pretty low amount of video memory you should probably not try to use very high resolution images though.

- Michael

Thanks Magnus and everyone else! Happy New Year!

- Michael

Thanks Michael. And happy new year in 2 hours 1 minute!

>>>You can now hold down shift+control when selecting to make the initial click ignored and force a window type selection instead.

>This is a great idea!
>if only other applications would behave like that.

Hi Marc, you can do the same in Rhino using Alt key and dragging a selection window. -Petr

Hi Michael,

MoI seems to be faster while updating a view! Some improvements in a display engine?
Although, the executable file moi.exe put on weight during Christmas... hehe...

Petr

Hi Petr!

> MoI seems to be faster while updating a view! Some improvements in a display engine?

Hmmm.. I don't really remember any changes that would effect this.


> Although, the executable file moi.exe put on weight during Christmas... hehe...

Well it was so skinny that I figured it could use some fattening up!

That's due to the new icon - it includes a large 256x256 image in it for Vista, stored uncompressed so as not to confuse Win2k.

This one also has the curve fillet bug that you reported back a little bit ago fixed.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

>>Hmmm.. I don't really remember any changes that would effect this.
Maybe, a vacation and ice skating relaxed my eyes so everything seems very quick now :)

>>Alt+Ctrl+drag a window
Idea: Currently, there is no way of deselecting an objects by dragging a window. Alt+Ctrl+drag a window could do this(?).

Petr

Hi Petr,

> Idea: Currently, there is no way of deselecting an objects by dragging a
> window. Alt+Ctrl+drag a window could do this(?).

Right now Alt+Ctrl+drag inside of a viewport will do a zoom (move up and down). This is one of the alternative view key/mouse combos that are enabled to make MoI friendlier to people who spend most of their time in some other package, I think this one is a Maya shortcut...

Any idea of a different combo?

Currently a bunch of key combos are taken up for this kind of view manipulation compatability.

- Michael

ehm... sorry, Michael, I meant a new "Shift+Ctrl+dragging selection window" mechanism actually. Would it be possible to add that second function (deselecting selected objects by dragging a selection window) to this shortcut? -Petr

> ehm... sorry, Michael, I meant a new "Shift+Ctrl+dragging selection window"
> mechanism actually.

Right, but that combo that you were talking about Alt+Ctrl is already in use for zooming (for Maya compatibility).

I mean that if you hold down Alt+Ctrl and left drag up and down, right now it will do zooming.

To make it do deselection instead, I would have to remove the zooming function from that key combo and lose the Maya compatibility...

It kind of makes me uncomfortable to have so many of these different multi-key combos... It might be nice if there was only one way to force windowing and then some kind of option that could be triggered (pressing d??) to tweak it for deselection instead... But nothing really great immediately comes to mind.

Edit: Hmmm, maybe if you use Shift+Ctrl to initiate windowing, then let go of shift and keep only control down to make it do deselection? Do you think that is too tricky? The selection preview display will probably help, since if you forget which one it is you can just hold shift by itself (after the initial window has started) or control by itself until you see that you have got the right one.

- Michael