Precious indeed :)
Added to the Special thread Gallery

Hi Jesse,

Very clear, easy to follow I think.

Maybe just one point :
- On several occasions you mention millimeters (mm). Don't you think you should say "units" instead as MoI uses a "generic unit" system.

Cya

Thanks for posting this Jesse, it's a really great tutorial!

The nice balloon text bubbles make it really easy to follow along.

I think that a lot of people will benefit from these.

- Michael

Hi Jesse,

Nice and neat!

Michael wrote: I think that a lot of people will benefit from these.

I think so.
An advanced users of NURBS applications (like me) often forget that they also started as an absolute beginners long time ago....


Petr

Thanks Petr,

I tried to make it very detailed... perhaps too much so?
I'll look at some other entry level tutorials to get a feel
for how much detail is neccessary or appropriate.

I thought Schbeurd's approach was very good in the
Helix tutorial that he recently posted.. :-)

Jesse

Hi Schbeurd,

My MoI units do corresspond to millimeters...I don't remember,
was this something I set up when I initially installed MoI?
If so, I should probably include some set up information to preface
the tutorial.

Jesse

Hi Michael,

Thank you. I'm new to making movie tutorials, so the first
one is the hardest! I'll have a few more ready soon...

I have a question...will it be possible to turn off edge curve display
in future versions of MoI? I would like to be able to see how closely
surfaces Match. For example, it's dificult to see the seam
in the geometry of this model..

It'd not a big deal, but if I were to render the model, it would show.
For real world production, I could fix it with a couple of passes of a # 2 Barrette file. :-)

Also, Is Surface Matching on the wish list?

-Jesse

Hi Pilou,

Thanks!

-jdk-

> My MoI units do corresspond to millimeters...I don't remember,
> was this something I set up when I initially installed MoI?

No, there isn't currently any units setting, you just have to decide what you are using.

Within a few betas I will be trying to change this and have a proper units setting. It will probably just be in the options dialog, I don't think that I will bug you about it in the install or anything like that.

- Michael

> I have a question...will it be possible to turn off edge curve display
> in future versions of MoI?

Yes, eventually I want to have a checkbox under the view toolbar that will let you turn off all edge displays temporarily, and also let you switch between different display styles (such as a shiny style so you can see things like that easier).

But I'm not sure for the schedule on that.

In the meantime there is a manual way you can turn off edge curve display - select an edge curve, then do a select all, then do Edit/Hide, this will hide the edges like you want. In MoI, it is possible to hide edge or face sub-objects. But this is kind of temporary, it is not smart enough to keep these hidden if you edit the object.


> Also, Is Surface Matching on the wish list?

Yup, but this one is also probably not going to make it into V1 though.

- Michael

Thanks Michael,

I don't mean to bombard you with requests, but I really like working in MoI,
so I want it to do everything Rhino does, only better. :-) I can't imagine
what it takes to develop an app like this, but it must be keeping you busy!

I'm uploading another Wink movie, I haven't added text to it yet, but I think MoI's
shelling feature is such a great tool, I'd like to share how useful it is for
jewelry design.

The challenge with this model wasn't with MoI, it was finding a strategy to
make the prongs in the correct thickness and proportion without a lot of trial and error.
Maybe it's not a very precise method, but I'm not designing for NASA, it's only jewelry...:-)

Just to note- the first two curves serve as guidelines and the two points are used as place markers.
The model can be scaled a bit to fit various sized stones, but if the varience in size is major,
the basic parameters must be adjusted so that the prongs won't be too thick or thin.

-Jesse

> I don't mean to bombard you with requests, but I really like working in MoI,
> so I want it to do everything Rhino does, only better. :-)

Don't worry about me, please go ahead with the requests! There will probably be lots of them that will take me quite a while to get around to, but the more that I know about what people want the better!

- Michael

Hi Michael,

In that case, I would find matching curves and surfaces
for tangency and curvature very useful,
"Project to C Plane" for curves...and a surface generating tool
similar to Rhino's Network Surface.

I have not been able to get Blend to work on curves,
do you have an example of how it works?

BTW, I uploaded a texted version of the last tutorial I wrote.
I was wondering... is there a section on the forum just for tutorials?

Thanks,

-Jesse

> I have not been able to get Blend to work on curves,
> do you have an example of how it works?

It doesn't work for curves yet - it's on the todo list though.


> I was wondering... is there a section on the forum just for tutorials?

There isn't yet. But I could create different sections. I've been holding off doing that for a while because it can sometimes fragment things up a bit too much to have too many discussion sections, in some ways it is nice having just one place to see all new messages...

But I can see that tutorials are so useful that they should be broken out in some way, either by a set of links to them somewhere, or having their own section I guess would accomplish the same thing. Any thoughts?

- Michael

Hi Jesse,

I've been watching the second part of your tutorial during this week-end.
Very interesting techniques there. Although I'm not a jeweller I learned some tricks that I can use elsewhere ! ;-)

Just one question. In your opinion, are your tutorials intended for full beginners or for people who already have a certain knowledge of how MoI works. If they are intended for the second category they're just great. If they are for full beginners then I think there are parts where you should explain more in details what you're doing (for example the moment when you use the Trim command).

Cool work. I'm waiting for the next part.

Schbeurd

>> There isn't yet. But I could create different sections. I've been holding off doing that for a while because it can sometimes fragment things up a bit too much to have too many discussion sections, in some ways it is nice having just one place to see all new messages...

>> But I can see that tutorials are so useful that they should be broken out in some way, either by a set of links to them somewhere, or having their own section I guess would accomplish the same thing. Any thoughts?

As the number of messages slowly increases I think sub-sections would be an interesting idea. In the long run there might be sections for tutorials, tips and tricks, WIP, gallery, specific uses (seems there are some jewellers here, maybe a "MoI for jewellers" section would be useful for them...), foreign language sections...
Also, I remember a few months ago there was a topic with a suggestion to move to another kind of forum. Maybe this thread is not the best place to debate of this but personally i feel much more at ease in PHPBB (or Vbulletin) forums even after being here for a few months. I find them more attractive, easier to use and sometimes more "fun" (you know, the avatars and smilies stuff...). There is well an option to see all new messages since last login... ;-)
Do you have any plans regarding the evolution of the forum ? Maybe this one is not currently used to it's full possibilities...
Just a few personal thinkings... ;-)

Hi Schbeurd,


I'm glad that you've been able to pick up some techniques from my tutorial

It's funny, it's difficult for me to learn from tutorials, maybe my attention
span isn't so good when it comes to reading about technical things.
I like the movie format more than a written tutorial and a short movie is even better...
That's why I decided to break it into two parts..my brain cells only absorb a little at a time! :-)

I owe just about everything I know about surface modeling to the Rhino newsgroup.
I've asked a lot of questions and gotten a lot of help from other Rhino users
as well as the tech support team. I also find it very helpful to work with the
models they upload to the group, (most of which are not jewelry related problems and solutions).

In fact, I need to go back to the newsgroup "classoom" because I have not
been keeping up with Rhino 4 as much as I should be.

You've brought up an issue that I had been thinking about..and I agree with you.

Although, I did intend the second tutorial to be on an intermediate level,
I know new users of MoI will also be interested, I should have put more detail
into the area that you mentioned. I actually realized it at the time I was writing it,
but I guess I got lazy towards the end! :-) Thanks for keeping me on my toes!
I'll edit it and replace it with a new one when I upload the second part.

But first, I have to write the second part. :-)

Jesse

Hi Michael,



I can see the pitfalls of the forum becoming compartmentalized,
which could make the information less accessible.

As I alluded to in my other post today,
I really like the simplicity of the Rhino Newsgroup.
There's a good group of core members who are sociable and friendly,
which can make for some very interesting reading on OT subjects,
but for the most part, it's a no-nonsense source of information and support.

Perhaps as you suggest -to have links to particular subjects such
as a gallery or tutorial section, but not to split up the messages.
For now, letting the MoI forum grow "organically" seems to be working just fine.

I can also see that as Schbeurd suggests, as it gets bigger it might
need to be organized in some fashion, but I hope it will be in keeping
with the minimalist, but user friendly and design-efficient MoI motif.

Jesse

> Do you have any plans regarding the evolution of the forum ? Maybe this one is not
> currently used to it's full possibilities...
> Just a few personal thinkings... ;-)

I did actually strip out some things from this forum like smiley stuff, etc.. I didn't really like the UI for it so I kind of stripped it down to bare bones.

Eventually I would like to add more to the forum, but I've actually been quite happy with how it is working out so far - one big issue with a more popular forum like phpbb is that it is much more targeted by spammers. I've been really happy that I haven't had to worry about that part so far with this forum (keep your fingers crossed).

That's actually a pretty big issue for me because I'd rather be spending time answering messages on the forum rather than administering it and cleaning off spam.

It will probably be a while before I'll be able to spend any effort on any changes here though. Except adding some different sections would be easy but it still doesn't quite seem to be at a critical mass yet where that is necessary.

- Michael